A brief look at the week just past and a recap of my leadership and management writings from around the web.
Art’s Writing and Week in Review for February 6, 2016
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The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—How to Get Your Team to Open Up to You
It’s impossible to lead effectively if you don’t have an open line of communication with your team members. Here are six ideas to help your team members open up to you:
Art’s Writing and Week in Review for January 30, 2016
A bit of commentary on the month that was January, 2016 and a recap of my leadership and management writing around the web. Enjoy and have a great weekend!
Leadership Caffeine™—Leading Your Peers
We tend to reserve our thinking, writing and talking about leadership for the hierarchical relationships. However, peer groups represent great, untapped sources of problem-solving and improvement. There’s ample opportunity for you to assert as a leader of this group, if you take the right approach. Here are 7 steps to asserting as a leader of your peers without being perceived as a jerk…
Leadership Caffeine™—Refueling as a Leader
From about the six-month mark out of college and for all but eighteen months of the next twenty-two years, I supervised, managed and cultivated my leadership skills in a variety of different technology and software firms. While I loved and still do love the challenge and responsibility for guiding and developing others, the work (including the actual running of the business) was and is demanding and draining. I learned over time that I could only be at my best for others if I took care of my own refueling needs first. Here are 9 ideas to help re-energize your leadership spirit:
Leadership Caffeine™—5 Signs You’re Heading for a Meltdown
Most senior leaders lack any form of an honest, effective and timely feedback loop, and when they succumb to the pressures of the role and begin to flail, things can go bad in a hurry. You should be on the lookout for these five warning signs suggesting that it’s time to hit the pause button before you suffer a leadership meltdown.
Leadership Caffeine™—Fight to Eliminate Obstacles
Too many firms act as their own worst enemies by sustaining rules and processes that no longer apply and that block the freedom and flexibility of employees and teams to experiment and innovate. Effective leaders and managers work daily to change or eliminate these blockers. Here’s a dose of encouragement and some ideas for you to spark a healthy revolution of change in support of your team:
Leadership Caffeine™—Aligning Your Efforts to Results Ratio
If you’ve ever worked incredibly hard only to have something run off the rails or just not generate the results you were after, you understand what an imbalance in the Efforts-to-Results ratio feels like. Here are some thoughts on aligning this equation in your favor:
Leadership Caffeine™—It’s Time to Become Better Informed Leadership Consumers
There’s a lot of happy talk in books, on blogs and in articles about leaders and leading. Much of the writing and commentary on leadership and leading reads like a Made-for-TV script with much of the gory and dirty content left out and the outcome predictable—the good guys always win. It’s disconnected from reality. What’s needed is a revolution in how we as consumers of leadership evaluate and select our leaders.
Leadership Caffeine™—Are You Driving Your Team Bananas?
What I really wanted to call this post was, “Quit Acting Like a Hyper-Rooster.” It’s much more visual, and after all, does anyone really want to look or act like a hyper-rooster? Yet, that’s exactly what too many managers act and look like, as they simultaneously strut and flit around the office or plant, moving from activity to activity, focusing on everything and nothing and making their colleagues dizzy and disoriented in the process.