Wake-Up Calls for Managers
For the hard parts no one prepares you for
When the path isn’t clear, the stakes are high, and the answers aren’t obvious—this is where managers struggle most.
Wake-Up Calls for Managers delivers practical, real-world guidance for navigating:
- Tough conversations
- Leading through uncertainty
- Building influence without authority
- Driving results through others
The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—”This Is the Way It Should Be”
Working With Others Can Be Painful. It Shouldn't Be! Teaming and collaboration experiences happen in all walks of our professional and personal lives. Some experiences working with others are draining, others passable, and just a few are energizing and even fun....
Leadership Caffeine™—”This Is the Way It Should Be”
Teaming and collaboration experiences happen in all walks of our professional and personal lives. Some experiences working with others are draining, others passable, and just a few are energizing and even fun and successful. You can hope these fun, productive experiences emerge by chance. Or you can be deliberate about creating the conditions that improve the possibility of a great collaboration experience. I opt for improving our odds of bringing one of these productive, fun experiences to life. Here are four ideas to help:
Art’s Weekly Leadership Message-9 Credibility Builders to Lead By
If you’re responsible for getting work done through others, you will be as effective as you are credible. Of course, those of us working for you take our time in assessing your words, actions and motives before we deem you credible as our leader. While a leader’s credibility is a qualitative assessment of the individual’s character, there are a number of good habits that anyone in a supervisory or management position can apply daily on their road to building credibility and growing as a leader. Here are 9 Credibility Builders that will serve you well:
New Book from Art-Incoming!
While both the paperback and Kindle versions of my newest work, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development, have been available on Amazon for a few days, I’ve not yet pulled the trigger on a public launch. In fact, when talking to my marketing manager, I suggested that instead of a launch as an event, I would much prefer a rolling launch.
Midweek Marketing: Delta Builds Customer Experience One Detail at a Time
I’ve been an unapologetic critic of the money losing and seemingly customer hating airline industry for many years. Anyone who has flown a million miles or more has a good view to the workings of this flying bus business (with apologies to bus companies), and the view is mostly unpleasant. (Not always, just mostly.) Imagine my surprise when I deviated on my return trip from my normal dealings with United, and flew Delta, and I actually enjoyed the experience. I checked my calendar and it wasn’t April Fools Day or Halloween, so all of the truly good natured, helpful and smiling Delta employees might have actually meant it. Here are 7 observations and some lessons for all of us worth sharing:
Art’s Weekly Leadership Message-Hey Boss: Less Talking, More Listening
It’s amazing what you hear if you exert a little self-control, clamp your jaw shut and focus on trying to understand what your employees and team members are trying to tell you. You learn about what’s working, what’s not, where you need to step up and offer help, where you need to step in and deliver feedback and so much more.
Leadership Caffeine™ Podcast #8: Francie Dalton on the Impending Talent Shortage
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard much about impending shortages of talent. My recent conversation with Francie Dalton, President and Founder of Dalton Alliances, Inc., served to remind us all once again, that talent is always an issue. And by the way, Francie makes an interesting case that the recently forgotten issue of talent shortages is a very real issue about to bite us where it hurts…in the bottom line.
The Conversations You Are Not Having Are Killing Your Business
The most important issue that most leaders and teams face is not in what is being said, but rather, it’s the important topics not being discussed. Here are the 10 conversations not taking place in your business right now.
Art’s Weekly Leadership Message-Engage With Purpose
Note from Art: Starting with this post, the Weekly Leadership Message is a new Monday feature here at Management Excellence. Use them in good health and great leadership! This week: Engage with Purpose. You don’t get time off from your role as a leader. There are no time-outs, no after hours hang-up-your-hat and become one of the gang situations. The best leaders understand that every encounter represents an opportunity to do something positive for someone or some group.
Leadership Caffeine™ Podcast #7: Kevin Eikenberry on Making the Shift from “Bud to Boss”
The most difficult job in the professional life of any leader may very well be that first role…when he or she moves from individual contributor to suddenly being responsible for the outcomes of others. This truly critical issue receives some much needed attention in the recent book, Bud to Boss-Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership, by consultants, authors and leadership experts, Kevin Eikenberry and Guy Harris, in their recent book, Bud to Boss. While the focus is on helping the first time leader successfully transition from one of the gang to leader, this book is important for those responsible for developing and supporting first-time leaders as well.
Leadership Caffeine™-Always Lead with Context
Context in this case is that not-so-secret ingredient that helps people understand the idea or issue and how it connects to something important in the workplace. Context provides the basis for understanding and assessing a situation or a request to do something. It has the equivalent workplace outcome of adding yeast to the process of making bread. Without it, everything is flat. Improve performance by providing critical context at the organizational, strategic and personal levels.