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
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:
Friday Leadership Ideas to Help You Finish Strong for July 24, 2015
Every week I share a few ideas to help you finish strong. A great ending sets the stage for success next week. This week’s suggestions include rethinking your approach to initiative post-mortem meetings and getting into gear on your own professional development.
Ideas for Professional Growth for the Week of July 19, 2015
Every week I offer ideas to encourage you to stretch and grow. For this week, my suggestions include volunteering to solve a vexing problem, experimenting with assignment rotation and taking your team on a field trip. Use them in great professional health!
Friday Leadership Ideas to Help You Finish Strong for July 17, 2015
Every week I offer ideas to help you finish on a high note. Use the ideas to finish strong and set the stage for success heading into the new week. For today, I offer encouragement on purging unfounded criticism from the space it rents in your mind, and I’m reminding you to show appreciation for your team members during the journey. Enjoy and have a great weekend!
It’s Your Career—Try Reframing the Problems to Stimulate Success
How we frame a situation guides our development of options and biases our decisions. In my coaching work, framing is almost always an issue with under-performing professionals. Here are five common situations that can benefit from some active, personal reframing.
Art of Managing—Be Careful About Labeling Your Employees
There’s an interesting article at Harvard Business Review, entitled, “How to Manage a Team of B Players,” by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. I appreciate the author’s attempt at describing the leadership challenge and approach to molding a group of “ordinary” individuals into a high performance team. He offers some compelling guidance. I am however, uncomfortable with his easy use of the term, “B-Players.” And while I am absolutely guilty in the past of using the A, B, C, designation to characterize individuals and their level of skill/capability/potential, I’ve grown uncomfortable with the cavalier assignment of people to these categories.
Friday Leadership Ideas to Help You Finish Strong for July 10, 2015
Every week I share a few ideas to help you finish strong. A great ending sets the stage for success next week. For this week, I’m encouraging you to call a timeout and assess how you are doing against the big items on your agenda. I’m also suggesting a change of view by engaging with peers and teams outside of your own function. Last and not least, I offer a few good Summer reading suggestions in business and biography.
Art of Managing—In Negotiations, Focus on Interests, Not Positions
All of us are involved in negotiating for something on a fairly frequent basis, and over and over again, most of us make the same critical mistake. We reduce the negotiation to a battle of wills over positions (I want/You want) and we try and brute force our way to a conclusion. For many situations, there’s a better way.
Leadership Caffeine™—Running Uphill Against the Wind
The oft-cited and disturbingly dismal numbers reported about employee engagement tell an interesting story about leadership effectiveness…or the lack thereof. Even in an environment of aberrant leadership behavior and high levels of unengaged employees, you have the ability and obligation to carve our a “safe” zone where people are treated with respect and support.
Ideas for Professional Growth for the Week of July 5, 2015
Every week, I provide a few simple (but not simplistic) ideas for you to Do/Experiment/Explore in support of your professional development and continued success. This week’s three focus on making big decisions, rethinking your approach to establishing team leadership and looking to firms outside your industry for ideas on strengthening your own organization. Use them in great professional health!