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 Challenging Conversations Go Unspoken—A Leader’s Nightmares
The Missing Conversations are the Most Expensive Be very afraid of the conversations on the tough topics of performance, improvement, and innovation that aren’t taking place on your team or in your organization. The Missing Conversations are the stuff of a leader’s...
When Challenging Conversations Go Unspoken—A Leader’s Nightmares
Be very afraid of the conversations on the tough topics of performance, improvement, and innovation that aren’t taking place on your team or in your organization.
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.
Leadership Caffeine™: Developing as a Senior Contributor
I regularly use the label “Senior Contributor” (SC) to reference a state of management maturity that tends to exist somewhere between upper mid-level management or senior knowledge worker and the executive layer. The SC is a professional (manager or individual contributor) on the brink of executive qualifications and someone that has displayed effective formal and informal leadership skills, value-creating critical and strategic thinking abilities, credible executive presence and a strong operating and quality orientation.
Want to Lead? What Skills Do I Need to Succeed? #5 of 7
The first four questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical: Why do you want to lead? Do you understand the true role of a leader? Do you understand that the skills that made you successful as an individual contributor are not the skills that will carry you forward? Are you prepared to give up your domain expertise as your foundation for results?
If you’ve made it through the investigation of questions 1-4, it’s time for you to focus in on what it takes to be successful as a leader.