[email protected]

847-612-8420

Free Consultation

The Leadership Caffeine Blog

Explore by Category:

The Dreaded Ice-Breaker-In Search of Something Better than Name, Rank and Serial Number

Oct 23, 2009

As a first-day seminar or workshop participant, don’t you just hate the opening few minutes where you’re thrown together with a group of strangers for the first time? You know it’s coming…everyone knows it’s coming, you just don’t know what form it’s going to show up as for this session. I’m talking about the ubiquitous and often dreaded Ice-Breaker.

This is the part where the instructor has spent hundreds of seconds rifling through books that have titles that sound like, “Session-Opening Games that Will Make Your Audience Cringe and Ensure that theirs Standards are Low Enough for Your Lame Content.” (OK, that was a bit harsh. Sorry to the authors of bad Ice-Breakers and purveyors of lame content!)

Well, I’ve finally found one that I like and that works…

read more

Leadership Caffeine™: Surviving as a Leader When Things Go Horribly Wrong

Oct 18, 2009

When faced with unexpected challenges, a good friend of mine intones what I believe is a fitting old Yiddish quote, “Man Plans and God Laughs.” Our modern incarnation of that is a less reverent but eminently understandable, “Stuff Happens.” My word choice here is the less frequently referenced “S-word” from this common phrase.

Learning to cope with the unexpected deviation from your most carefully laid plans is an important part of growing up as a leader. Here are 7 suggestions for developing your crisis leadership skills.

read more

Leading in the Trenches-What Do You Do? And No One Buys Gobbeldy Gook

Oct 15, 2009

OK, this might seem like an odd one, but ask most people what they do and what do you get? “I’m an accountant,” or, “I work in marketing/customer service/support” etc. Attend a business-networking event and listen to the introductions. “We’re a leader in…” or, “We make…” or, “We’re a software company… .” Boring. Hard to stimulate interest with an answer that makes someone want to reach for the bacon-wrapped water chestnut and shout, “Next!”

read more

Leadership Caffeine™-Be the Example

Oct 11, 2009

I recently found myself as a guest speaker in a good-natured discussion with my audience about the challenges that mid-level managers face in trying to facilitate positive culture change while working in a toxic or at least a less than ideal work environment. I opt for the affirmative in this debate, and often find myself arguing the minority opinion. I absolutely have strong convictions about the ability of one individual or a small group of individuals to catalyze positive environmental change in the most challenging of environments.

read more

Two-Dimensional Leader Disease

Oct 8, 2009

Just when you think you can’t take on one more concern, you’ve heard about two new illnesses from the Center for Leadership Disease Control here at Management Excellence. A few weeks ago, you were shocked to learn of the longstanding but freshly named malady, Tired Leader Syndrome. Adding fuel to the fire was the recent announcement here at the Center for Leadership Disease and Control at Management Excellence, that researchers have finally isolated the causes of a long-standing leadership wasting disease. This heretofore unnamed but common set of symptoms is now called Two-Dimensional Leadership Disease or TDLD for short.

read more

Guest Post-More Leadership Lessons Learned the Wrong Way

Oct 6, 2009

Note from Art: It’s always fun when a post strikes a chord and compels someone to comment or even put hands to keyboard and crank out a guest post. Last week’s “Leadership Lessons Learned In a Crane and Sitting on a 5 Gallon Pail” drew upon some of my own early career memories and the formative lessons learned the hard way and served as inspiration for some interesting comments and today’s guest post.

Joe Zurawski is back with us today serving up a nice post on one of the early career experiences that shaped his own leadership development. You may recall that Joe joined us here a few months ago with his take on “Things I Wish I Knew When I Became a Leader.” Joe, welcome back and thanks for sharing!

read more

Leadership Caffeine™-Character Forged in Defeat

Oct 4, 2009

Winning is great. It’s often the culmination of years of hard work, a relentless focus on condition and outstanding execution. What high school or college football coach hasn’t hung a poster in the locker or training room with Vince Lombardi’s inspirational quote: “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious”

It’s easy to lose track of the reality that most victories are forged in the emotional blast furnace of prior losses.

read more

October Edition of Leadership Development Carnival at Leader Talk

Oct 4, 2009

Becky Robinson, the articulate and highly engaging author of one of my favorite blogs, Leader Talk, has posted the October edition of the always exciting and thought-provoking Leadership Development Carnival. She appropriately names this one the Endurance Edition, in part, because she received a record number of posts from the leading leadership bloggers on the planet and brought them together in one place for your reading convenience. Plan on a rousing workout as you digest some fantastic content. Oh, and she was kind enough to include one of my posts as well!

read more

Today’s Action Item: Reinvent Self!

Oct 2, 2009

I know an awful lot of talented, hard-working people talking about or rehearsing for the process of reinventing their professional selves. This is the silent epidemic taking place in people over 40 that doesn’t garner the same level of attention as our anticipated flu epidemics.

read more

Leadership Lessons Learned in a Crane and While Sitting on A 5 Gallon Pail

Oct 1, 2009

Note from Art: my week of alternative blog fare continues with this very autobiographical reflection on the formation of my later life leadership viewpoints! It’s remarkable what you can learn and do if your attitude is focused on finding ways to improve and turning so-called down-time into time for creativity and improvement.

read more