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
The Death of The Manager Role: What’s Really Needed
As Layoffs Climb and AI Emerges, the Predictions are Flowing Like clockwork, bad news in the economy coupled with some scary new technology brings out the pundits offering exaggerated predictions for something or another. This time, the mass layoffs in techdom and a...
The Death of The Manager Role: What’s Really Needed
As Layoffs Climb and AI Emerges, the Predictions are Flowing Like clockwork, bad news in the economy coupled with some scary new technology brings out the pundits offering exaggerated predictions for something or another. This time, the mass layoffs in techdom and a...
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:
Art of Managing—In Searching for Talent, Emphasize Potential
The author builds a case for shifting away from the competency model (core skills and experiences) that has dominated hiring practices for the recent past, to one that emphasizes assessing a candidate’s potential in the form of, “the ability to adapt to ever-changing business environments and grow into challenging new roles.”
Just One Thing—The Impact of a Simple Gesture
There’s a lesson in this situation for any airline or business striving to differentiate in a world where almost everything seems to be some flavor of vanilla. The best marketing always has been and always will be relating to people as individuals and creating a warm, memorable experience.
Leadership Caffeine™—Beware Becoming Part of the Drama
Let’s face it, some people thrive on bringing their personal challenges into the workplace and baring them all for the world to see. These drama kings and queens seem to revel in sharing their own misery with us in a seemingly never-ending series of scenes from the worst tragic Broadway or faux-Shakesperian play ever. Here are 4 ideas to help you avoid becoming part of the drama:
Art of Managing—When People Develop at Their Pace, Not Yours
I’ve encountered more than a few managers who have expressed frustration over the pace of development of someone they have marked for future advancement and increased contribution. For many of these managers, it’s a vexing dilemma with no clear solution. Here are 4 ideas to help you navigate this potentially sticky situation: