Last week, I delivered a 45-minute webinar on Powerful New Approaches to Leadership and Coaching Development. This webinar condensed the key research and approaches from The Extraordinary Leader and The Extraordinary Coach workshops. An 11-minute Q & A session followed the webinar presentation. I was able to answer just seven questions and couldn’t get to […]
Read post »Almost 20 years ago, Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman began a two-year research project to review 360 assessments on over 20,000 leaders. They sought to pinpoint the leadership competencies differentiating the top 10 percent of leaders from the bottom 10 percent of leaders. Jack and Joe correlated assessments of the best and worst leaders against […]
Read post »Would you like to help your leaders increase employee engagement by up to 8 times, double or triple their motivation to implement a personal development plan, build coaching and leadership skills around natural strengths, make performance appraisals an inspiring event people look forward to, and double rates of improvement from 360 feedback? As farfetched as […]
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 »Last week Melanie Will, Manager of Learning and Organization Development, Wilfrid Laurier University and I delivered a one hour webinar on Strengthening Leadership and Culture. Melanie provided a case study using many examples and research data from their organization’s use of The Extraordinary Leader Development System for over 160 leaders throughout the university. We covered […]
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 »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 »How do you build a leadership strength from good to great? How do you sustain energy and endurance to keep working at developing leadership skills until others notice a substantial improvement? How do you ensure the leadership skill you’re developing is most relevant to what the organization needs or expects from you? The answers to these […]
Read post »Are you interested in learning from world class leaders and practitioners in coaching and leadership skill development? Would you like insights to new and ground breaking approaches you can apply immediately and bring back to your organization? Do you want to see the latest research and practical applications that break traditional molds to produce measurably […]
Read post »I am publishing just one blog post this week as I enjoy holiday relaxation with family and friends. So I’ve packed this blog post with enough resources to last the week! Here is a recap of our most popular resources over the past year. I hope you’ll have a little extra time over the holidays […]
Read post »Would you like to move beyond building individual leaders to building a culture of exceptional leadership and coaching in your organization? Are you concerned about succession planning, deepening leadership bench strength, cultivating teamwork, recruiting top talent, increasing retention and engagement, improving customer service, safety and wellness, and increasing sales and profits? These critical issues are […]
Read post »Coaching skills development has become a major concern for many organizations. And for good reason. Leaders with extraordinary coaching skills create 8 times higher employee engagement, 2.5 times higher job satisfaction, 3 times more willingness to “go the extra mile,” half as many employees thinking about quitting, and dramatically higher levels of customer service and […]
Read post »An 11 Keys to Building Extraordinary Leaders and Coaches webinar participant e-mailed me with this observation and question: “It’s amazing that for so long our organization has been concentrating on improving employee weaknesses and seemed to forget about helping them achieve greatness by focusing on what they are good at. I assume I can use […]
Read post »I just went to Amazon and searched for coaching books. I was presented with 29,935 books to peruse. I typed “coaching programs” into Google and got 687,000 hits. Coaching is so popular because — done effectively — it can turbocharge personal, team, and organization performance. But there’s a mind-numbing array of frameworks, processes, experts, methods, […]
Read post »Two readers recently posted comments voicing the common struggles many people have in letting go of weaknesses when developing leadership effectiveness. One reader responded to Zenger Folkman’s Harvard Business Review blog Three Myths About Your Strengths by naming a fourth myth as focusing on your strengths means you can ignore your weaknesses. He went on […]
Read post »Tom is a strong manager with a solid track record of energizing and pulling teams together to deliver results in difficult circumstances. He’s been rising steadily in his organization. Tom thrives on ever more challenging assignments and driving hard to continue growing his leadership effectiveness and career opportunities. A recent 360 assessment from Tom’s direct […]
Read post »We had over 400 sites join last week’s webinar on building extraordinary leaders and coaches. During this 60 minute webcast I outlined a high level and highly condensed overview of 5 keys to strengths-based leadership development and 6 steps to building a coaching culture with exceptional leaders. In this fast-paced webcast I rapidly covered: • Key […]
Read post »We’re now planning our fall series of webinars, briefings, and public workshops. You can see what we’ve got planned in our Coming Events section. I pulled together, updated, and condensed our research, workshop materials, and key learning from The Extraordinary Leader and The Extraordinary Coach development systems into a 60 minute complimentary webinar. To provide […]
Read post »I’ve delivered hundreds of leadership workshops over the past few decades. Until our partnership with Zenger Folkman, these sessions were based on “timeless leadership principles” that encouraged participants to build their improvement plans around the weaker areas to round out and expand their leadership skills. That meant focusing on weaknesses. Last week I delivered another […]
Read post »Soundview Executive Book Summaries has released a summary of Zenger Folkman’s new book, How to Be Exceptional: Drive Leadership Success by Magnifying Your Strengths. The summary covers: • How to pinpoint your best leadership traits and choose the right development target for yourself. • How to use feedback and action learning on the job to […]
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