The Leadership Caffeine Blog
How Effective Leaders Help Their Teams Turn Ideas Into Actions
Think about it: "Ideas are easy; doing stuff is hard." –Seth Godin In my article How leaders can teach their teams to become more creative, I proposed a tune-up of the approaches used in many workplaces to generate ideas. After all, ideas are oxygen for...
How Effective Leaders Help Their Teams Turn Ideas Into Actions
Ideas are oxygen for problem-solving. Yet, all the ideas in the world won’t help you solve the challenges in front of you if you don’t have solid ideas-to-actions flow. As leaders, we need to complete the process and make sure there’s a robust Ideas-to-Actions machine operating on our teams and in our organizations. Here are approaches to help strengthen the flow of ideas into actions in your workplace:
What the Boss Learns About You in Every Conversation
While you may not know this, that idea you bounced off of your manager the other day and your response to her questions on one of your projects both play a critical role in your near future success and the speed of growth in your paycheck! Here’s what the boss is looking and listening for when she’s talking with you:
Leadership Caffeine™: Nine Key Skills Demanded By Our Times
In our world of constant change, there are (at least) nine critical skills that leaders and professionals at all levels must cultivate to succeed:
The Rocket Scientist and the Rock Star Effect
Good ideas and good strategies are plentiful. The weight of the research on why strategies fail points at the execution side much more so than the idea side of the equation. In a career hanging around mostly technology organizations, the limiting factor has NEVER been on the idea front. It’s been on the management side and the ability of management to produce what I describe as the Rock Star Effect.
At Least 10 Managers You Don’t Want to Meet On Your Journey
Here’s a fresh follow-on to some earlier posts on the habits of lousy leaders based on input from participants in my leadership and management programs and forums. It seems we don’t run out of content for this thread!
Leadership Caffeine™: Cultivating the Confidence to Act
For leaders at all levels, there’s much to gain from James D. Murphy’s excellent book, Courage to Execute: What Elite U.S. Military Units Can Teach Business About Leadership and Team Performance. Of the many quotable and thought-provoking items in the book, one that jumps out at me is Mr. Murphy’s perspective on courage. His words: “…but remember, courage is not bravado. Courage is the confidence to act that comes from preparation.”
It’s the lack of confidence to act that I observe as a derailment factor for so many teams from senior levels to functional or project groups. Here are 5 ideas to help cultivate the confidence to act on your team:
Guest Post: Building High Performance Teams with Heart
The best teams I’ve been a part of had something beyond high performance—they had heart. When the chips were down, these teams pulled together and delivered against the odds with brio. High performing teams with heart have a tremendous will to win, learn from failure, think hard work is a blast, trust their leaders, and never burn out. In this post, I’ve tried to distill the leadership behaviors and strategies I’ve observed throughout my career that create the kind of team dynamic that boosts performance to the highest level.
When did Passion for Your Work Become Passé?
Run a search on current business clichés or phrases to avoid and you’re likely to come across a number of references to the word passion. The writers tend to be passionate about the fact that passion is a term to avoid on your CV, during interviews and in other business references. Is it out of style to be vocal about your passion for your work, your profession or your firm?
Leadership and Management Lessons from Chris
The Chris Christie bridge scandal offers a few too many leadership and management lessons to pass up without a few observations. Here are 7 that jump to mind:
Leadership Caffeine™: The Leader and Constancy of Purpose
Deming’s idea of Constancy of Purpose strikes me as perhaps the best way I’ve heard to describe that intangible but palpable drive that propels the most effective individuals and the most successful organizations. From long observation, this unyielding focus is often missing in our workplaces and in the behaviors of those in roles of leadership. Here are 4 ideas to promote focus and cultivate constancy of purpose on your team or in your organization: