Instead of letting your days just happen, invest a few minutes before work to prepare your attitude and strive to succeed at every encounter. Here’s how I do it:
The Leadership Caffeine Blog
How to Get Ahead Without Being Perceived as a Jerk (Most of the time)
The question, “Do I have to be a jerk to get ahead?” is spoken out of frustration. There’s no doubt that in sharp-elbowed organizations, noisy, manipulative individuals can be the ones gaining the plum assignments and key promotions. If you want to get ahead, you don’t have to mimic their behaviors, but you do have to choose a strategy to compete. Here are some ideas to help you get ahead without compromising your values:
Leadership Caffeine Podcast #27—John Baldoni
One of the secret joys of writing this blog over the past decade has been meeting so many remarkable and inspirational individuals in all sectors. In this episode of the Leadership Caffeine podcast, I have the privilege of connecting with one of those inspirational individuals, friend and leadership guru, author, and great guy, John Baldoni.
Be Careful with Multi-Person Feedback—It’s Easy to Get it Wrong
Multi-person feedback is a tricky issue. Don’t let it trip you up and then stress the people around you. Here are some tips for getting it right:
How to Respond When Someone Violates Your Trust
I’m an advocate of leaders practicing Swift Trust in the workplace. Given that time-to-trust is an essential driver of time-to-performance on teams, the approach makes sense, yet it is not risk-free—it will backfire from time-to-time. Here are some approaches to help you recover when someone makes you question your decision to trust them:
Thinking Differently—It’s Time to Fire Up Your Firm’s Imagination
There are more than a few reasons your firm or industry won’t make it through the next decade. While you won’t derail or defuse the power of the many disruptive market forces swirling in our world, it’s the lack of imagination for harnessing these forces that may ultimately relegate your firm to the business history books. Ironically, imagination may be the most controllable and most important of the tools you need to survive and even thrive in this world.
Leadership Caffeine Podcast #26—Dr. Nick Morgan
In this fast-moving, far-ranging conversation with communications expert, Dr. Nick Morgan, we uncover and share the verbal and non-verbal behaviors of great communicators.
Leadership Caffeine™—In Celebration of Those Who Think and Act Differently
It takes courage, self-confidence, and a high degree of risk tolerance to challenge conventional wisdom in environments fueled by the relentless pursuit of perfecting the status quo. Here are three behaviors of individuals who think and act differently and succeed:
A Checklist and Process to Create Daily Success at Work
Here’s a simple checklist process I use (and recommend to my clients) to help ensure they avoid the all activity/no vector trap.
Stepping In to Lead a New Group? Try This Process to Grow Trust and Gain Performance
If you’re an executive or top manager staring at a new group you’ve been assigned to lead and concluding you’ve got a lineup that looks destined for last place, it’s time to take action. Of course, most of those actions involve the person staring back at you in the mirror. Here’s a process that will help:









