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.
First-Time Managers Academy—Redefining Online Professional Development
First-Time Managers Academy blends the convenience of online learning with the rigor of a structured development and continuous improvement process. Registration for the last cohort of 2019 closes at 11:59 p.m. Pacific on November 6, 2019.
How to Fight the Pressure to Make a Bad Decision
Yet again, we are faced with a firm that potentially allowed the pressure-to-produce force decisions that impacted not only lives but all of the organization’s stakeholders. As a manager, you may not face life or death consequences, however, manage long enough and you will encounter situations that challenge your ethics and values. Here are six ideas to help you navigate a situation where the prevailing approach is one you believe detrimental to the firm.
Managers—Less of You is Probably Enough
As managers and leaders, we often fall victim to the belief that our teams need us to survive and thrive. In reality, if we’ve done our jobs right in selecting, developing, and placing people in the right positions, and worked hard to create a healthy environment, what they need is less of us.
A Focus on Leadership and Strategy
A number of my recent articles on strategy and strategy execution are found only at SmartBrief on Leadership. This post points you to those articles.
Free Webinar: 4 Conversations to Help You Develop New Managers
On Wednesday, October 30, 2019, at 11:00 a.m. central, I am hosting a new webinar entitled: 4 Critical Conversations for New Manager Success. My goal in this free event is to share a framework of four sets of conversations and supporting activities promoting managers can use to strengthen their selection and early-stage development of new managers on their teams.
Designing Constructive Feedback Discussions for Success
Delivering quality constructive feedback is elusive for many managers and much desired by individuals striving to strengthen performance. In this article, I share an overview of the four core processes around effective feedback development and delivery.
Four Conversations Essential for New Manager Success
Developing new managers is hard work that all-too-often is skipped inside our organizations. Fortunately, for all of us, there’s a solution that’s within your control. It comes in the form of four different series of conversations essential for new manager success.
Leadership Caffeine Podcast #29—Amy Jen Su
In this episode of the Leadership Caffeine podcast, Art Petty talks with Amy Jen Su about her new book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self Every Day.
A Leadership Case—Mistake or a Lack of Discipline? What Would You Do?
The most difficult and impactful decisions in a leader’s life are the people decisions. Drawing from examples in the military, a leader has to assess whether an issue was a mistake or a lack of discipline. One merits second chances and the other demands more aggressive action. Here’s a case and outcome that illustrates the situation. How would you have handled this situation?