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
Three of My Favorite Business Reads in 2024
If I'm not reading, it's like not breathing. I mentally suffocate, or at least my brain feels like it's shutting down. If you subscribe to the Leadership Caffeine newsletter (subscribe via LinkedIn), you know that I search for and share five fabulous articles...
Three of My Favorite Business Reads in 2024
Here are three of my favorite business reads from 2024. Whether you are investing in you or sharing with colleagues, you cannot go wrong with one or all of these three books.
Rethinking Your Management Approach and Your Team’s Operating Routine in Real-Time
In talking with top executives, it’s no surprise that one of the biggest challenges they are facing is transferring their well-established operating routines into an online/virtual format. Many managers are learning their well-honed cadence and schedule of activities to review, plan, and communicate no longer works in a virtual world.
Leadership and Management Book Talk #9: Books on Thinking
Art Petty and Wally Bock take on the topic of “books about thinking” in this episode of the Leadership and Management Book Talk podcast.
Rethinking Managing and Leading in Real-Time
For those leading and managing, it’s time to change. The life-safety of our colleagues is of paramount importance in every sector. The economic safety of our employees is right there with the financial security of our customers. And, the road ahead isn’t clearly marked. We’ll have to navigate together.
Reset, Learn, Connect (virtually), Help
We like routines, and those have been put on hold—some likely forever. A new normal will emerge, and much of it won’t feel like the old normal. That’s disorienting and can leave many of us swirling. Here are six ideas to help you reset and stop the swirl:
Leadership Caffeine™ for Leading in a Crisis
You don’t have all the answers. No one does in a crisis. However, your behaviors go a long way to gaining the collective support of your team members in pursuit of one answer and solution at a time.
Leadership and Management Book Talk #8: Robert Iger and The Ride of a Lifetime
Reading Robert Iger’s The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company was truly a joy. Wally Bock concurred, and we go on in this fun Leadership and Management Book Talk podcast episode to share the many reasons why we both love this book!
Leadership Caffeine™—It’s Time to Deliberately Strengthen Your Internal Network
What are you doing weekly to develop, renew, and repair key workplace relationships deliberately? If you don’t have a solid answer for this question plus calendar time dedicated to the work, it needs to be elevated to your priority list. It’s time to make strengthening your workplace network a top priority. In this article, I share why and how, along with a few finer points for consideration.
Leadership Caffeine Podcast—Professor Thomas J. DeLong
The best leadership book I’ve encountered in years isn’t ostensibly about leading. The book is Teaching by Heart: One Professor’s Journey to Inspire, by Thomas J. DeLong at Harvard. You’ll love getting to know Tom and his passion for teaching, and you won’t be able to help drawing some fabulous leadership lessons from him along the way.
Leadership Caffeine™—The Four C’s of Effective Leadership
The best product managers, project managers, general managers, supervisors, sales managers, and every other leader I can think of who created success over a long period all exhibited the Four C’s of: competence, credibility, connection, and caring.