The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—Leadership Lessons from a Move to the Lake
My wife and I made a big move last week. We left our 30-year suburban home where we raised our sons and moved to the lake. The process took almost a year from the decision to make the move and about a day to sell. In-between, we focused on lightening our load of...
Leadership Caffeine™—Leadership Lessons from a Move to the Lake
While an incredible number of people move every year, and everyone knows what a miserable project it is, there are a surprising number of leadership lessons in these situations. Here are a few I gleaned from our recent move efforts.
Decorum, Drinking and the Company Holiday Party
It’s time for my annual Scrooge-like post on how a few drinks at the wrong time can damage credibility and derail your prospects. This is a season filled with potential social traps and ripe with opportunities for awkward moments as we blend the ever-present and oft dreaded holiday event with the opportunity to drink with coworkers. Here are at least 6 big reasons to hold back at the office holiday party:
Politics and the New Leader
As your responsibility in guiding and managing others grows, you are increasingly involved in the organizational dialog around budgets, projects and talent. Congratulations, you’ve entered the political arena in your workplace where power and influence decide who goes where and which teams and projects are on the receiving side of new investment. Here are 3 ideas for playing in your firm’s political arena while maintaining your integrity:
In Pursuit of the High Performance Senior Management Team: Part 1
Most senior management groups are teams in name only, but not in performance. Sadly, the costs to the organization of this failure to coalesce at the senior management level are heavy. Great functional performers are not automatically great team players, and the hard work of moving from a team by name to a team in performance is just that, hard work. In part 1, we kick off our series on creating high performance senior management teams with a look at some of the key conditions for successful teams and an exploration of the 4 key areas senior management teams fail and flail when it comes to pursuing high performance.
4 Reasons Why Questions are a Leader’s Best Friend
The best leaders wield questions precisely, respectfully and always with a clear objective in mind. Here are at least 4 reasons why questions are a leader’s best friend:
Leadership Caffeine™: 6 Key Decision Areas that Shape You as a Leader
There are a number of decisions in every leader’s life that stand head and shoulders above all others. These are the decisions that change the trajectory of people, teams and organizations and on a bigger stage, nations. As you navigate your career and your growth as a leader, be prepared to stand up and be counted on these challenging issues:
A Leader’s Reasons to be Thankful
Note from Art: This is an annual post at Management Excellence, offered in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. It’s a nice time for leaders to pause and recognize the many reasons they have to be thankful for the privilege of serving.
It’s Your Career—Show Your Boss You Want to Learn and Grow
An employee interested in developing is like catnip for a conscientious boss. We’ll put in extra effort to support your development; find ways to relax our training budgets to push you along, and frankly, if you are genuinely, authentically pushing the envelope on your own development, you will gain access to the challenging assignments that set people up for advancement. Here are 5 ideas to make sure the boss knows you are interested in learning and growing:
Sears CEO: “We have a profit problem.” Really?
In an article in the Sunday Chicago Tribune, Edward Lampert, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sears Holding Corp offers, “We don’t have a sales problem. What we have is a profit problem, and that’s what we’re intending to address.” Mr. Lampert, I respectfully suggest that you have a lot of problems in your shrinking, unidentifiable former retail empire. However, characterizing the situation as a profit problem is off the mark.
Just One Thing—There’s No Such Thing as a Partially Toxic Employee
As managers, we tend to tolerate certain employees who straddle that toxic boundary, in large part, because we can rationalize their aberrant behaviors in the context of what they do well. This is a mistake with tremendous costs to the organization, team and to your own credibility as a leader.