The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Professional Development is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
A Plan for Professional Development Heading Into the New Year The best managers and executives I work with are always on the lookout for opportunities to support team member growth. As a senior executive, I went into every new year with professional development on the...
Professional Development is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
The best managers and executives I work with are always on the lookout for opportunities to support team member growth. Here’s a list of great professional development opportunities for you or your team members.
Finding Time to Focus or, Speed Kills
The lot of professionals inside many organizations can easily be characterized by a series of endless status meetings, hurried hallway conversations and messages quickly dispatched on a pda while walking, ignoring the meeting in process or consuming a protein bar on the run. Nonetheless, work gets done, customers are served and growth often created. I do however, worry and wonder about the human costs and the cost to the organization in lost-ideas, missed opportunities and a much more superficial existence.
Leadership Caffeine™-Give Your People Room to Run
Overheard: “If I don’t stay on top of my people, nothing gets done.” If lousy leadership were a crime, the owner of the quote above might just merit a short stretch of quality alone-time to reflect on the implications of his statement. There are so many things truly wrong with the style of leadership that the statement connotes, that I’m not certain where to start.
Here are 11 reminders that your job as a leader is to give people the room and tools to succeed.
Beware Context Canyon When It Comes to Leading Change
We invest a great deal of time talking and writing and preaching about change. We discuss resistance to change, fear of change, our own need for personal change and the challenges that organizations face when it comes to embracing change. We’re not very good at changing, but we sure like to talk about it.
Don’t Expect Easy-My Top 15 Suggestions for Coping as a Professional
“Easy” is not a term that should be on your mind, except when it comes to improving the experience for your customers. Outside of making life easier for your customers, there are few circumstances where “easy” shows up or where you are justified in expecting things to go that way. Here are my Top 15 Suggestions for Coping as a Professional.
Management Excellence Book Series Kicks Off Featuring Good Boss, Bad Boss
Welcome to the first post and first interview for the Management Excellence Book Series, where I feature Bob Sutton, New York Times best-selling author and author of the forthcoming book Good Boss, Bad Boss. I had the great fortune to connect with Bob recently on a phone call/interview, and our scheduled 10-15 minutes turned into 30 minutes of fascinating insights about the book, and about Bob’s work as a professor and consultant. He was a delight to interview and I sincerely believe that you will find his insights and anecdotes as fascinating as I did. Enjoy the interview and enjoy the book!
Leadership Caffeine™: 5 Ideas for Infusing Fun Into the Workplace
You heard it here first. It’s OK to Have Some Fun as a Leader. Most of the popular press on leading and leadership focuses on the challenges, strain and pains of leading, leaving one to assume that signing on for the role is akin to a vow of chastity or at least a vow of silence. Here are 5 ideas for safely infusing more fun into your workplace. The increase in performance might just surprise you.
Art’s Updates and Coming Attractions
This has been a productive period for my development of new programs and information offerings. While we all write and talk about the impact of great people on our organizations, it is truly palpable when you are on the receiving end of that help. Thanks to two outstanding young professionals, Eric and Amber, that are busy helping and holding me accountable to getting my work done, we’re adding new programs, tuning up prior offerings and extending our line-up of information products.
Beware the Pull of "Us Versus Them"
’s easy to get caught up in departmental or team squabbles inside of organizations. My advice: stay clear, stay out of it and learn to think and act for yourself.
The Pursuit of Power and the Misguided Leadership Literature
Jeffrey Pfeffer’s article, Power Play, in the July-August Harvard Business Review (fee) is interesting and relevant for everyone working inside organizations as well as for those individuals actively engaged in the development of leadership literature and course-work. Pfeffer tackles the important topic of power. How to gain it, how to wield it, and in his opinion, why those that actively cultivate power are more effective at driving change and implementing a new strategy. He also suggests that the leadership literature is soft-selling or ignoring this very real and important part of organizational life.