Difficult Decisions and Challenging Conversations—The Stuff of Leadership (and Organization) Success

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.

Struggling as a Manager? Try Revisiting These 3 Foundational Issues

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.

By |2017-11-02T07:16:59-05:00November 2nd, 2017|Emerging Leaders, First Time Manager Series, Leadership|0 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—Extraordinary or Mundane? Your Choice

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.

Leadership Caffeine™—Your Critical Personal Performance Questions

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:

By |2016-10-22T17:11:11-05:00December 14th, 2014|Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|6 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—Your Job is to Clear the Path

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:

By |2016-10-22T17:11:14-05:00May 27th, 2014|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|1 Comment
Go to Top