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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »“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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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.” […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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, […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 »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 »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, […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »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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