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
Where Too Many Managers Hit the Wall on Their Level-Up Journeys
Developing as a manager is a perpetual exercise in leveling up. Just when you think you've developed some competence at the role and are asked to take on more responsibilities, WHAM, you hit the wall of new, ambiguous challenges. In my work as an executive and...
Where Too Many Managers Hit the Wall on Their Level-Up Journeys
Developing as a manager is a perpetual exercise in leveling up. Just when you think you’ve developed some competence at the role and are asked to take on more responsibilities, WHAM, you hit the wall of new, ambiguous challenges. Here are the six big level up challenges I see for rising managers:
Leadership Caffeine™—Why Should Anyone Trust You to Lead?
Seriously, why is it that someone or some group should trust you to lead? From long experience and ample input from thousands of professionals, here are 5 big credibility killers and 5 big leadership credibility builders:
It’s Your Career—Resolve to Conquer Your Fear of Speaking
A frighteningly few number of people genuinely relish the idea of getting up in front of an audience at work and talking.That’s too bad, because there are few skills that will take you further and help you more in your career than developing your speaking skills.
Art of Managing—Managing Effectively is Hard, Good Work
For some reason, the work of management and of managers often is positioned as a poor second cousin to the richer, nobler tasks of leading. That’s a false perspective. Good managers with good leadership skills are incredibly valuable to today’s organizations. Here are a few reasons why you should be proud of your important role as a manager:
Art of Managing—Beware the Lure of Strategy in a Box Approaches
Strategy is one of those difficult topics that dog most management teams and most firms. The real work of strategy is challenging, time consuming and filled with hard-to-answer questions. Given the challenges of managing an effective, on-going strategy process, it’s no surprise “Strategy in a Box” approaches are often adopted by management teams looking to add a check mark to the strategy task on their annual goals. Here are some key reasons why there are no shortcuts when it comes to strategy:
Leadership Caffeine™—Ideas to Help You Adjust Your Attitude and Improve Performance
While Woody Allen offered, “80 percent of success is just showing up,” I might politely suggest the phrase is missing a key ingredient: attitude. There’s a profound difference between showing up and showing up with the right attitude. Here are five ideas to help you put your attitude in the right place before you start your work day:
Leadership Caffeine™—In Praise of Mistakes Made for the Right Reasons
Show me a mistake-free leader, and I’ll show you someone hiding from the real issues confronting the business: people and strategy.
Leadership Caffeine™—3 Questions To Help You Cultivate Your Leadership Style
I can tell you with absolute certainty that I didn’t think about my own leadership style for a large part of the first decade of my career. I didn’t care at the time. It wasn’t relevant. Although in hindsight, I certainly had a style, it was more muscle than finesse. It wasn’t until a wise and confident senior leader challenged me to think through and then apply the answers to three powerful questions, that I began to form an effective leadership style.
It’s Your Career—Is It Time for You to Go?
Far too many professionals linger in stagnant roles or struggling firms long beyond the optimal expiration date of their involvement. Instead of seeking out new challenges that support learning and skills expansion, otherwise competent, motivated individuals tend to linger in bad situations hoping for circumstances to shift more to their liking. More often than not, they are disappointed.
Art of Managing—How to Respond When the Experiment Goes Wrong
In the most successful firms I’ve been around, the managers actively promote experimentation and learning as core to everyone’s job. Yet, it’s not the words on the wall or even the words that come out of their mouths about experimentation, it’s the actions they take when things go horribly wrong that fosters the effective learning environment. Here are 3 counter-intuitive ideas for turning project failures into lessons learned that stick: