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 — 60-second tips: raise your questions-to-comments ratio
Questions are an effective leader's best friend. Tips to strengthen your questions-to-comments ratio.
Leadership Caffeine — 60-second tips: raise your questions-to-comments ratio
The weekly 60-second leadership tip from leadership caffeine. This episode’s focus is on strengthening your questions-to-comments ratio to strengthen your effectiveness.
Wrestling With Feedback Part 3—Conduct Feedback Discussions with Empathy and Clarity
In Part 3 of this series, the emphasis is on managing the discussions successfully with empathy and clarity. It turns out when the feedback discussion goes off the rails, as happens all too often, it’s because empathy and clarity were nowhere to be found.
Career Caffeine—How to Uncover Your Professional Value Proposition
Thinking about looking for a new job? I’ll wager the first thing you feel compelled to do is update your résumé. It’s a nearly universal reflex. And, it’s wrong. My advice is to push away from the keyboard and spend time gathering data and thinking through the value you bring to your teams and firms. It’s time to form and articulate your professional value proposition.
Wrestling with Feedback Part 2—Seven Actions to Help You Succeed
For many managers, giving and receiving feedback is challenging. However, when feedback is approached properly, it can be a powerful tool for strengthening individual and group performance. Here are seven actions you can take to succeed with feedback:
Wrestling With Feedback, Part 1—Why We Don’t Like the Idea of Giving or Receiving It
We all can benefit from the right type of specific, behavioral, task, or situational-focused feedback. Unfortunately, our natural fear of either giving or receiving feedback often gets in the way of harnessing value from this input.
Career Caffeine—What to Do When You Don’t Get the Promotion
While it’s hard to stave the flood of emotions that occurs from missing out on a promotion, it’s essential to put the situation in context and turn it into a valuable lesson and potentially a catalyst for personal development.
Leadership Caffeine™—5 Things You Can Do to Help Navigate the Crisis
We place extraordinary amounts of pressure on our leaders to solve the big problems in front of us. In reality, they don’t have the answers. They are looking for individuals to provide ideas that point to solutions. Here are five ideas you can use today to help and start leading without authority:
Career Caffeine—Why You Need a Sponsor More than a Mentor
Don’t let the title of this article mislead you; I love mentors. I’ve been on the receiving end of several great individuals’ wisdom and support during my career. However, it’s the sponsors in my different organizations that advocated for me and opened doors to opportunities that challenged me to stretch, grow, and succeed in real-time.
Leadership Caffeine™—Now is the Time to Double-Down on the Fundamentals of Effective Leadership
In the face of complexity and risk, the simplest solutions are generally the best ones. These are indeed challenging times for anyone responsible for managing and leading initiatives, teams, and functions. It might seem as if answers are hard to come by, yet, the...
Four Big Ideas to Help You Cultivate Influence in a Sharp-Elbowed Environment
I love the “clean power” approach to cultivating influence because it’s how I choose to conduct myself. Many others have adopted their version of it for similar reasoning. However, not everyone plays by rules you deem fair, and not everyone has your interests at heart. Here are four ideas to help you survive and thrive when you find yourself working in a sharp-elbowed environment.