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
Let’s Rethink Summer School—A Program for Motivated Managers
Summer School Gets a Bad Rap OK, first, let’s take on the summer school label. As a kid growing up in Chicago, I remember thinking that people who had to go to summer school clearly did something bad during the school year. After all, summer was about riding my...
Let’s Rethink Summer School—A Program for Motivated Managers
The Summer School for Managers program offers a low-stress opportunity to sharpen your skills, network with some great people, and do it from wherever your travels take you.
Career Reinvention May Save Your Health and Life
We all intuitively know a toxic workplace is bad for our health. Jeffrey Pfeffer’s latest book, Dying for a Paycheck, offers some data to back this claim. And while some may benefit from job change, others are motivated to reinvent their careers as part of saving their health and lives. This articles shares some of the insights gained in working with multiple career reinventors.
Your Open Door Policy Needs to Be Closed for Good
While the intent of the statement, “I’ve got an open door policy” is mostly positive, it’s naive and out of time and sync in a world where managers are accountable for closing the power gap between themselves and their group members. Get up and get out and narrow the power gap while doing some good.
Few Do-Overs in Leadership, Instead, Do-Different
Unfortunately, do-overs in leadership are rare. Instead, work on rebuilding your leadership foundation mid-flight by using these three big ideas with your team.
Harnessing the Benefits of Physical Transformation for Career Reinvention
There’s a well-known mind-body connection when it comes to exercise. The hard work of career reinvention is helped considerably when you commit to a parallel activity of physical transformation
It’s Manager and Leader—Developing the Whole Professional
There’s no doubt leadership development is important. However, top leaders in successful organizations understand they owe much of their success to great managers who make their firms go and grow. They also understand the connectivity between leader and manager and they focus on developing the whole professional.
Escaping the Career Trap—Give Yourself Permission to Reinvent
For many mid-to-late career professionals, the lure of doing something different is strong. Unfortunately, the barriers in our minds are often stronger. A critical success factor is giving yourself permission to reinvent your career. Once you eliminate this hurdle, the process is navigable.
High Performance Accelerator Program from Art Petty
Filled with practical ideas and approaches to strengthen your performance as a manager, better support your team and drive results, High Performance Accelerator for Managers (live-online + mentoring) is a great next step for your professional development.
Three Lenses of Awareness to Help You Identify Emerging Leaders
Too often, the identification of emerging leaders in an organization is done haphazardly or not at all. The Three Lenses approach give you and your fellow managers a consistent framework for observing, coaching, and assessing emerging leaders on your team.
11 Principles of Positive Persuasion for Workplace Conversations
Any conversation at work where you are asking someone for something is a form of negotiation. Effective managers and leaders use the principles of positive persuasion to get what they need and strengthen relationships in the process.