The good news is strategic thinking can be nurtured
I once started working with a leader who suddenly found herself on the executive team. A corporate restructuring resulted in skipping a level and now she is sitting around the table asking, ‘am I strategic enough to do this job?’ Her question is not unique. Twenty years of developing leaders has taught me there are…
Seven basic management skills to motivate your workers
For over two decades we have been training leaders to manage people by empowering them. Leaders who were authoritarian, who behaved like a parent instead of a coach, were seen as dinosaurs at the end of their era. Times change. I remember how a conversation I had with a client, an enlightened and successful leader, unfolded:…
Being offered a promotion or a chance to do something new at work may be your dream come true. But is it?
Being offered a promotion or a chance to do something new at work may be your dream come true. But is every opportunity a good one? Before you jump and say ‘yes’ ask yourself these five questions. Why me? Organizations re-assign people for a variety of reasons. Brent took two back-to-back ‘Acting’ roles and was…
By being kind, we give those around us hope and inspiration
Mindfulness is a hot trend in organizational effectiveness, with employee programs popping up in innovators like Google and stalwarts like General Mills (Why Google, Target, and General Mills Are Investing in Mindfulness, Harvard Business Review). The demonstrated benefits of mindfulness practices, such as meditation, are mounting. As good and important as mindfulness is (I am…
At mid-life, as we long to reshape our lives and careers, and do something more meaningful, we could learn a thing or two from millennials
Several years ago, I had the sudden, blessed opportunity to step off my hamster wheel – the success-oriented, fast-paced career where I put my work first and tried to shoehorn in everything else. Balance was a see-saw – when one side went up, the other went down. It was a life of sacrifice and compromise,…
By focusing on simple things that improve your life, you'll become a happier person – enabling you to make a broader contribution
I relish the opportunity to reflect on the year – and give thought to what I want to be different going forward, and how I will accomplish that. I gave up making actual resolutions years ago; like everyone else, my follow-through was short-lived and ended in disappointment. But I like to experiment with new habits…
Change isn't difficult. What is difficult is doing things when you don't really want to
So it's a new year. The pressure to look optimistically and confidently ahead, to resolve to change old ways and embrace the new, is palpable. The media, with tiresome predictability, are chock-full of advice from the experts on how to make and stick to your resolutions. Forget it. Most people really don't want to change,…
A leader provides his team with vision, values and guidelines critical to helping people make the best possible decisions for the company
A leader I met with once said something that has stuck with me. "Most people are trying to do what they believe is in the best interest of the organization. The trouble is they may not have the same point of view on what that is. And that leads to chaos." As an example, take the…
25 per cent of people who move into a new job will fail. Paying attention to these six common mistakes will help make sure you are not one of them
What happens when leaders take on new roles or responsibilities in their company? 'Onboarding' – the process of acquiring, accommodating, assimilating and accelerating new team members, whether they come from outside or inside the company – has focused almost exclusively on employees who join from the outside. But there is usually a lot more internal…
You don't engage your employees by handing them a report card like they are grade-school students, but by helping them paint a picture of their future
The dreaded performance review is quite possibly the most detested human resources program ever invented. It doesn’t matter what process, form or technology is in place to accomplish this task, it is always bad. And it doesn’t work – ever. The reason I know this is because I spent a year thumbing through job descriptions…