The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—Five Questions that Will Help You Strengthen as a Decision-Maker
We don’t spend much time in our careers or inside our organizations deliberately developing our decision-making skills. That’s too bad. Whether contributor or manager, we’re mainly in the decision-making business. Nothing happens without a decision. Nothing good...
Leadership Caffeine™—Five Questions that Will Help You Strengthen as a Decision-Maker
Effective decision-making demands discipline and process. A good starting point is asking yourself and your team some key questions.
Fresh Voices: Two Posts that Can Improve Your Day and Your Life
Still reeling from my losing battle with the apologetic sales rep from Big Telco, I went searching for solace and inspiration from the many great writers that I follow. Two posts from two professionals in very different fields stood out as particularly thought provoking and inspiring.
Big Telco and the Art of the Apology-driven Sales Pitch
Apologies are everywhere these days. I wrote a post on leaders and apologies last week, and this week, Letterman is in the news apologizing to Sarah Palin for a joke that went awry. Yesterday, as I prepared to get even with my evil Telco provider by dropping them like a bad habit, I ran square into an onslaught of apologies followed by a brazen sales pitch. What follows is my own recollection of events during this phone call.
The Struggles and Mental Toughness of a Leader
I’m particularly drawn to the quality of “mental toughness” in great leaders. Where most would have cut and run, the best stare at adversity and seem to draw strength from the enormity of the challenges in front of them. Failures are but mere setbacks and when conventional wisdom and all of the advisors preach capitulation, these leaders see and seize opportunity.
I look for this quality in leaders in the business environment, but often our hiring and screening processes get in the way. We tend to focus on hiring those that package themselves as flawless.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Leadership Lessons from Twitter
It takes a certain amount of curiosity and yes, even courage for forty-something corporate types to even admit that there might just be something to a social networking tool like Twitter. Many of my contemporaries scoff and mock the tool and anyone participating.
As leaders, we often lose our intellectual curiosity and courage as we move through our careers. We’ve seen it all before and we’re well aware in our own minds that when you take risks and do something a bit edgy, most of the time, bad things happen. We’ve seen fads come and go, and to many of us, this is just one more fad.
To those involved, it is part of the fundamental rewriting of the rules…
A Fresh Voice and Leadership and the Art of Apology
There’s an excellent post entitled, “Sorry is not the final word, just the beginning,” by guest author and Product/Project Management Consultant, Lisa Winter at one of my favorite blogs: The Art of Project Management. hosted by the UCSC-Extension in Silicon Valley.
Ms. Winter describes a situation where she inadvertently upset a valuable but delicate team member on a conference call, and then went to significant lengths to apologize and regain his support. In addition to the happy ending, this fine post prompted some thoughts on a topic that I confess I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about: the role of the apology as a leadership tool.
I can’t help but feel a little guilty that I’ve not raised this topic in the past, and for that, I apologize…(OK, I had to work it in somewhere!).
Executive Behaviors, Your Boss Has No Clothes and Revolution from the Bottom
Gary Hamel offers a post well worth reading on “Why Success Often Sows the Seeds of Failure,” in his Management 2.0 blog at the Wall Street Journal. He takes some tough and well-earned shots at the narrow-minded thinking of executives that foments the eventual demise of formerly good organizations.
In my opinion, the habits and traps that bedevil formerly successful companies also exist in those less-than successful organizations. Regardless of starting point, the tendencies and habits of ineffective executive leadership are not hard to see. In theory, they shouldn’t be hard to call out and change. However, we don’t. Why not?
Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week: Coffee, Your Health and 8 Suggestions to Improve Your Team’s Problem Solving Skills
The best learning opportunities in the workplace occur when individuals or teams come face to face with a vexing problem. These situations provide outstanding growth opportunities and a great chance to generate and implement innovative and creative solutions. Of course, the manager has to play by the rules.
Unfortunately, there are still a few managers and leaders out there that insist on spoiling these ripe learning opportunities by requiring you to follow a specific approach or steps in solving a problem.
A Follow-Up to My “Evil Leaders” post: Your Firm’s Values Have No Teeth
My recent post, “Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish in Some Organizations” struck a chord or at least a nerve for many, as the many insightful comments quickly outstripped the value of the original post. Thanks to all that jumped in and shared on this topic.
On the heels of what turned out to be a deluge of good thoughts on why some leaders and some people get away with less than agreeable (to the rest of us) behaviors in the workplace, I keep coming back to the topic of Values as a core issue.
The results of my informal polling as well as my formal surveying (as part of culture assessments) indicates that for many organizations, values exist as nice statements in a frame with little meaning or use in day-to-day business dealings.
Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish Inside Some Organizations?
It’s always been a mystery to me why so many arguably evil managers and leaders not only last but seem to thrive inside certain organizations.
You know the type. Hey, maybe you are one. If so, chime in. I’ve never actually heard from an evil leader that was willing to talk openly about why he is the way he is.
Evil leaders tend to fit one or more of these profiles…