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
Career Reinvention Journal™—Don’t Let Fear Keep You Locked in Misery
We ran our latest career-focused event the other day: How to Get Unstuck & Take Control of Your Career, and as always, the commentary from the attendees was priceless. With over 300 registered and a great group in attendance, the chat stream was in full...
Career Reinvention Journal™—Don’t Let Fear Keep You Locked in Misery
As Frank Herbert offers in the classic science fiction book, Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer.” Don’t let your instinctual reactions to the idea of making a career change keep you locked into something that no longer works for you.
That Seismic Shift You Are About To Hear is Management Revolution
Something’s gone horribly wrong with our pre-established convictions and our comfortable understanding of the old rules of business and management. There was no memo. The new rules are not written in stone anywhere, and in fact they are changing so quickly, that by the time you understand and write them down, they’ve changed yet again. Heck, a good number of firms and leaders never optimized under the old rules, and now look at what they are facing!
It’s time to overthrow the archaic, dysfunctional leadership and management practices of the past!
“It’s Simple” and The Six C’s that Enable High Performance
Sometimes we learn lessons in interesting ways. I learned the power of “keeping things simple” in an amusing but instructive manner from an early mentor at Panasonic. For leaders looking to manage complexity during these difficult times, I offer my own Six Power Tools for keeping things simple and driving high performance.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 16, 2009
Your weekly dose of Leadership Caffeine offers reminders and tips for improving communications, engaging your team members and helping knock down obstacles. Oh, and take a second sip of the iced coffee and spend a few minutes thinking about how you might leverage your firm’s values as powerful leadership tools.
Mind Your Knowledge Gap: Why Social Media is Essential to Your Career
This is a wake-up call to my mid to late 30 to 40 something (and older) contemporaries. It’s time to figure out what all the noise is about social media and how to leverage it for yourself, your career and your organization.
What’s Your High Performance Team Experience?
I love to talk with people that have led or been part of a high performance team (HPT). Their enthusiasm is palpable. These individuals have been to the promised land of corporate collaboration and achievement for a brief period in time and they are interested in going back.
Unfortunately, my own formal and informal research indicates that only 30% of professionals surveyed would agree that they have been part of a high performance team. If you’ve been a part of this 30%, the other 70% of your peers would love to hear your story!
Inspiration and Hope: Encouraging Sound Bites in a Challenging World
There’s enough negative going around. Here’s a few worth reading that will leave you thinking and maybe even feeling a bit more upbeat. Students of strategy and performance excellence might want to take a closer look at how McDonald’s is using leadership, strategy, customer relations and information to successfully beat back the economic doldrums. And for an extended dose of hope and encouragement, check out the March issue of Fast Company, where the focus is on the world’s most innovative companies.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 8, 2009
Welcome back for this week’s double-shot of leadership motivation. I’m taking my leadership cues this week from Michael Beers, a Harvard Professor with a forthcoming book: High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage.
While I’m not certain that a Harvard Professor is the first one that I seek out to help me lead my way out of a crisis, I like what he has to say. Mr. Beer’s focus is on building high performance teams and organizations on the back of what he describes as high commitment leaders.
Management Excellence Blog Named to Alltop!
OK, pardon my excitement, but I was thrilled to learn the other day that my blog, Management Excellence, was named to Alltop in the Leadership category! In case you are not familiar with Alltop, it is is a collection of “the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic.” I am honored to be among the “best” in the leadership category on this great site!
Smile, Your Mirror Neurons are Firing Everyone Up & A Homework Assignment
Intuitively, it makes sense that leaders that are more engaged and engaging tend to elicit better responses and better results from their teams. Perhaps nice people can finish first.
Now, the father of the concept of Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman (What Makes A Leader), along with Richard Boyatiz are pushing the envelope by integrating new research in social neuroscience with their studies of effective leaders. Their recent Harvard Business Review article, Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership, is fascinating reading for anyone intrigued by the role that our biological makeup plays in our leadership abilities.