The Leadership Caffeine Blog
It’s Time to Take a Stand Against Leadership Indecency
Leadership Indecency is an admittedly awkward, uncommon phrase. I like it. It's the perfect phrase to describe the many amoral examples and practices of leadership we encounter in our organizations and institutions. Sadly, these practices are curable if WE stop...
It’s Time to Take a Stand Against Leadership Indecency
Leadership Indecency is an admittedly awkward, uncommon phrase. I like it. It’s the perfect phrase to describe the many amoral examples and practices of leadership we encounter in our organizations and institutions.
Thinking of Becoming a Manager? Pause and Consider These Questions
Managing can be rewarding and exciting. It also can be disastrous for your career. Before making the move to manager, ask and answer these 10 questions:
Developing the Whole Leader—The Clinic Approach
In a world where our organizations face a chronic shortage of leadership talent to navigate uncertainty and change, it’s time to rethink our approach to leadership development. In this article, I suggest an alternative approach, the clinic model for leadership development. Consider this more a “What if?” prompter on finding new ways to address the whole-person and to integrate and sustain development over time.
Leadership Caffeine™—Your Curiosity is Contagious
Too many managers and organizational leaders emphasize answers and directives over questions. You are leaving performance and innovation on the table if you do this. Instead, know that your curiosity is contagious and start leading with open-ended, thought-provoking questions.
When Slowing Down Helps You Move Faster with Strategy
You’ll rarely meet a CEO or top executive suggesting, “What we need to do is slow down.” This counter-intuitive guidance in a world seemingly spinning faster-and-faster flies in the face of conventional thinking and practice, yet in matters of strategy, slowing down to move faster, is often the recipe for success
Leadership Caffeine™—Ten Essential Behaviors for Emerging Leaders
While some leadership behaviors are timeless, the context in which we lead is ever-changing. Here are ten leadership behaviors for emerging leaders in our era of volatility and uncertainty.
It’s Not Science Fiction—How an Idea Lab Might Just Create an Alternate Timeline for Your Firm
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best. Ideas are the engines of innovation, yet too often they are visible for just a flash of time. In reality, we need ways to curate and develop ideas. Try building an idea lab. All you need to get started is a few spare walls, some low-cost materials and some starter ideas! Just be careful, as you may very well change your firm’s future in the process.
How Integrative Thinking Promotes Innovative Problem-Solving
Integrative thinking is the process of using the tension from two conflicting approaches to a problem in pursuit of a new and innovative outcome. Instead of responding to competitive or strategic situations with the same approaches, try these 5 tools to identify new and superior approaches.
Career Reinvention May Save Your Health and Life
We all intuitively know a toxic workplace is bad for our health. Jeffrey Pfeffer’s latest book, Dying for a Paycheck, offers some data to back this claim. And while some may benefit from job change, others are motivated to reinvent their careers as part of saving their health and lives. This articles shares some of the insights gained in working with multiple career reinventors.
Your Open Door Policy Needs to Be Closed for Good
While the intent of the statement, “I’ve got an open door policy” is mostly positive, it’s naive and out of time and sync in a world where managers are accountable for closing the power gap between themselves and their group members. Get up and get out and narrow the power gap while doing some good.