Despite extensive use of competency models and annual performance appraisals, our research shows that only 10 percent of leaders have an individual or personal development plan and are actively making progress on it. What’s going on? Most leaders are career driven and want personal and professional growth. Many want promotions, bigger opportunities, and higher levels […]
Read post »Martin Luther King, Jr., American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement once said: “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what […]
Read post »In their book, Learning to Lead, Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith write, “To be authentic is literally to be your own author (the words derive from the same Greek root), to discover your native energies and desires, and then find your own way of acting on them. When you have done that, you are not […]
Read post »“This instinctive need for what we don’t yet have creates in us a persistent state of dissatisfaction. Without it, our ancestors would always be only one failed hunting session away from starvation…unhappiness is nature’s way of keeping people on their toes. It’s a crude system, but it has worked for thousands of years.” “Studies show […]
Read post »With the rapid growth of Positive Psychology there’s been an explosion in books on happiness. Amazon lists 100,000 books on the topic! I lean heavily toward personal, leadership, or organization development books that are evidence-based. Neil does cite some research and many of his approaches align well with the emerging science of well-being. What sets […]
Read post »Execution and follow through is the key to how extraordinary leaders get things done. We need to convert leadership theory to action and strategy to implementation. It’s transforming why to how and converting what to when. Execution is the only way for a leader, team, or organization to succeed. But there’s a world of difference […]
Watch webinar »My last blog linked to Zenger Folkman’s May 25 webinar on Execution – The KEY to How Leaders Get Things Done with a discussion of knowing versus doing. Common sense often isn’t common practice. “With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know but we must try to have and use […]
Read post »“Belling the Cat,” a tale from the ancient Greek fabulist Aesop, points to the timeless dilemma of knowing versus doing. The story describes a counsel of mice trying to figure out how to deal with “the sly and treacherous manner” that the cat sneaks up on mice and kills them. A young mouse proposed putting […]
Read post »The “dark side” of fixing weaknesses is very alluring. Last week I was facilitating our Extraordinary Leader workshop with a group of senior leaders. This was a highly experienced team who were strongly motivated to improve their organization and their own effectiveness. All participants had been through 360 feedback assessments before. Many reported feeling beat […]
Read post »The evening before a speaking engagement in Vancouver, I was in a hotel room on the 37th floor overlooking Stanley Park, English Bay, and The Lion’s Gate Bridge. After a pleasant dinner with a friend, I returned to my room. The sun was setting on a beautiful, warm spring evening. Wanting to enjoy the view, […]
Read post »A sure path to marital unhappiness — if not divorce — is when a newlywed sets out to change his or her spouse. Yet how many performance management discussions are built on the same premise? Too often managers set about trying to “improve” his or her direct report by fixing weaker areas. How enthused are […]
Read post »I met Chad Hymas years ago when he was a speaker at an executive retreat I was facilitating. He was putting his life back together after a devastating accident that left him a quadriplegic. Chad’s an inspiring speaker on overcoming obstacles and making the most of tough circumstances life may have handed us. How he […]
Read post »In his 1973 book Reflections on the Human Condition, social philosopher, Eric Hoffer wrote, “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” How true that’s proven to be over the past few decades. If […]
Read post »Many succession planning processes involve identifying and developing high potential leaders. As with promising amateur athletes working to secure very scarce spots at the professional level of their sport, not every leader considered to have strong potential grows in their career to ever higher leadership roles. Through our evidence-based approaches to identifying key leadership skills […]
Read post »Mass shootings, ISIS, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, November Paris massacre, climate change, economic upheaval, infectious diseases, Syrian refuges, crashing airplanes, hurricanes, corporate greed and deception, Donald Trump… 2015 news headlines were full of disaster and despair. One national newscaster reflecting on the year solemnly declared 2015 the “year of darkness.” But that’s mass media sucking […]
Read post »Does your team/organization need more communication? Would you like to get more e-mails? Most workshop participants give an emphatic yes in response to the first question and a deafening no to the second. Yet when told that team/organization members want more communication many leaders respond with ccing more people or sending more e-mails. During the […]
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 »I was booked to facilitate a development and team planning retreat with a group of vice presidents of a large company. The group had a dinner the evening before our session to provide each other with updates and discuss common issues. The company was going through turbulent and difficult times. Productivity and profitability were down. […]
Read post »Gandhi, the towering political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement, once observed “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” But we live in an ever accelerating world. Zenger Folkman’s research based on their “speed index” showed that extraordinary leaders are both quick and effective. Ten years ago I bought […]
Read post »Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. These words are often attributed to the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but seems to be a compilation from various sources. Regardless of the author, this powerful advice identifies a timeless leadership […]
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