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Leadership Caffeine™: How to Cope With Organizational Alchemists

Jan 3, 2011

The modern-day practice of alchemy is only metaphorically about the search for a method to turn lead into gold. Instead of the medieval pursuit by alchemists of a magical chemical conversion process to change one element into another, modern practitioners are focused on the magical and easy transformation of people and organizations from one level of performance to another. Here are 12 questions to help you keep the alchemists in check.

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Best of Leadership Caffeine™: A Leader’s Resolutions are Calendar Blind

Dec 28, 2010

While it is natural for us to focus on resolutions as we approach the new year, the best leaders understand that improved performance requires an unrelenting, year-long focus on personal and professional development. Instead of joining the masses in pursuit of a ridiculous list of soon-to-be forgotten resolutions (along with those fitness goals), consider this approach to continuous leadership improvement:

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Two Great Blogs and a Best of Leadership Caffeine™ post

Dec 27, 2010

Note from Art: I’m taking a few days off over the holidays to focus on family and recharge my writing batteries. I plan on completing the second round edits of my next book, aptly titled, Leadership Caffeine, and I’m preparing a few other blogging surprises for the new year. However, if you happen to be hungry for stimulating content, here are a few suggestions to help you through this typically quiet week. Enjoy!

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Art Guest Posts at Lead Change, My Next Book & Other Updates

Dec 16, 2010

I confess to focusing a great deal recently on the future of leadership. This was evident in my guest post, “The Great and Perilous Leadership Journey Ahead,”at Tanveer Naseer’s site, and in today’s essay, “Leadership Guidance for Our Children.” at the Lead Change site. And while you’re visiting Lead Change, be certain to check out the many great blog posts from some truly outstanding leadership writers and thinkers.

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Leadership Caffeine™: How to Appropriately Respond to Positive Praise

Dec 13, 2010

It’s easy to start believing the praise you hear in the hallways about your leadership approach. Easy and dangerous. I’ve always been leery of the unfounded and saccharine-sweet praise that is bestowed upon leaders. While you may call me cynical, I prefer to think of myself as pragmatic. Here are five ideas for appropriately responding to positive praise:

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Leadership Caffeine™: Mistakes are the Raw Ingredients of Leadership Courage

Nov 21, 2010

’ve made a number of mistakes over the course of my leadership career that make my head spin and my stomach turn just thinking about them. No life or death or business impacting mistakes, but, definitely some people and team impacting issues that created ill will and most definitely didn’t show me off at my leadership best. Learning from those mistakes helped me evolve my thinking on the role of a leader and on my true priorities in supporting my business, my peers and my team members.

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Leadership Caffeine™: The “I’s” Have It

Nov 15, 2010

The short, important and seemingly harmless word, “I,” is a potentially lethal weapon of morale and credibility destruction when used for evil or ego instead of for good. It’s so powerful in fact, that I envision a future world where leaders wear the equivalent of a dosimeter badge to warn leader and followers when the use of “I” is in danger of creating a toxic event…most likely a spillover of b.s. into the workplace.

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Leadership Caffeine™: Managing Risk Without Stifling Experimentation

Nov 8, 2010

The art and science of management is much about coping with risk. There are few certain outcomes in business, and that’s particularly true when we factor in the reality that people are darned complex and don’t always act rationally. More often than not, I see managers and leaders looking at their world through the eyes of “what can go wrong?” and basing their decisions solely on attempting to minimize those identified adverse outcomes. Here are 5 ideas that leaders can use to help experimentation flourish on their teams.

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Leadership Caffeine™: Learning to Ask for Help

Nov 1, 2010

I’ve not met a person yet that doesn’t need help from time to time, and this goes double for anyone in a leadership role. Leadership is frequently lonely and those that take their role seriously truly fret over decisions surrounded by ambiguity. The pressure to “figure it out” is tremendous, partially imposed by our fast moving and politically charged working environments, and partially imposed by our own misguided sense that to show that we need help is to show weakness. Here are seven ideas for properly and professionally asking for help.

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