The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Winning the Inner Game of Leading With Positive Self-Talk
Note from Art: a version of this article appeared originally at SmartBrief on Leadership. -- I've written several times about the idea of the inner game of leading. It's where success in this challenging role is won or lost. From an article a few years ago, I wrote:...
Winning the Inner Game of Leading With Positive Self-Talk
Fear, self-doubt, and the tendency to catastrophize situations are your adversaries as a leader. The essence of life is overcoming challenges. Instead of allowing your negative emotions to rule you, engage in a little self-trickery and reset and reframe the negatives to positives.
Towards an Independent Product Management Organization
Product Management’s position in the organization is a topic that invites vigorous debate, usually around whether marketing or development should own the function. While any debate about optimal organization structure can sound a lot like the radio and television sports shows where people argue fiercely over the greatest running back or quarterback of all time (there is no one right answer!), the PM issue merits some consideration. Of course, the right answer may be, “It depends.”
The Seven Leadership Levers that Shape the Working Environment
The best leaders understand that one of their principal responsibilities is to shape the working environment that determines how their team members communicate, collaborate, innovate and problem-solve.
The Best Product Managers are in Seat 12C
As a Product Manager/Marketer, the more time you spend in the office, the less intelligent you become every day about the real situation of your offerings and your clients. You cannot build relationships, gain critical insights and frankly, grow as a professional from your office or cubicle chair. As important as all of your internal tasks are, you cannot create value for your firm by cloistering yourself in endless meetings and only gaining critical market context on the other end of a telephone.
Technical Leaders: It’s Time to Throw Out the Single-Track System for Developing Talent
One of the many priceless discussion threads during the interview, focused on the challenges of developing leadership and individual contributor talent in technical organizations. Specifically, he railed at the “single career-track” approach that in his opinion results in many otherwise great individual contributors pursuing leadership roles for the wrong reasons regardless of their interest or capabilities for leading. There is wisdom in his perspective.
Leader, How Do You Recharge?
Most high performance leaders that I know understand that they need to shift gears and get away from the day-to-day firefight once in awhile or they risk burning out. Quite a few of these leaders learned this lesson the hard way, succumbing at some point early in their career to the often self-imposed requirement to keep running at top speed out of fear of falling behind. A few cultures that I have been around actually encourage (or at least, don’t discourage) this destructive pace, almost as part of some bizarre survival-of-the-fittest ritual.
One of your core responsibilities to yourself and to your team members is to stay on top of your game mentally and physically (they go hand in hand). You owe it to everyone around you to be at your mentally sharpest when guiding, mentoring, helping with decision-making or engaging with colleagues. Just like the human body and brain needs sleep to function, I’m convinced that your effectiveness is function of giving your work-mind frequent and appropriate breaks to process and to recharge.
Would You Work for This Character?
“The only way that you will succeed on my team is if you are married to the job!”
“The reason that I am not in any family vacation pictures is because I’m on the phone. If I’m in the picture, I have a blackberry stuck to my ear.”
Yeesh. What a jerk!
The quotes speak volumes about this individual’s leadership style, priorities and character. A “my way or the highway” approach, coupled with an “I will succeed on the backs of your labor and you will help me succeed or else,” philosophy. It also speaks volumes about the culture in the organization that tolerates this leader’s style.
The Product Manager’s Questions for Success
Thanks to a good friend and the person I credit with the creation of the “Why is a Product Manager Like the Office Photocopier?” joke, I recently unearthed a listing of questions that we had established with the PM team to help teach and remind everyone of the True Role of a Product Manager.
Excitement for the Next Generation of Leaders and Management at the Movies
I had the great pleasure of serving as a guest lecturer on Leadership yesterday to a class of college seniors (business majors), and I was struck by the remarkably mature perspective and intuitive feel that they have for the subject. After my opening comments on how you can’t possibly learn to be a leader from a book or a class, we launched into a series of discussions and exercises that Wowed me with the clear thinking and great ideas about effective leadership and great leaders, as well as the opposite. I’m definitely growing more excited about the potential of this generation of early career professionals!
Why Sales Managers Shouldn’t Hate Performance Reviews
I don’t know too many Sales Managers that relish the opportunity to conduct performance reviews with their Reps. In fact, come to think about it, I don’t know too many Sales Managers that actually conduct performance reviews with their Reps. Unless you count the token compliance that a few accommodate through a “half-hearted, fill out the form to get HR off my back” approach that some Managers confess to employing. That’s too bad, because all parties involved are missing out on valuable conversations that can contribute to the growth of the business, the strengthening of the sales bench and the development of sales superstars.