Last month Brad Smith and I attended Zenger Folkman’s Extraordinary Leadership Summit and Coaching Symposium in Salt Lake City. A highlight of the three day event were Client presentations from, and panel discussions with, General Mills, General Motors, and McKesson Corporation (a Fortune 500 healthcare services and IT company). With implementations ranging from two to […]
Read post »Leaders today are crazy-busy. They also know that their leadership development is vital. But work often trumps personal development. Everyone runs fast and hard and personal development is put off as executives look for a break in their schedules.
Watch webinar »Are the leaders in your organization timid or bold? What is bold leadership? How does it differ from timid leadership? How much of a difference does bold leadership make? Zenger Folkman recently studied 360-degree reports on more than 50,000 leaders in all industries and from all parts of the world. This new research identified leaders […]
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 »The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley is part of the burgeoning research in the emerging field of Positive Psychology. Since 2001, the GGSC has been a leader in the “scientific movement to explore the roots of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior — the science of a meaningful life.” […]
Read post »Most organizations find themselves either in competitive battles or with mandates to reduce costs and increase productivity. Those mild mannered, steady eddy, timid leaders of the past need to step-up and become BOLD.
Watch webinar »Joe Folkman is a global expert in psychometrics or measuring psychological factors. He wrote his PhD dissertation on data he collected from 360 assessments. Over the decades he’s developed feedback and measurement tools around a growing database now compromised of over a half million assessments on almost 50,000 leaders. Long-time feedback, executive coaching, and leadership […]
Read post »Exclusive! Download the strengths-based self-development guide for the competency “Practices Self-Development.” This tool will help you move forward with your development plan and will teach you more about the 8 related companion behaviors Joe presents in this webinar.
Watch webinar »Emotions strongly impact our own productivity and performance. And the emotions of one person are highly infectious to everyone contacted. Leaders who recognize the power of making an emotional connection with their associates magnify their impact.
Read whitepaper »The keys to increasing discretionary effort
Read whitepaper »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 »Many leaders find courageous conversations to give corrective or redirecting feedback very difficult. Emotions can get in the way, perceptions of the issue can differ widely, relationships may be damaged, and reactions can be volatile. Leaders may be scarred from past conversations where they gave or received tough feedback in a poorly structured and awkwardly […]
Read post »Plato once observed “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when people are afraid of the light.” Ignoring or failing to understand how others see our behaviors keeps us in the dark and diminishes everyone’s perceptions of our leadership effectiveness. Those perceptions then shape […]
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 »The research behind development of The Extraordinary Coach included looking at best practices in helping professions such as counseling, clinical psychology, and social work. Two practical lessons that apply to coaching effectiveness were focusing on topics of importance and interest to the coachee and asking for feedback at the end of a coaching conversation. When […]
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 »A few weeks ago I reflected on the last three years of partnering with Zenger Folkman (“Re-Fired with Building Strengths“) and their powerful strengths-based leadership development methodology found in The Extraordinary Leader. 360 feedback is critical to building strengths or addressing fatal flaws (as long as it avoids the “Nine Problems with 360 Multi-Rater Assessments“). […]
Read post »Strengthening coaching collaboration, and attributes of an extraordinary coach.
Watch video »“Managing the monkeys” so employees move from passing problems upward to taking more problem solving ownership. Where coaching fits in The Leadership Continuum.
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