The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Breaking Out of a Personal Creativity Slump—Restarting Your Idea Machine
It's a Crisis When My Idea Machine Grinds to a Halt Like many of you, ideas are my stock in trade. Whether writing the next article, designing a new workshop or course, providing strategy advisory services for a client, or supporting my coaching clients, I have to...
Breaking Out of a Personal Creativity Slump—Restarting Your Idea Machine
Like many of you, ideas are my stock in trade. Whether writing the next article, designing a new workshop or course, providing strategy advisory services for a client, or supporting my coaching clients, I have to operate with a well-oiled idea machine. When the idea machine grinds to a halt, I’m in trouble and need to find a fun, engaging, practical approach to restarting it. Here are 14 hacks I use to restart mine:
7 Lead-Off Mistakes to Avoid as a First Time Manager
Establishing yourself as a credible and positive leader is important and challenging. Here are some all-too-common missteps of first-time (and even some hapless, experienced) managers. Avoid them in good health!
Leadership Caffeine™—Don’t Back Off Leadership Development in a Crisis
When things break bad (even momentarily) in an organization, a number of predictable reflexes kick-in. Expenses are cut. Operations reviews evolve into extended, public proctology exams with everyone taking a long look searching for answers and blame. Some of the responses are reasonable and expected. Others are destructive. Suspending the work of developing your leaders and managers is destructive. Instead of letting your training budget dictate your team and leadership development efforts, here are 5 high-contact ideas to turbo-charge your efforts:
Study The Top Leader’s Style Before Signing On
If you’re interested in gaining critical insights into how things work in a prospective employer, look to the style, values and priorities of a firm’s top leader.
New Leader Tuesday—Quit Walking on Eggshells around Boss Bullies
Almost every person who’s ever held a managerial position has spent time walking on eggshells around a deliberately difficult employee to avoid inciting a confrontation. I describe these individuals as “Boss Bullies.” They’re particularly fond of first-time managers because their tactics tend to work on the new managers for a period of time. Here are 6 ideas to help you navigate this sticky situation:
Choose to Work in a Culture that Brings Out the Best in You
I’ve worked in cultures like those ascribed to Amazon.com in the recent and controversial New York Times article, “Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace.” These battle-zone firms exists and they can be very successful. And for the adrenaline junkie career climber, these cultures are perfect. For the rest of us, not so much.
New Leader Tuesday—Ideas to Help You Cure Feedback Fright
While the act of delivering constructive feedback doesn’t rank up there with the fear of public speaking (stage fright) or facing an IRS audit (just pure fear), too many managers…especially newly promoted first-timers avoid this activity because it makes them uncomfortable. Here are 9 ideas to help you move beyond your own feedback fright:
Leadership Caffeine™—When It Comes to Toxic Employees, Don’t Hesitate
The toxic employee has a “special” knack of destabilizing groups, destroying trust between coworkers and stifling conversation and creativity in nearly every situation. For a number of reasons…none of which are worth much, too many leaders hesitate when it comes to purging these radioactive waste products from their teams. If you’ve been rationalizing retaining one of those characters that creates fallout with every encounter, it’s important to recognize what you’re doing to everyone else and then to take action.
High Performance Management—Courage and Business Transformation
The topic of transformation is a challenging one for all management teams. It’s not surprising that few muster the collective courage necessary to transform their organizations even in the face of sustained headwinds or looming crisis.
New Leader Tuesday—Learning from Your Communication Mistakes
You will make many communication mistakes in your formative role as someone responsible for the work of others. It takes time and more than a few mistakes to recognize your need to understand the communication preferences of your team members and to learn to tailor your approach. Here are 4 communication lessons learned the hard way and some guidance for helping you avoid these missteps: