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
Here’s Why You Should Change Jobs, Not Careers
Helping individuals reinvent in their careers is an integral part of my professional life. It’s some of the most fascinating, rewarding work of my career. Yet, you would be shocked how many individuals I talk out of signing up for my reinvent boot camp and coaching...
Here’s Why You Should Change Jobs, Not Careers
Before embarking on your journey to reinvent your career, spend time assessing your motivations. For many, a like-kind job change to a new environment is the right move. Here’s why:
Guest Post-More Leadership Lessons Learned the Wrong Way
Note from Art: It’s always fun when a post strikes a chord and compels someone to comment or even put hands to keyboard and crank out a guest post. Last week’s “Leadership Lessons Learned In a Crane and Sitting on a 5 Gallon Pail” drew upon some of my own early career memories and the formative lessons learned the hard way and served as inspiration for some interesting comments and today’s guest post.
Joe Zurawski is back with us today serving up a nice post on one of the early career experiences that shaped his own leadership development. You may recall that Joe joined us here a few months ago with his take on “Things I Wish I Knew When I Became a Leader.” Joe, welcome back and thanks for sharing!
Leadership Caffeine™-Character Forged in Defeat
Winning is great. It’s often the culmination of years of hard work, a relentless focus on condition and outstanding execution. What high school or college football coach hasn’t hung a poster in the locker or training room with Vince Lombardi’s inspirational quote: “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious”
It’s easy to lose track of the reality that most victories are forged in the emotional blast furnace of prior losses.
October Edition of Leadership Development Carnival at Leader Talk
Becky Robinson, the articulate and highly engaging author of one of my favorite blogs, Leader Talk, has posted the October edition of the always exciting and thought-provoking Leadership Development Carnival. She appropriately names this one the Endurance Edition, in part, because she received a record number of posts from the leading leadership bloggers on the planet and brought them together in one place for your reading convenience. Plan on a rousing workout as you digest some fantastic content. Oh, and she was kind enough to include one of my posts as well!
Today’s Action Item: Reinvent Self!
I know an awful lot of talented, hard-working people talking about or rehearsing for the process of reinventing their professional selves. This is the silent epidemic taking place in people over 40 that doesn’t garner the same level of attention as our anticipated flu epidemics.
Leadership Lessons Learned in a Crane and While Sitting on A 5 Gallon Pail
Note from Art: my week of alternative blog fare continues with this very autobiographical reflection on the formation of my later life leadership viewpoints! It’s remarkable what you can learn and do if your attitude is focused on finding ways to improve and turning so-called down-time into time for creativity and improvement.
Leading in the Trenches: How Well Do You Know Your Customers?
If you don’t know your customers at a sufficient level of detail, including their hopes, dreams and emotions, everything you are doing includes a high degree of guesswork and randomness. Your messaging likely includes a great deal of blah blah about your firm. Promotional activities are fired from a shotgun, and while they occasionally hit something, there is no viable, sustainable marketing system in place.
Leadership Caffeine™-The Cure for Tired Leader Syndrome (TLS)
If you experience one or more of these symptoms and especially the last one, you might be suffering from Tired Leader Syndrome or TLS. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. This debilitating condition affects a high percentage of leaders that have been in the same role for too long. Left untreated, TLS is often fatal to your career as well as the careers of those in constant contact with you.
Guest Post-A Fresh Voice on Developing Executive Presence
Note from Art: Today’s post is from Jeff Hornstein, a Speaking Coach and someone passionate about helping individuals and teams develop their critical presentation skills. I invited Jeff to share his thoughts and ideas on “Executive Presence” and he was kind enough to contribute this post and his wonderfully useful pdf guidebook, “Communicating Credibility.”
Building Better Leaders-One At A Time
I had an interesting kitchen table discussion recently with a friend who questioned my belief in the ability to change the world by helping support the development of effective leaders. His point: for every one person that actually “gets it” and develops into an effective, values-driven and people-focused leader, dozens of “incompetent idiots” will end up in positions of responsibility and the cycle of horrible leadership and lousy leaders will continue.