Have you ever been stressed out by a bad boss? If it was bad enough you likely found yourself saying “they can’t pay me enough to put up with this.” At the other extreme, have you been part of a team led by an outstanding leader? Did the spirit of we-can-conquer-all, electric energy, and stretch […]
Read post »As organizations thin their ranks to run leaner, the need for building highly effective leaders becomes a strategic imperative. Stronger leaders create stronger organizations. This creates even stronger leaders across the organization in an upward spiraling circle toward peak performance. As discussed in our recent webinar on “How Wilfrid Laurier University is Strengthening Leadership Skills […]
Read post »Balancing management and leadership has been a focus of our work stretching back through many of my books and our keynotes and workshops and leadership team retreats. Zenger Folkman’s research on the “differentiating competencies” that separate the bottom 10% from the top 10% shows that emotional intelligence is a major factor in leadership effectiveness. Good […]
Read post »WLU is a dynamic and fast growing university in the heart of “Silicon Valley North” in Waterloo. A core part of their mission and values is nurturing a culture that “inspires lives of leadership and purpose.” Our daughter, Vanessa, is a Laurier graduate. Living in Waterloo Region, I’ve spoken to various student groups and conferences […]
Read post »Change happens. We can’t control much of the world changing around us. But we can control how we respond. We can choose to anticipate and make changes or resist them. Resisting change is usually like trying to push water upstream. Generally we’re quick to point to others who resist change. It’s much harder to recognize […]
Read post »My last blog, “7 Reasons Change and Development Programs Fail“, concluded that a senior leadership team retreat lays the foundation for successful change and development initiatives. This is often the intact senior leadership team heading up a department, division, or the entire organization. Depending on the retreat objectives and length, one or sometimes two, levels […]
Read post »In organizations with safety risks, leaders loudly proclaim their commitment to health & safety. But every day we read news reports of another worker badly hurt or killed on the job. The stark contrast in injuries and deaths between very unsafe and extremely safe workplaces — often in the very same industries — can be […]
Read post »“Ignorance is bliss,” and “what you don’t know can’t hurt you,” is dangerous thinking in today’s fast changing world. Perceptions don’t improve because they’re ignored. American writer and philosopher, Eric Hoffer, wrote “far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.” Leaders often rely too […]
Read post »Over the years we’ve worked with many Human Resource executives. We’ve also facilitated a few hundred offsite executive retreats as part of Culture and Organization Development. Step #2 in that process, setting up and following through on the executive retreat, is where we see the starkest differences in HR leaders. The biggest differences often show […]
Read post »Periodically I search Amazon’s web site to see how many books are now available on leadership. There are now 150,000. That’s up from just over 120,000 when I last searched a few months ago. The overwhelming number of leadership theories, models, frameworks, and skills makes it very hard to know where to invest development time […]
Read post »When our son Chris was home from university to celebrate his 22nd birthday, he and I had a conversation about how much more complex, nuanced, and interesting the world has become for him than when he was a teenager. During his teenage years, the world, and most of the people he encountered in it, could […]
Read post »Change isn’t news. But the continually accelerating pace of organizational change is. People feel inundated, overwhelmed, and stressed. Adaptive organizations provide inspiration and practical tools to everyone in order to help deal with our rapid pace of change and uncertainty. Our turbulent times have created waves of fear, frustration, and uncertainty. When these negative forces […]
Read post »360 assessments are now being used by over 85% of larger and leading organizations. As I wrote in “9 Problems with 360 Multi-Rater Assessments” there’s a growing backlash and resistance to their use because they often search for gaps and weaknesses. Our work with Zenger Folkman has shown that 360 data on a leader’s effectiveness can […]
Read post »Last year we started offering one-on-one phone coaching around The Extraordinary Leader 360 assessments and building strengths-based personal development plans. These typically involve 2, 3, and sometimes more sessions about a month or two apart. As leaders have reported back on their progress we’ve further developed and expanded their action plans. Typically the first step […]
Read post »8 Tips for a Better YOU Research shows that people who put proper emphasis on their own development impact their organization in significant ways. Multiple studies show how seeking feedback can increase leadership effectiveness, but ZF’s upcoming webinar on May 27 will take a deeper dive into self-development and the critical role feedback can play. […]
Read post »A recent Harvard Business School newsletter summarized research from David Garvin, the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Joshua Margolis, professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School. They point out that effective leaders need good advice and need to give useful advice to others. “Yet business […]
Read post »As part of succession planning many organizations are concerned about developing their next generation of senior leaders. Many large companies in well-established industries like financial services, resources, manufacturing, and the like or public sector, education, and healthcare organizations struggle with getting middle and senior managers to embrace leadership development opportunities. We’ve recently published a case […]
Read post »Most 360 feedback assessments search for skill gaps, weaknesses, and training/development needs. We’re running into executives who’ve refused to participate in 360 feedback assessments because they’ve found them negative and often feel beat up by the process — even when they have the counsel of a well-trained coach or psychologist. Some CEOs have banned the […]
Read post »Our research shows that leadership self-assessment correlates to performance outcomes like employee engagement, turnover, safety, customer service, or profitability only half as reliably as ratings from everyone else (manager, direct reports, peers, and others). Some leaders rate themselves much higher than all the other raters. Other leaders don’t see their own strengths and assess their […]
Read post »We are often asked, “What is the one thing a person ought to do to be a better leader and have a more successful career?” While it is difficult to narrow down the list to just one thing, there is one that seems to surface over and over again in our research. That one thing […]
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