A recent survey of more than 400,000 employees across various industries by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) showed that “nearly half of executive teams lack the information they need to manage effectively because employees withhold vital input out of fear that doing otherwise will reflect poorly on them. This restricted information flow can cripple a […]
Read post »My last blog post discussed Dan Tobin’s new book on building a leadership development program. His first chapter deals with identifying your organization’s high-potential talent. Once high potential people are identified, the next question often is whether to tell those rising stars that they’ve been flagged as such and will be developed further. In their […]
Read post »Failing to understand, believe, and share a sense of urgency for why higher levels of customer service – or other organizational transformations are needed – is a major reason the failure rate for change and renewal efforts hovers around 60 – 75%. Today’s younger generations of workers have an even higher need to buy-in to […]
Read post »Strong leaders build leadership skills at all levels (“leadership is an action, not a position”) and share ownership by bringing out the best in people on their team and throughout their organization. Unfortunately, these leaders are rare. More common – and often unaware – are stressed out managers who take on too much while reducing […]
Read post »The pace is frenzied – even desperate – in most organizations today. Restructuring, revamping IT systems, and reengineering processes are just a few of the major initiatives driving big changes across organizations. At departmental levels projects, goals and objectives, and operational bottlenecks expand exponentially. Add with today’s 24/7, always on and always connected technology, all […]
Read post »For gardeners like me, June in Southern Ontario is the peak of the season. Everything is lush, green, colourful, and fragrant. All the hard work of spring preparation and last year’s perennial planting is now paying off. “Servant Leadership” is the theme of the June issue of The Leader Letter being published tomorrow. So here’s […]
Read post »There’s an epidemic of frantic busyness, multi-tasking, project overload, way too many goals, and tyranny of the urgent. An old folk saying reminds us “the hurrier I go the behinder I get.” A theme running through many recent blog postings has been the critical need to be more focused, disciplined, and strategic with our personal, […]
Read post »As I was preparing to facilitate a senior management team retreat and planning session I came across an excellent Harvard Business Review article on the huge problem of frantic busyness and priority overload. This was especially timely since the executive team was debating how they’ll deal with a long list of urgent projects, goals, and […]
Read post »The CLEMMER Group does a lot of work with our Clients in defining and implementing (performance management systems, training, 360 feedback, etc) competency models for supervisors, managers, and executives. Recently I was working with a Client where the issue of nurture versus nature emerged yet again. The question was whether people can improve their emotional […]
Read post »I’ve spent all of 2009 with my head deep into research, writing, and speaking about dealing with change and adversity, personal growth, and leading ourselves and others “above the line.” That path inevitably leads into the critical topic of resilience. As the old truism reminds us; it’s not what happens to us but what we […]
Read post »Harvard Business Review published a special July/August issue on “Managing in the New World.” One of the many excellent articles in this expanded issue is entitled “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis.” The authors state “when the economy recovers, things won’t return to normal – and a different mode of leadership will be required.” They go […]
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