The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Feedback is Funny—Just Not in a “Ha Ha” Kind of Way
OK, the topic of feedback isn't stand-up comedy funny. It's funny as in odd because there are so many contradictions surrounding it. What the Experts Say About Feedback Run a search on "Feedback" at Harvard Business Review (subscription), and you'll encounter these...
Feedback is Funny—Just Not in a “Ha Ha” Kind of Way
OK, the topic of feedback isn’t stand-up comedy funny. It’s funny as in odd because there are so many contradictions surrounding it. Here are five practices to help managers bring feedback to life as the performance-enhancing tool it is capable of being:
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week
Let’s start out with an extra large cup of the hot stuff to help kick-start the new week. Oh, and one sugar, please, in acknowledgement of Valentine’s Day.
Consistent with the theme of this card, flower and candy holiday that my significant other enjoys so much, the focus this week is on relationships. It’s time to improve your professional networking, spend some time learning from your sales colleagues and work on repairing any broken relationships. Oh yeah, and don’t forget your significant other on Valentine’s Day!
Seeing Opportunities in the Storm
As we all come to grips with the calamity that is our economic situation, I’m finding bits and pieces of optimism in interesting places. Some of the optimism may be false, as people work to talk themselves into believing that things can’t get much worse. (Don’t fool yourself, they can and most likely will.) Overall however, I am excited by how some are beginning to face up to the challenges ahead of us.
The Five Tripping Points of Emerging Leaders
A colleague used the phrase Tripping Points in conversation the other night to describe what leaders and management teams go through in attempting to take businesses from one level to the next. Firms and teams run into natural Tripping Points in the form of infrastructure and know-how as they work to grow a firm from start-up to $10 million or from $10 million to $25 million and so on. I can easily apply Tripping Point thinking to the challenges that we as professionals face in advancing our careers and in particular, in developing as leaders. Awareness of your prospective Tripping Points is an important first step in creating your personal and professional development plan.
The Leader’s Mid-Week Survival Guide
Hey, it’s Wednesday. How are you doing on your leadership priorities this week?
If you are starting to feel the week slip away from you, here’s a blunt reminder and a few tips to focus on your true priorities. The week’s not over yet…and victory is still within your reach. It’s time to fight off the fires and push away from the urgent-unimportant.
Your Customer Service Tells Me All I Need to Know About Your Management Quality
Of my many quirks, one that I actually enjoy is my unceasing study of customer service. I love to observe customer service interactions and I’ve made it a habit to try and figure out why the good ones are good and the bad ones so miserable. Here are a few thoughts and few light-hearted examples to for managers everywhere to learn from.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week
4 quick-shots of your favorite roast to jolt you into action in this new week. This week’s issue helps you jump start tough conversations, improve project post-mortem meetings, increase your active listening effectiveness and schedule staff meetings that people want to attend. And if you need a double-shot of motivation, visit the Leadership Caffeine category at the Management Excellence site.
Five Tips for Leading Change When You’re Not In Charge
As I continue on my career respite from managing a business that’s not mine, I’m increasingly conscious of the significant gap between the needs and ideas of employees and the attention and interest of senior managers. There are so many remarkable ideas and thoughts on improving performance that never see the light of day that it is staggering. I offer five suggestions for driving change when you’re not in charge. I’m hoping that readers will add a few more of their own.
Your Recruiting Practices Might Just Be Killing Your Business
It’s long past overdue to change the way you recruit talent. The way you’ve been doing it is wrong, and it is hurting your business. This topic is particularly important, because there is a goldmine of talent on the street in this lousy economy. Your opportunity to strengthen your firm with hungry, motivated and powerful people will never be better IF you execute properly.
The Case of the Rapidly Shrinking Attention Span
Are we losing our ability to focus? Maybe. Maybe we never had it, and it is the exception instead of the rule, but it just seems so much harder in this environment to focus on an issue and work through it to creative, complete solutions. We’re too busy racing from one sound-bite opportunity to another, focusing our precious gray matter on topics for nanoseconds before the next interruption comes along.