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Quick tips to energize your daily leadership activities.

Leadership Caffeine™—A Simple Hack to Resuscitate Your Positive Attitude

When your usual positive attitude takes a holiday and leaves you alone with your grumpier more cynical self, it’s time for action. And while the idea of turning in your resignation after telling off the higher-ups is a nice fantasy, it’s placing the blame squarely where it doesn’t belong. Instead, try this simple but powerful hack to bring your positive attitude back to life:

By |2018-11-05T07:25:09+00:00November 5th, 2018|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leadership Power-Ups|1 Comment
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For Managers—The Performance Potential of a Strong Feedback Culture

Imagine there was a tool at your disposal that would help reinforce in real-time the behaviors of group members that moved the performance numbers in the right direction. Or, a tool that would get people motivated to learn, grow, and leave behind less-than-ideal behaviors in favor of new approaches and continuous improvement. Wouldn’t this be helpful? Well, there is. It’s called performance feedback. And sadly, it’s often missing-in-action, misapplied, or, applied inconsistently, and that’s just leaving money and morale on the table.

By |2018-11-05T08:12:35+00:00November 2nd, 2018|Art of Managing, Challenging Conversations, Emerging Leaders, First Time Manager Series, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|0 Comments
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Leadership Caffeine™—Lessons for Management Fixers

It's a great vote of confidence when your boss picks you to lead the turnaround of a struggling team or function. You're the management fixer, charged with figuring out what's not working and how to fix it. And while this is a great career opportunity, there are a number of ways you can misfire in this role. This article offers 7 hard won ideas to help you make the best of a team or function turnaround opportunity.

By |2018-10-22T10:02:49+00:00October 22nd, 2018|Art of Managing, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change|0 Comments
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Leadership Caffeine™—How Effective Leaders Use Reframing to Tackle Challenges

For individuals involved in the world of design and design thinking, reframing vexing problems is a standard part of the process. For the rest of us, a bit of design thinking focused on reframing is invaluable in our daily labors. Here are some ideas to help you jump-start your reframing activities in pursuit of better solutions in the workplace:

By |2018-10-15T09:08:34+00:00October 15th, 2018|Decision-Making, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change, Strategy|0 Comments
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Leadership Caffeine™—Learn to Love Uncertainty

We spend a great deal of time in our organizations striving to reduce risk and uncertainty. For some tasks that's possible, but for the big issues of strategies and market forces, it's impossible to bend behaviors and responses to fit our scripts. Effective leaders understand they must build teams that recognize uncertainty as opportunity and live to excel in those moments.

By |2018-10-07T10:00:20+00:00October 7th, 2018|Decision-Making, Emerging Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Strategy|0 Comments
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A Workplace Communication Fable with Three Great Lessons

Challenging workplace conversations and even confrontations are inevitable. The key is to be at your best when many might be at their worst. Learn to tie these three together—own your message, manage yourself in the moment, and practice positive persuasion—and you have a bright communication future in front of you.

By |2018-09-19T13:36:46+00:00September 19th, 2018|Art of Managing, Career, Challenging Conversations, Emerging Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|1 Comment
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The High Cost of Feedback Left Unspoken

I fret over feedback poorly provided. I also recognize that not all feedback is worth listening to—a great deal depends upon the source and the motivations of the feedback giver. However, I worry a great deal about the incredible and immeasurable cost of important feedback never given. As Deming suggests, this value is unknown and unknowable. And that worries me.

By |2018-09-13T07:42:43+00:00September 12th, 2018|Career, Emerging Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|0 Comments
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Effective Leaders Understand the Need to Create an Emotional Connection to Strategy

It’s no secret that top leaders and their management teams struggle with strategy. After all, choosing a direction, saying “no” to other opportunities and then creating a blueprint for organization-wide involvement is one of the most difficult challenges of organizational life. This challenge is made easier however, when leadership ensures all employees have the opportunity to internalize and develop an emotional connection to the strategy.

By |2018-09-04T09:42:21+00:00September 4th, 2018|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Management Innovation, Strategy|0 Comments
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The Curious Case of Translating Curiosity into Action in Your Organization

I love curious managers, teams, and individuals. Curiosity is the stardust of creation in our organizations. And while the questions and the explorations and the discoveries are all fascinating, what we as organizational leaders have our sights set on, is realizing ideas that turn into changes that promote positive outcomes. Here are three ideas to help improve your ideas-to-outcomes results:

By |2018-08-27T11:26:07+00:00August 27th, 2018|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change, Management Innovation, Project Management, Strategy|2 Comments
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