The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Gray-Zone Leadership—A Powerful Formula for Career Success
Spend time observing successful individuals in your organization who are visibly succeeding—taking on more responsibilities and gaining access to critical projects, and you will notice three significant themes: 1. Successful individuals learn to make themselves...
Gray-Zone Leadership—A Powerful Formula for Career Success
It turns out, learning to spot and seize gray-zone opportunities is a spectacularly great way to get ahead in your career.
Fresh Voices: Perspectives on Change, Communication and Delegation
One of my favorite outcomes of blogging has been the opportunity to meet and learn from some really sharp people that share a passion for many of the same topics that I write about: leadership excellence, high performance and personal and professional development.
Consistent with my desire to hunt for great new books, I’ve been seeking out new (to me) writers on topics that are relevant to anyone engaged in working with and leading others or focused on developing themselves. I plan on sharing these posts and authors with you from time to time, just like I would a great new book or a newly discovered writer. This week’s posts and authors include…
Leadership Caffeine™: Scouting for Talent in Unusual Places
This week’s focus is on scouting talent, and like most of my posts, I’m encouraging you to break some established rules. The best leaders that I know are also the best talent scouts. They are acute observers of people and extraordinarily quick to identify individuals with potential. They are also great developers of talent, but that’s a separate topic for another day.
In my experience in working around and talking with individuals that have outstanding track records in finding and developing new talent, there are three core attributes that they look for…
Why I Hate the “Sandwich” Technique for Delivering Feedback
At the risk of inviting the ire of a great number of readers and trainers, I am once again opting for the dissenting opinion on a controversial topic. I absolutely hate the use of the “sandwich” technique in delivering constructive feedback. Here’s why and here’s my guidance to help you throw away this leader’s crutch and to start delivering clear, polite feedback that supports behavioral change.
Read Art’s Latest Article: Leadership and the Millennials at CW Bulletin
For those of you that have followed this blog, heard me speak or have been a participant in one of my MBA classes or workshops, you know that I’ve opted for the dissenting opinion on this youngest generation in the workforce. I am a huge fan!
I was thrilled when the professionals at CW Bulletin, the on-line supplement to Communication World magazine invited me to share my thoughts on this new generation and to offer some guidance for leaders on how to harness the talents and fire of these young knowledge workers. The result is my latest article, aptly named: Leadership and the Millennials.
What Leadership List Are You On?
At the beginning of my leadership workshops, one of the ice-breaking activities is to have the participants think about and jot down the characteristics and behaviors of great and lousy leaders that they’ve experienced in their careers. It’s always fun to watch the small groups attack this task with relish.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Lead with Passion!
The passion that a leader brings to his or her work is the secret sauce in a winning recipe for creating an effective working environment and developing a high performance team.
Good leaders understand their role, work hard on developing credibility, listen and ask questions and provide coaching and mentoring. Great leaders do all of that and they infuse everyone around them with a sense of excitement for the adventure.
What Are You Doing to Reinvent Your Professional Self?
A fact of life in our world is that you will inevitably face the prospect of having to reinvent your professional self. For many this is a daunting task that gets put off along with getting in shape, painting the house and writing a book. The dream is nice, but the lack of action keeps it firmly out there somewhere in a hoped-for future.
A Rant on Social Networking Etiquette or, When did Rude Become Acceptable OnLine?
Call me old-fashioned, but just because so many of us are interacting from behind a screen doesn’t mean that the rules of etiquette and common courtesy have been suspended. In case you didn’t get the meme on the importance of professional courtesy in an on-line world, this is it.
I am increasingly fascinated and horrified by the way people conduct themselves through sites like Linkedin and for networking introductions provided via e-mail.
Improving Your Odds of Success in Driving Change
There is a fascinating article on Change Management in a recent issue (Issue 2/2009) of the McKinsey Quarterly (subscription required) by Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller, entitled: “The Irrational Side of Change Management.”
And while much has been written over the years on this important and vexing topic, the authors offer some insights and ideas that they describe as counter-intuitive, but potentially helpful in improving your odds of success with these initiatives. This article alone was for me worth the hefty annual subscription price.