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
The Great Capitulation: Here’s Why You’re Losing Too Many Good People
Stupefaction: that feeling of distress you have when you realize you’re responsible for good people leaving your firm. -- Here's a Fun-Fact from my Career Reinvent Boot Camp programs: 50% of participants would prefer to reinvent their careers (change what they...
The Great Capitulation: Here’s Why You’re Losing Too Many Good People
Here’s a Fun-Fact from my Career Reinvent Boot Camp programs: 50% of participants would prefer to reinvent their careers (change what they do) without leaving your organization. Unfortunately, most of them end up leaving your firm. Here’s why and here are some ideas you can rethink your approach to career development in your organization:
Leadership Caffeine™-An Effective Leader’s Resolutions are Calendar Blind
As a leader, you cannot afford to fall victim to the boom and bust cycle of annual resolutions. Rather, your challenge is a daily one, requiring you to manage your practices and habits in a program of perpetual self-improvement. Of course, identifying the right improvements requires you to have a real-time feedback system and the ability to keep your ego in check while as objectively as possible processing the daily evidence on your own performance.
An Irreverent but Pointed Look at Feedback & An Update on the Newsletter Promotion
Today’s post is at my Building Better Leaders site/blog and features a slightly irreverent look at the value and need for feedback. It is entirely possible that in the course of making a point on why feedback is such a critical skill to master, I compared it to Viagra, dissed the Chicago Bears QB Jay Cutler and encouraged incompetent leaders to volunteer to stand next to a wall with a blindfold on and smoke a cigarette. And yes, there is a message and at least a few ideas for you once you get beyond my slightly off-center suggestions
Feedback-Performance Enhancement for Leaders Without the Pill
“No one ever told me that before.” I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard some variant of that grammatically challenged statement. It is generally uttered by someone that is a member of the “Never Receive Feedback” club right after receiving something that is eye-opening and genuinely appreciated. I’m no longer shocked to learn that yet another otherwise good individual is a charter member of this club. Shocked, no, but disappointed always.
My advice: become great at the art of delivering effective constructive and positive feedback and you improve your own effectiveness, enhance your stature as a leader and improve your own career opportunities! All that and no evil side effects. Dare I call it a Viagra-like tool for leaders?
Increase Your Team’s Global Awareness or Risk Being Run Over
Too many of our businesses, business leaders, citizens and politicians fail to understand, pay attention to or even appreciate the impact of the ever-changing global business environment. Or, if they do appreciate the impact, many are caught like the proverbial “deer in the headlights,” staring as the global competitors approach at an accelerating rate.
Links to Entertain, Inform and Inspire-And Time for Shopping
If holiday shopping and end of year activities have you a bit beaten down, here are a few reads to inspire and energize and at least one shameless plug for my forthcoming e-newsletter.
New Leader? Six Suggestions for Closing Your Context Gap
New leaders…either those that are first-time leaders or those that find themselves responsible for leading a new team, deal with extremely high degrees of ambiguity at start-up. They lack context for the people, the team culture, the issues, group and individual dynamics and so many important variables in the environment, that they find themselves acting on instinct or avoiding acting because of this knowledge gap. One of the critical challenges for the new leader is quickly closing this context gap.
Leadership Caffeine™: Dare to Be Different-If You Dare
It’s good to be a good leader, so don’t misconstrue the message in this post. The world needs more individuals that care enough to consistently execute the blocking and tackling required to pass for effective leadership. My issue here is that good isn’t good enough, when the potential to be great at this activity that we call leading is within reach. Often, the distance of the reach to “great” is slightly beyond the cultural norms and leadership habits of the firm.
Join the Management Excellence Newsletter List And You Might Win A Book!
Note from Art: this is shameless promotion and good clean fun. I’m working hard on extending the variety of vehicles that I publish original leadership and management content in, and the Management Excellence e-newsletter is soon to launch. I would love to have you as a subscriber and this is a fun way of stimulating some subscriptions.
First some background, and then the promotion description. I’ve long threatened to start an e-Newsletter, but have been short on execution. A good friend of mine recently referenced it as my “Unicorn” project…something frequently talked about but never seen.
A Friday Time Out to Say Thank You
I’m way overdue to provide some thanks to a number of great people and organizations that I’ve worked with or that have supported me over this past year, and the deep freeze here in Chicago is no excuse for delaying this post any longer. Nor is the fact that I’m horribly behind on holiday shopping (the economy is waiting!), not to mention that my wife and brother both have birthdays within 6 days of Christmas. (Parents, in the future, better planning please!)
I turned up the heat a bit, refilled my coffee cup and pried myself away from this week’s all consuming collaboration on my next Building Better Leaders program (mentoring plus distance education) entitled Leadership and the Technical Professional, and here are just a few of Thank You’s that I would like to extend.