Leadership Skills Archives

Leadership Caffeine™—10 Situations to Throttle Back on Speed

Somewhere on the way to this world we now live and work in, “speed” became a proxy for success. Speed is undoubtedly important, but beware relying on it as the sole indicator of effectiveness. It’s a cruel tyrant, demanding fealty from followers, while discouraging critical and deep thinking and focusing solely on time-to-response as a metric of success. Here are at least 10 situations where you should resist the need for speed and call a timeout:

By Art Petty|2017-12-13T11:59:29-06:00October 17th, 2011|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Project Management, Strategy|3 Comments

Art’s Weekly Leadership Message-Hey Boss: Less Talking, More Listening

It’s amazing what you hear if you exert a little self-control, clamp your jaw shut and focus on trying to understand what your employees and team members are trying to tell you. You learn about what’s working, what’s not, where you need to step up and offer help, where you need to step in and deliver feedback and so much more.

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:11:36-05:00September 26th, 2011|Uncategorized|3 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: How to Cope With Organizational Alchemists

The modern-day practice of alchemy is only metaphorically about the search for a method to turn lead into gold. Instead of the medieval pursuit by alchemists of a magical chemical conversion process to change one element into another, modern practitioners are focused on the magical and easy transformation of people and organizations from one level of performance to another. Here are 12 questions to help you keep the alchemists in check.

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:11:44-05:00January 3rd, 2011|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|4 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: For a Change, Look At What’s Working

Consider these common refrains from two different leaders:Leader 1: “That’s great! Congratulations! How do we do more of that?” Leader 2: “That’s broken and we need to fix it right away.” We have all met both of these characters. One sees opportunity and achievement and building blocks everywhere she looks and the other sees flaws and problems that need fixing. And while you are free to accuse me of making a hasty generalization here, my “blink” assessment of the two is that I want to hire or work for Leader #1

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:11:53-05:00April 26th, 2010|Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|7 Comments

The January Leadership Development Carnival-Best of 2009

Dan McCarthy, the proprietor of the well-named and always excellent Great Leadership Blog, is out with The January Leadership Development Carnival-The Best of 2009 Edition. I am honored to be in some great company with Dan and many, many of my absolute favorite thinkers and writers, and I encourage you to click over and spend some quality time soaking up the energy and great ideas.

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:11:57-05:00January 3rd, 2010|Leadership, Leading Change|0 Comments

Two Voices-Humility and the Effective Leader

One of the true joys of my blogging experience comes from meeting and collaborating with some remarkable people. Mary Jo Asmus is one of those remarkable people. We collaborated a few months ago on Two Voices on: The Words of a Leader, and enjoyed the experience and the reactions so much that we vowed to do it again. Well, we're back. Mary Jo reached out to me a few weeks ago and raised the topic of "Humility and the Leader," and we were both so interested in exploring this issue that we went off to our separate corners and the output is reflected in the two posts below. While the posts don't necessarily reflect a point-counterpoint perspective, they do bring two unique perspectives to what turned out to be a challenging issue.

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:12:01-05:00October 28th, 2009|Career, Leadership|11 Comments

Leaders Teach

I’ve long believed that the best leaders are teachers. Not lecturers, but teachers. As teachers, they challenge us to think, to explore, to experiment, to learn and to keep trying. (click on the title to read the entire essay.)

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:12:02-05:00September 15th, 2009|Career, Leadership|16 Comments

Two Voices on: The Words of a Leader

This dual post was the outcome of a casual exchange of thoughts via Twitter that quickly evolved into a must-write piece and fun collaboration on an important topic: the words of a leader. My partner in crime here is Mary Jo Asmus, the author of the outstanding Intentional Leadership blog...one that I turn to regularly for inspiration and insight. Good leaders are builders and they form and shape their words into phrases and questions that encourage learning and improvement and risk-taking and more learning. Good leaders are master craftsmen in many ways, and words are some of their most important tools. Less effective leaders use words like tools as well, but in this case they crassly apply the words of brute force in settings where precision is called for

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:12:02-05:00September 10th, 2009|Career, Leadership, Leading Change|13 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™-Respectfully Speaking, Your Respect for Others Will Serve You Well

The formula is simple and the outcome is predictable. Treat people with respect and they will generally return the courtesy many times over. The word “respect” just might work as the lone word in the world’s shortest chapter in the world’s shortest and most effective book on leadership. Master the term, practice it liberally and you’ve uncovered one of the simple secrets to leading effectively.

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:12:02-05:00September 8th, 2009|Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|25 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Resistance and the Leader

Resistance shows up in many forms in our daily lives. It’s what keeps us from eating properly, working out regularly, taking that leap into a new job that we’ve been dreaming about for years, and pushes off to some unknown point in the future, the writing of the book that nearly everyone says that they have in them. If none of those examples fit, think of something in your life that you know you should do, but haven’t found the time or had the discipline to do it. That’s resistance. Resistance shows up in leadership settings and in the workplace in many forms:

By Art Petty|2016-10-22T17:12:05-05:00August 3rd, 2009|Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change|5 Comments

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