The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Finding Purpose at Work—Ideas to Help
Purpose is a Powerful Driver for Performance Here's a not-so-bold claim: individuals who feel a strong sense of purpose in their work are happier, more engaged, and ultimately more successful than those who aren't clued into this powerful motivator. While my research...
Finding Purpose at Work—Ideas to Help
In my experience, those professionals driven by a sense of purpose enjoy what they are doing, are more resilient in the face of organizational and personal challenges, and, frankly, excel. So, what’s your professional purpose at this stage of your career? Ideas to help.
Leadership Caffeine™: How to Survive a Sudden Promotion Into Leadership
One of the oddities of organizational life is the fairly frequent and sudden promotion of individuals from competent individual contributor to someone responsible for the work of others…supervisor or manager, without any visible sign of mentoring or support for the newly in-charge individual. “Congratulations…go get ‘em Tiger.” Here are 6 ideas to help you survive this challenging new assignment:
Leadership Caffeine™-5 Priceless Lessons from Amundsen and Scott
In preparation for an upcoming presentation, I’ve become a bit obsessed with studying the 1910 expeditions and race between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott to 90-degrees South (the South Pole). The lessons for leaders and managers practically leap off the pages of this classic example of coping with risk, uncertainty and volatility. Here are 5 lessons from these remarkable expeditions that you can apply in your work-life today:
Managers: Show Fear the Door
Intuitively, one would expect most senior managers to recognize both the delicate state of people’s emotions in this uncertain era and to take some steps to both confront and mitigate this destructive force in the workplace. Based on the survey results, perhaps more than a few managers missed the memo. Here’s your reminder.
Leadership Caffeine™-Listen Harder, Please!
I doubt that anyone reading this would disagree with the theme of, it’s important to be a good listener to be a good leader. However, in working with leaders at all levels striving to strengthen their performance, listening skills aren’t an issue some of the time, they are an issue nearly 100% of the time. Here are 3 ideas to help you exercise your leadership listening skills today:
Just One Thing: Will This Make the Boat Go Faster?
The world of work may well become a better place if we would simply filter a few more activities with this very succinct and clear question: “Will this make our boat go faster?” If not, just say “no.” Here are at least 5 situations where the boat is definitely not moving any faster:
Leadership Caffeine™-4 Rules for Getting Intensity Right
Intensity is a powerful leadership tool that when wielded with laser precision, can help focus, engage and inspire your team members. Here are 4 key rules for getting intensity right:
New Leader Tuesday-Develop as a Decision Coach
The best leaders I’ve worked with and for are not only good decision-makers, they are effective decision-coaches. They understand the importance of teaching their teams how how to navigate the pitfalls and complexities of decision-making in pursuit of the best results for the organization. Here are 6 great habits of effective Decision-Making Coaches:
Leadership Caffeine™-Lessons from the Wilderness
Instead of teaching people to work within a self-contained system where the goal is to impose order, this new world demands much more of a sense and respond style of leading. Here are 5 ideas for cultivating tolerance for adversity and uncertainty on your team:
Just One Thing-How Hard Are You Working at Connecting?
We live and work in a transactional world, where most of us experience a large number of low engagement sound-byte interactions in our professional and even our personal lives. It’s the rhythm of our age. Take a few moments and try and recall the last time you engaged in a high quality, interactive conversation with a peer, boss or direct report that led to a valued outcome, a new insight or a new direction. Here are some ideas to help you slow down and create some quality connections between you and your colleagues: