The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Sampling the Many Flavors of Career Reinvention
If you're feeling restless in your career and wondering what else is out there for you, it may be time to start exploring options. After all, you've got experience, wisdom, some unique skills, and you want to apply all of these attributes in pursuit of something you...
Sampling the Many Flavors of Career Reinvention
If you’re feeling restless in your career and wondering what else is out there for you, it may be time to start exploring options. One of the first items we tackle in our Career Reinvent™ Boot Camps involves defining what “reinvent” means to the participants. It turns out there are a wide variety of flavors for this term, and it’s possible to be interested in multiple flavors at the same time—a kind of reinvent ice-cream sundae!
Don’t Miss the 39th HR Carnival at HR Capitalist!
If you are after thought-provoking, practical content from scores of leading authorities in HR, Leadership and Management, then click-thru to the great Carnival being hosted by Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist. You won’t be disappointed. Thanks to Kris for an awesome job.
Decision-Making and The Three Rules of Risk Management
Your decision-making style says a lot about you as a leader. Some people make a lot of decisions with little more than a gut hunch to guide them and others spend a lot of time gathering insights and information to support their decision. Others struggle to make decisions on anything and might still be considering what to order for breakfast when it’s time for dinner. And still others avoid making decisions because taking a stand increases the odds that they will be held accountable for results.
Inspirational Leadership: The Victim of the Balanced Scorecard?
Today I’d like to cover what I believe to be a disturbing management trend. In today’s world of the Balanced Scorecard, companies have never focused so much energy on alignment of results with strategy. I applaud the approach. In fact I recommend it. But sadly it seems that for some organizations, results have become the sole focal point—the only thing that matters. What they are losing touch with is the fact that results are driven, at least in most companies, but living, breathing human beings.
From Imperial Court to Learning Organization
It’s time to quit talking about becoming a learning organization and start knocking down the time worn conventions, institutions and processes that stand in your organization’s way. In an ideal world, this change starts at the top with an insightful leader or leadership team that understand what it takes to move from an efficiency orientation to a learning focus. In reality, a lot of this change will need to be driven by leaders in the middle that clearly see what is happening in the external environment as well as what it takes to win in that environment. If necessary, let the royals executives posture and play while you go about the business of changing the business one initiative at a time.
Capturing Talent and Creating Great Customer Experiences: They Go Together
There’s no way that an organization that accommodates sloppy interviewing habits is landing and retaining the best and brightest. As a business leader, you want your customers to constantly be surprised and delighted. A manager that takes mid-interview smoke breaks and badgers a talented candidate about salary expectations is someone that I want working for my competitor.
Help Wanted: Great Leaders to Solve Vexing World Problems
Tough times and challenging circumstances provide outstanding opportunities for leaders at all levels to test their mettle and gain valuable experience. There have been few times in recent history with this number of complex challenges staring at us in everything that we do. As individuals, we cannot solve these issues alone, but we can hold our leaders from local politicians to congress and the next President accountable. We can make good decisions with our finances, demand accountability from our elected officials and challenge the leaders in our businesses to do more than focus on the short-term. We can support our troops even if we disagree with the policies, and we can cast our vote this November. It’s a great time for leaders everywhere to stand up and be counted.
The Art and Approach of Asking and Encouraging Great Questions
Learning how to ask compelling questions in a non-threatening manner is one of those un-exciting but absolutely critical skills for an emerging leader to develop. Questions are the leader’s lifeblood of information, and like most skills, learning to ask great questions in the right manner, is something best learned through repeated practice.
What to Do With a Lousy Boss
More often than not during a workshop, someone will raise their hand and ask, “All of this stuff about being a good leader is nice, but what do I do about my lousy boss?” Being fairly fast on my feet, I resort to the facilitator’s fail-safe of “asking the audience” before offering my own suggestions on this dicey issue. Not surprisingly, there are few satisfying answers (that don’t include jail-time for you as a possible outcome) to this dilemma shared by so many.
Leader: What’s Your Strategy for Managing Your 30 and 40-Somethings?
As a leader, you cannot afford to allow the best, brightest and most-experienced employees to feel detached and unmotivated. I suspect that more often than not, you as the leader have a hand in creating this problem, and you definitely can help solve it. It’s time to sit down, talk and most importantly, listen to what your thirty and forty-somethings have to say. These are the leaders in your immediate future. Don’t come up short just when these talented professionals are ready to pay off.