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Team Building: Healthy Debates versus Dysfunctional Arguments

Strong management teams fiercely debate options, challenge each other’s thinking, and find the optimum approaches hidden in the grey area between both sides of tough issues. That takes trust, emotional intelligence, and courage. I am currently coaching a couple of lower performing executive groups struggling to “up their game” and become strong leadership teams. One […]

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Three Keys to Leading a Virtual Team

Today’s organizations are spanning geographic and departmental boundaries. Increasingly people — especially white collar professionals — are on teams whose members don’t all work in the same location. Telecommuting and cross-functional/regional/country collaboration are adding to this growing trend. The international training company, AchieveGlobal, has just published a study looking at leading virtual teams. Among its […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on…. the Power of Expectations

“What we expect, that we find.” – Aristotle, Greek philosopher, student of Plato, and teacher of Alexander the Great “Much of life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think the worst of people and show it, they will often prove you right. If the systems we design are based on the principle that people cannot […]

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My Fair Lady Shows the Power of Expectations

Last week I finally saw the famous musical My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. I took our fair daughter, Jennifer, to see My Fair Lady at the Shaw Festival in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. We thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve wanted to see the show for years as a result of reading and […]

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Are You a Servant Leader? Whom Do You Serve?

Recent Client work with culture change, service/quality improvement, safety, and leadership development has led to discussions of values, intentions, and drivers of behavior change. Do you see people as “human assets” to be “motivated” toward your goals? Do you strive for a win/win alignment of helping people get what they want from work while the […]

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Avoid These Traps and LOL for Peak Performance

I recently came across this bit of wisdom from an unknown author, “Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold — but so does a hard-boiled egg.”  Way too many managers confuse intentions, plans, and declarations with actions. Managers must LOL — lead out loud […]

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Reflections on “Nine Leadership Behaviors” and a Bad Boss Mirror Check

A recent blog post on “Nine Leadership Behaviors to Build Commitment” provoked a few excellent questions/observations that got me thinking — and responding. Reader input included: How is the measurement and management of leadership effectiveness actually implemented in practice? Most managers let themselves off the hook for the poor productivity of an employee… Aren’t ego […]

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Strong Leaders Harness the Power of Spirit and Meaning

We regularly review our seven Timeless Leadership Principles in our workshops while participants assess how well they feel they’re doing with each one, and which of the Principles they’d most like to improve. The one that scores number one or two on participant priority lists for improvement is Mobilizing and Energizing. Supervisors, managers, and executives […]

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Nine Leadership Behaviors to Build Commitment

So many leadership topics to write about and so little time! I continue to stockpile research on personal, team, and organization leadership. Today’s blog draws from two research pieces I’ve been hanging on to for a while, waiting for a chance to share them with you. The first is about how “CEOs Misunderstand Employee Engagement.” […]

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Management Practices to Reduce Workplace Stress

An e-mail from Philip, a student working on a senior thesis on “management practices that can help reduce stress in the work environment,” provoked me to think further and review some of my writing on this growing epidemic. Below are Philip’s questions and my responses. Stress is a classic symptom or result of many underlying […]

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Learning from Southwest Airlines: Nurturing a Culture of Volunteerism

The New York Times recently published an in-depth look at the zany – and wildly successful – culture that propelled Southwest Airlines to become the largest U.S. domestic carrier over the past 40 years. Entitled “Pushing 40, Southwest is Still Playing the Rebel,” this entertaining and educational article explains how the company’s very powerful culture […]

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It Takes Strong Leadership Skills to Avoid the Deadly Incentives Trap

A few weeks ago one of my Tweets linked to a BusinessWeek article “How Incentives Can Undermine Your Influence.” The article focuses on Danny Meyer “the most influential restauranteur in New York City…today every one of his 10 restaurant brands have appeared every year in Zagat’s top 40 for New York City.” The article’s author, […]

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Thoughts that make you go Hmmm on…Courageous Conversations

My last blog post highlighted the big problem of a culture of fear within many teams and organizations. In the middle of preparing today’s post, I’m doing some fall clean up in my garden while listening to a radio panel discussion on the huge problem of medical errors. Fear of speaking up or admitting mistakes […]

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A Culture of Courageous Conversations – Speaking Up and Listening – Overcomes the Price of Fear

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 […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on…. Servant Leadership

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 […]

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Reconnecting with Jack Zenger as Guest Blogger: “The Motivation Myth That Won’t Go Away”

Jack Zenger is one of those very special people whose work and personal relationship has had a big impact on my career. And he’s a wonderfully warm human being and all around nice guy. As co-founder and president of California-based Zenger Miller, Jack and his organization developed outstanding leadership training programs that my previous company, […]

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Inside Out: Beyond Motivation to Inspiration

Last week I received this e-mail from a reader: “Your August newsletter, as usual, was interesting and noted comments from readers. Hence, I am sharing this thought with you. I just returned from Indonesia after doing a session on Emotional Intelligence (EI) and leadership. After I finished the session on motivation in relation to EI […]

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Three Critical Factors in Building a Productive Team Culture

Marcelino Sánchez added this comment to my blog posting last week on “Keys to Building a Strong Team or Organizational Culture:” “My thoughts on building a productive team culture (subculture). For a team to do what it needs to do in a way that they like to do it and be effective, they have to […]

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Possibility Thinking: Spreading Hope and Optimism

During all my decades of studying, personally applying, training, and coaching leadership, I’ve come to appreciate that hope and optimism is a core defining element. Leaders make us hopeful. Whether leading ourselves, our families, our teams, organizations, or countries, when times are darkest true leadership shines brightest. Leaders don’t sugarcoat or avoid facing tough problems […]

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Supervisors and Managers Playing The Blame Game and Make Themselves Transparent

After reading one of my articles entitled “Leaders Take Responsibility for Their Choices” along with a comment from another reader, Heather Bruce posted these reflections: “I agree with Don’s email and the article in our very human tendency to find something or someone to blame! I have found over time that asking myself: ‘what outcome […]

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