When Challenging Conversations Go Unspoken—A Leader’s Nightmares
Be very afraid of the conversations on the tough topics of performance, improvement, and innovation that aren’t taking place on your team or in your organization.
Be very afraid of the conversations on the tough topics of performance, improvement, and innovation that aren’t taking place on your team or in your organization.
Transparency is measurable. Accountability is binary. If transparency is low and accountability is turned off, expect to struggle.
Difficult decisions and challenging conversations are inextricably linked. You don't get to the big decisions on strategy, structure, or talent without some tough discussions. Yet often, we as leaders fail to model the right behaviors. Here are eight ideas to help you and your team strengthen discussion and decision-making processes.
If you’re growing frustrated and fatigued with your life as a manager, you might want to take a step-back and review and strengthen the foundation for your role. Three items provide structural integrity for your managerial foundation: role clarity, values, and connectedness All three components inter-operate to support your effectiveness and to eliminate many challenges in this difficult role. Alternatively, the absence of the three is potentially disastrous.
Moving from individual contributor to manager is a challenging career step. One of the more vexing issues first-time managers encounter is learning to drive results through others. Here are at least 7 ideas you can use immediately to promote great results with your group:
There's no shortage of those in leadership roles who might reasonably be described as mundane. They focus on performance, but fail to inspire the pursuit of potential. That's too bad, because there's nothing secret or particularly difficult about pursuing extraordinary as a leader. Small changes in behaviors have the potential to yield big outcomes.
What costs are your own leadership tics and aberrant behaviors imposing on your teams, your firm and on your career? While you've been successful, how much success have you left on the table along the way?
(Note: this post originally appeared at the Management Excellence blog, copyright 2015 Art Petty.) Why do we fail with our initiatives (projects, strategy, leadership) in the workplace so regularly when the causes of failure are well documented and the practices to minimize the chances of failure so well identified?
An early career mentor offered this comment and it has been with me in one form or another throughout my career: “If you’re sleeping through the night, you’re not thinking hard enough about your job and career and you’re definitely not asking yourself the tough questions.” While I encourage a full night’s rest…we all need quality sleep to perform at our best, the second half of his advice on asking (and answering) the tough questions of ourselves is spot on. Here are at least 11 sets of challenging questions that only you can ask and answer for yourself:
The best gift you can provide to your team members is the gift of time. If you’ve got the right team members (with the right values), they’ll respond to your willingness to clear the path with enthusiasm, creativity and commitment. Here are 5 diagnostic questions to help remind you of your need to clear the path ahead for your team members: