The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Turning Your Goals (and Resolutions) Into Growth and Gold
As you approach the annual resetting of the calendar and contemplate how you will make this year different, better, and complete, here are some thoughts generated during our recent Leadership Caffeine Jam Session. (The Jam Sessions are our monthly second-Friday events...
Turning Your Goals (and Resolutions) Into Growth and Gold
As you approach the annual resetting of the calendar and contemplate how you will make this year different, better, and complete, here are some thoughts on how you can rethink your approach to your goals and turn them into growth and gold.
Don’t Get Blindsided by Organizational Politics
For all of us, ignoring this very real human behavior that manifests itself as organizational politics, is a sure-fire way to end up at best on the fringe of irrelevance, and at worst, to end up outside, wondering what happened. Here are 7 ideas you can apply to “play politics” and maintain your integrity:
Leadership Caffeine™ Podcast: Brook Manville on Judgment Calls
Run a literature search on decision-making, and you’ll find a broad range of content, much of it focused on the cognitive issues and traps surrounding the process, and the balance focused on the disasters so widely dissected in our culture. For a fresh and refreshing view, enter Tom Davenport and Brook Manville with their book, Judgment Calls-12 Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams that Got Them Right.
Leadership Caffeine™: Listen with Intent
Yesterday, a valued colleague described a fascinating professional interaction and used the phrase, “listening with intent.”While I imagine it is something on the level of “seek first to understand,” the phrasing works for me. It connotes a significant and deep personal investment in focusing on another human…something lacking from most of our interchanges in life and in the workplace.
Bringing Back Professional Courtesy
The issue of professional courtesy (or seeming lack thereof) came up at a recent networking group meeting. With permission, I’m sharing the spontaneous suggestion list we generated, including ideas for live and social media settings. Please add to the list and let’s all strive to put these into practice in real-time. At Least 15 Ideas to Help Bring Professional Courtesy Back:
The Cruel, Bitter and Crushing Taste of Dump-Truck Feedback
Right after avoiding it, the most commonly employed managerial strategy for dealing with feedback is, delaying it. The first approach is poor form… the latter approach is cruel.
Leading in the Matrix-7 Ideas to Cultivate the Right Skills
If speed, adaptability, learning…and the need to innovate are more than buzzwords and corporate clichés, but in fact are the requirements for success in this fast-moving world, then building cultures, teams and people capable of succeeding in the matrix must be a priority.
Leadership Caffeine™-For a Change, Do Something Unconventionally Unorthodox
We tend to love our life and work routines. They are comfortable and comforting. And while there’s a certain amount of routine that’s inherent in successfully running any organization, the best leaders seek and create opportunities to breakaway from the mind-numbing, sense-dulling pursuit of routine. Here are 5 ideas to stimulate your own-thinking on breaking the routine with your team:
Web Construction Update
I'm erring on the side of sharing a little more rather than a little less on some of the work going on here. A few days ago, I highlighted upcoming changes. Last night, the new format for the site went live, although much work continues on content refinement and new...
Leadership Caffeine™ Podcast #14-Bob Frisch on Who’s In the Room?
Bob Frisch is one smart professional, with some great guidance for senior managers and CEO’s in his new book: “Who’s In the Room? How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them.” His lifetime experience as a strategy consultant working with senior management teams comes through loud and clear as he shares some fairly blunt and important perspectives on how decisions at the top are really made.