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
When Your “Ask” Runs Into a Brick Wall— Find the Loose Brick
Shameless flattery: the brick wall/loose brick statement in the title is paraphrased from Keith Ferrazzi's foreword to Just Listen by Mark Goulston. -- Imagine you invested a great deal of time doing the background research, compiling the data, and building your...
When Your “Ask” Runs Into a Brick Wall— Find the Loose Brick
People resist anything that threatens their autonomy and safety. Quit leading with what you need and start focusing on what’s important to them, and you’ll watch resistance melt.
Leadership Inspiration from the Howard Schultz HBR Interview
If you’re looking for a breath of fresh leadership air and some hope in this world after watching CEOs doing the Perp Walk or the Resignation Shuffle, read the interview, “We Had to Own the Mistakes” with Howard Schultz, Starbucks Chairman and CEO, in the July-August, 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review. While Schultz is no stranger to our world as an iconic founder of one of the world’s most successful and formerly fastest growing firms, one might argue that he didn’t earn his leadership stripes until faced with the unexpected challenging of turning the firm around.
The Triple Threat to Good Decisions: Data, Time and Emotion
There are few situations more challenging to teams than dealing with a tough, emotionally-charged issue and decision-choice while facing significant time pressure and seemingly contradictory data. If that type of situation sounds uncommon or unrealistic, consider that many firms and management teams make critical priority calls and strategic choices under just such circumstances. The decision to launch Challenger was a prime example, with all three factors playing a huge role in this tragic call. Countless corporate strategic misfires owe their outcome to this triple-threat of data, time and emotion. While many situations don’t involve life-safety issues, this triple-threat is something that every manager should be critically sensitive to in their group and strategic decision-making.
8 Quick Tips to Improve Your Effectiveness with Feedback
Leaders at all levels struggle with this most important of performance tools: feedback. We delay delivering it, we water it down, we sandwich it in praise and obscure the message or, we avoid it altogether. Like anything else, practice makes perfect, and a few simple guidelines can help ease some concerns and usher in more “practice time” in your workplace.
Team Conflict? As Long as It’s Not Personal, Run With It
I’m leery of happy teams. Don’t get me wrong. I like positive experiences and working with happy people, however, in my experience, the happy teams are the ones that produce mediocre results or, they don’t produce at all. Give me a group of people that show up to do battle on the issues versus the team that strives for peace and harmony, any day.
July Issue of the Management Excellence e-Newsletter: Subscriber Only Content
he July issue of The Management Excellence e-Newsletter is out, with subscriber-only content. The current issue includes content on: Improving Ideation & Creativity with Your Team, Surviving and Thriving at the Dreaded Annual Strategy Off-Site, Ideas for Jump-Starting Your Personal/Professional Development Program, New Suggestions for the Management Excellence Reading List and
a tasteful promotion at the bottom of the newsletter outlining new beta test opportunities for upcoming Building Better Leaders programs and other services. (Hey, I am in business here!)
If you’re not a subscriber, please consider signing on and gaining access to content and opportunities not covered on my blogs. As always, I will guard your e-mail information with amazing ferocity!
The July Management Excellence Newsletter & Free Books
The July issue of The Management Excellence e-Newsletter is out, with subscriber-only content. The current issue includes content on: Improving Ideation & Creativity with Your Team, Surviving and Thriving at the Dreaded Annual Strategy Off-Site, Ideas for Jump-Starting Your Personal/Professional Development Program, New Suggestions for the Management Excellence Reading List and
a tasteful promotion at the bottom of the newsletter outlining new beta test opportunities for upcoming Building Better Leaders programs and other services. (Hey, I am in business here!)
If you’re not a subscriber, please consider signing on and gaining access to content and opportunities not covered on my blogs. As always, I will guard your e-mail information with amazing ferocity!
Leadership Caffeine™: 6 Ideas to Improve Team Performance Today
If your organization is like most, you’re leaving money on the table in terms of team productivity and performance. Social and interpersonal factors, motivation issues, lack of group cohesion and the general up-front churn that teams display as they form, are just a few of the areas where you can pick up immediate productivity improvements with a little bit of smart leadership.
Want to Lead? Answer These Questions! #6 of 7
The first five questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical. If you’ve made it through the investigation of questions 1-5, it’s time for you to consider your new world of accountability.
A Vote for Impracticality in Pursuit of Mid-Life Renewal
One of the reasons that I love working with early career professionals is that many of them still believe that they are going to change the world in their own small or very large way. If only we could bottle some of these early dreams and tap into them later in life.