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—Solving Your Career Pivot Puzzle
Your View of Self Might Be an Impediment to Your Career Makeover There’s a Rubik’s Cube puzzle to solve when considering your “next” options in your career. Solving this puzzle requires you to think differently about yourself—something that requires thoughtful...
Career Reinvention Journal—Solving Your Career Pivot Puzzle
There’s a Rubik’s Cube puzzle to solve when considering your “next” options in your career. Solving this puzzle requires you to think differently about yourself—something that requires thoughtful introspection and outside support.
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.
Leader-What’s Your Charter?
Somewhere during my second decade out of college (Hey, I’m slow but I figure it out eventually!), I recall having the epiphany that most people in leadership roles acted like they had no conception of what their job as a leader was. In fact, it dawned me after a few moments in thought that it probably wasn’t an act—they truly did not understand their job. The evidence to support this conclusion was all around me.
Leadership Development Conversations-Still Free and Always Will Be
I recently gave a talk at a gathering of managers and executives from different organizations, entitled: “Creating a Leadership Development Culture In Your Organization.” The gist of the talk was that leadership development does not have to cost a lot of money and in fact can be jump-started with some basic activities. Also, I came down hard on the age-old excuse of “I don’t have time” that so many leaders use to explain their lack of attention to leadership and talent development.
Just today, I received a note back from one of the participants that renewed my faith in the fact that when presented with practical approaches, many leaders want to do the right things to support the development of their people.