The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—If You’re Leading Change, Expect Flak
A guest speaker in one of my recent workshops was asked how to know when you’re on the right track leading a transformation initiative. His answer, offered with a laugh, “Expect cynicism followed by criticism,” is more truth than humor. In the same vein, a late friend...
Leadership Caffeine™—If You’re Leading Change, Expect Flak
Don’t let the flak derail your transformation initiative. Instead, dive in to understand the core of any resistance better and strive to build your coalition. Transformation initiatives succeed on the strength of relationships, not ideas.
Leadership Caffeine™-Is it Time to Re-examine the Leader You’ve Become?
Taking time to reflect and re-examine your role and performance as a leader offers nothing but growth opportunities for yourself and for those who look to you to lead. Here are 5 ideas to help you reboot your drive to excel as a leader:
Leadership Caffeine™—3 Situations to Quality Check Your Gut Instinct
While it’s clear our guts don’t do any heavy lifting when it comes to making decisions, that sense we describe as “gut feeling” is something most of us rely on to guide us through life’s challenges. However, there are at least 3 key situations where senior leaders should develop the discipline to quality check their gut instincts:
Leadership Caffeine™—6 Ideas to Help You Prosper During Periods of Change
Contrary to how many people view and respond to change in the workplace, it’s been my experience that periods of organizational adjustment typically represent big fat beach balls of opportunity for those willing to pitch in and help. Here are 6 ideas to help you adjust to and prosper during periods of organizational change:
5 Ideas to Keep Your Culture from Having Your Strategy for Lunch
Every leader who has grappled with a shift in strategy for their firm understands the powerful gravitational pull of organizational culture. Here are 5 ideas to help ensure you respect and leverage the culture during periods of change:
Leaders, Beware the Imposters: Triumph and Disaster
Triumph, that moment in time when we have vanquished our competitors or achieved a level of performance long desired, is the moment of our greatest vulnerability. Leading from a point of success is challenging. Disaster breeds its’ own set of leadership challenges. The best leaders follow Kipling’s advice and treat these imposters the same.
Leadership Caffeine™-It’s Not Your Leadership, It’s the Cause
Leadership by Cause invites greatness to the party. Anything less than a clear, galvanizing, shared cause, promotes compliance-type performance and typically mediocre results. Here are Six ideas to help you identify and promote a cause that inspires in your organization:
Just One Thing: Rewrite the Rules If You Dare
One of the most difficult but potentially compelling plays in strategy is to redefine the rules of the game. Those who write the new rules…and get them to stick, win.
New Leader Tuesday: Engage, Inform, Inspire
Those who look back and reflect upon the start-up period in their first leadership role will frequently describe this stage as having been awkward or uncomfortable. The transition from individual contributor to supervisor or manager is abrupt for many and lonely for most. Building your priorities and daily activities around the mantra, Engage, Inform, Inspire, can help you cultivate the good habits of effective leaders.
Leadership Caffeine™—Toward More Simplicity
There’s a must-read article that appeared at Fast Company a few months ago by Aaron Levie, entitled, The Simplicity Thesis. The short form is that in this world of increasing complexity, the best opportunities are for those firms, products and services that are minimally complex (simple). The same goes for those of us leading others and managing our organizations.