The Leadership Caffeine Blog
It Takes Leadership Courage to Kick Conventional Wisdom to the Curb
The Situation: The candidates were very different. One was the textbook choice—great pedigree, including top schools and a nice progression of assignments for name-brand firms. The other individual didn’t match up well on paper. The assignments for the other candidate...
It Takes Leadership Courage to Kick Conventional Wisdom to the Curb
Resilience, according to one dictionary definition, is the capacity to absorb a shock or a punch and return quickly to original form.
Life and business are filled with shocks and punches. We’ve lived this story for the past few years. And the shocks and punches keep coming, just in different forms and from unexpected places. It takes resilience and leadership courage to absorb the hits and come out stronger.
New Leader Tuesday—Focus on the Fundamentals
The fundamentals of leadership never go out of style. Whether you are a first-time leader, an experienced professional taking over a new team or a senior leader who can use a little leadership pick-me-up, focusing on these five fundamentals will serve you and your teams well:
Art of Managing—Balancing the Need for Speed AND Performance
With few exceptions that I’ve encountered, most senior leaders lose sleep over how fast their organizations and employees are moving. Their minds and mantras are: faster to change, faster to improve, faster to add new capabilities, faster to explore and develop competence in new markets and with new customer groups. However, at the same time senior leaders are looking for ways for their firms and teams to move faster, most employee groups and their managers are bogged down slogging through the reality of getting stuff done. Here are 3 ideas to help you and your team strengthen the balance between the need for speed and the need for performance:
Leadership Caffeine™—Coping When a Valued Protégé Says Goodbye
Part of growing up as a leader involves letting the people you’ve supported and coached, sometimes from day one of their careers, move on to new opportunities inside and outside the organization. Here are 5 thoughts to help you keep things in context when faced with losing a valued team member:
It’s Your Career—4 Key Self Development Questions
In the course of my work coaching, managing and hiring, I encounter far too many individuals who have nothing to point to when it comes to skills development and continuing education. How you answer these 4 questions speaks volumes about you as a professional:
Art of Managing—Is Your Success Placing You on a Glide Path to Oblivion?
Good to great near-term numbers have lured many a management team into focusing on the near-term at the expense of their firm’s long-term health. Assuming that prior and current success will continue uninterrupted is a sure-fire way to place your company on a glide path to oblivion.While it’s counter-intuitive to think that good results are potentially unhealthy, consider using these 6 questions with your management team to jump-start a discussion about your organization’s future health:
Leadership Caffeine™—Helping Your Team Find and Keep Focus
We all know and live with the distractions that pull us from our true priorities. From the personal issues that tug at us while we’re striving to work and live, to the endless number of workplace distractions, focus often seems like an abstract concept. Here are 5 ideas you can apply today to help your teams and team members find focus:
Just One Thing—Quit Playing the Role of the Office Overbearing Smarty Pants
Most of us have very little real understanding of how our behaviors impact others. We cruise through our days secure in our view of our importance and convinced that our presence lights up every room, enlightens our colleagues and brings joy and prosperity to our teams and organization. Just in case you happen to be the Office Overbearing Smarty Pants, here are 5 tips to help you reform your ways:
New Leader Tuesday—Beware These 6 Time and Agenda Killers
For too many new to the role of leading, we allow the urgent-unimportant to monopolize our time and dictate our priorities. Detailing the focus means ensuring that your eyes and efforts are locked on to the real issues in your new role. Here are 6 nefarious agenda killers of new (and experienced leaders) to avoid at all costs:
Leadership Caffeine™—Curing the Leader’s Communication Conundrum
People are complicated, vexing and remarkable all at the same time, and the only way to tame these forces and harness the hearts and minds of the people around you, is to strengthen your effectiveness as a communicator. Every day. Here are 3 ideas to help you get started: