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 Options to Help You Strengthen Your Feedback Skills
If the Idea or Act of Giving Constructive Feedback Stresses You, You're Not Alone In a recent survey of over 500 managers, anticipating and then giving constructive feedback was found to be the number one stressor in their jobs. Ouch! 65% of them indicated they either...
Three Options to Help You Strengthen Your Feedback Skills
It turns out, a great number of us stress over giving feedback—particularly the constructive kind. Earlier in my career, this was me and it took a great mentor to help me solve this problem. I work with professionals of all types and at all levels to strengthen their skills with feedback. Here are three options to support your growth (two free, one a great value workshop).
Leading at the Intersection of Logic and Emotion
As much as we might like to believe people support plans based in good analysis and logic, reality says they act on emotions and in what they perceive is self-interest. This is why effective leaders understand the need to appeal to hearts first and then the minds will follow. This approach helps leaders safely navigate the perilous intersection of of logic and emotion.
Leadership Power-Up #2—Prepare Your Attitude Daily
I have a leadership workshop participant to thank for my all-time favorite technique for preparing for a successful day.
Leadership Caffeine™—Natural Time
We struggle to force the pace of leadership development in our organizations. Instead, we need to adopt a pace that operates on a person’s natural time.
Giving Thanks for Those Who Serve
Veteran’s Day 2017. Giving thanks to those who serve today and those who have served and sacrificed to protect our freedom.
Leadership Power-Up #1—Pay it Forward
A Leadership Power-Up is a positive action you take to strengthen your energy, enthusiasm, and resolve for the hard work of guiding and developing others while driving results. This new series share simple, powerful approaches for powering up your performance as a manager and leader.
First-Time Manager #14—Management Lessons Learned the Hard Way
In workshops and live settings, I’ve been asked numerous times about my biggest mistakes as a manager. I’ve made a fair number of them over three decades of leading and managing (and I regularly share these via my cases and articles), however, my Achilles Heel earlier...
Leadership Caffeine™—Be the Hero of Your Own Story
Being the hero of your own leadership and management journey isn’t about focusing on yourself. To the contrary, it’s about focusing on those around you and striving to leave every encounter, situation, and person a bit better than how you found it. Here are 4 questions to use daily to strengthen results on your own heroic journey:
Moving Beyond a Plateau— 9 Lessons in Career Reinvention
Getting started on the hard, important work of reinventing your career is a challenging proposition. Here are 9 lessons I’ve learned from working with some great professionals on this process, along with some ideas for you to consider.
Struggling as a Manager? Try Revisiting These 3 Foundational Issues
If you’re growing frustrated and fatigued with your life as a manager, you might want to take a step-back and review and strengthen the foundation for your role. Three items provide structural integrity for your managerial foundation: role clarity, values, and connectedness
All three components inter-operate to support your effectiveness and to eliminate many challenges in this difficult role. Alternatively, the absence of the three is potentially disastrous.