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
Leadership Caffeine™—Who Are You?
You aren’t a leader until people know who you are and why they should follow you. People comply with the title. They follow the person. While many individuals deliberately keep their work personas and their personal personas separate, I checked, and each of us is one...
Leadership Caffeine™—Who Are You?
While many individuals deliberately keep their work personas and their personal personas separate, I checked, and each of us is one person. Yet, the faster you grow comfortable letting them see you as that whole person, the faster they’ll trust you. And yes, trust is the critical foundation for high performance.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Your Message and the Chicken Salad Sandwich Test
Much of what passes for leadership conversation in the workplace is filled with unnecessary and meaningless jargon that gets in the way of the true message. It’s time to de-clutter our conversations and choose words that are meaningful and actionable to our team members.
The U.S. Memorial Day Weekend
For most Americans, the Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer. This long three day weekend tends to be filled with barbecues, picnics and sporting events. Take a moment out of your activities and barbecues this weekend to live up to the spirit of the order and Remember.
Sales and Marketing: Wake Up and Start Refining Your Leads
I was reminded yesterday of one of the fundamental failure points of many marketing and sales teams: lead management. This reminder was painful.
The short-story version is that in spite of tremendous advances in technology tools to analyze, monitor and manage sales leads in the three years since I’ve been charged with doing this, many (actually, the word used was “most”) firms are less than diligent in managing leads from the initial touch-point to final disposition.
The Drive to Create—Rocket Fuel for Entrepreneurs
I sat and talked yesterday with a uniquely impressive entrepreneur. She is not yet successful, and in fact she is barely two weeks young in her new adventure. If I was asked to handicap her chances of success, the odds would be very good.
Leadership and the Project Manager-Critical Skills for Success and a New e-Book
Great project managers are also great leaders. The best of the project managers are senior contributors that understand their role is more about helping the group succeed than it is about conducting status meetings and revising and distributing reports.
My new e-Book, Leadership and the Project Manager—Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance, was written to serve as a “Quick-Start” to developing as a senior contributor for anyone (certified or not) that is charged with leading and managing projects.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Bad Coffee and The Tyranny of Consensus
Like bad coffee, I’m not particularly fond of leading by consensus or even seeking consensus as a decision-making tool. I’ve long viewed managing by consensus as a “Tyranny of Mediocrity” approach to leading and making decisions. In seeking consensus, compromises are made that eliminate the more radical, revolutionary innovations and settle on solutions that make as many parties as possible happy.
Six Strategy and Leadership Lessons from Studying World War I
I often look through the lens of history for lessons in leadership and strategy that can be applied in business. Unfortunately, it seems as most of the pivotal events of human history involve wars.
And while war is an odious event, there are many lessons to learn—both good and bad from the leaders that give birth to the events as well as from the leaders and followers that prosecute them.
Fresh Voices: Perspectives on Change, Communication and Delegation
One of my favorite outcomes of blogging has been the opportunity to meet and learn from some really sharp people that share a passion for many of the same topics that I write about: leadership excellence, high performance and personal and professional development.
Consistent with my desire to hunt for great new books, I’ve been seeking out new (to me) writers on topics that are relevant to anyone engaged in working with and leading others or focused on developing themselves. I plan on sharing these posts and authors with you from time to time, just like I would a great new book or a newly discovered writer. This week’s posts and authors include…
Leadership Caffeine™: Scouting for Talent in Unusual Places
This week’s focus is on scouting talent, and like most of my posts, I’m encouraging you to break some established rules. The best leaders that I know are also the best talent scouts. They are acute observers of people and extraordinarily quick to identify individuals with potential. They are also great developers of talent, but that’s a separate topic for another day.
In my experience in working around and talking with individuals that have outstanding track records in finding and developing new talent, there are three core attributes that they look for…