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The Seven Critical Conversations of Great Firms and Great Leaders

Jun 23, 2009

You learn a great deal about an organization’s current state, near-term prospects and about the health and effectiveness of a firm’s leaders by looking for and listening to the quality of the conversations in the working environment.

There are at least Seven Critical Conversations that I observe taking place over and over again in organizations that that are either successful or improving. These same conversations are often nowhere to be found except perhaps behind the closed doors of a firm’s leaders in less successful firms or organizations that are struggling and sinking.

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Power-Washed! Guest Post

Jun 22, 2009

One of the challenge that many leaders face in their seemingly endless string of days of teaching, leading, motivating, supporting, challenging and guiding their colleagues is how to refresh and recharge. It’s an important topic and one that is under-represented (in my opinion) in the leadership literature, including my own.

It’s difficult to be “on” all of the time, and for leaders, the stress fractures show through usually in the form of snapping or growling at someone. While never good form, the momentary break from behavior is indicative of the need to take a few deep breaths or to even look towards tomorrow as a chance to start over and get things right.

Sometimes what’s needed is a good Power-Washing for the leader’s attitude and soul.

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The Struggles and Mental Toughness of a Leader

Jun 16, 2009

I’m particularly drawn to the quality of “mental toughness” in great leaders. Where most would have cut and run, the best stare at adversity and seem to draw strength from the enormity of the challenges in front of them. Failures are but mere setbacks and when conventional wisdom and all of the advisors preach capitulation, these leaders see and seize opportunity.

I look for this quality in leaders in the business environment, but often our hiring and screening processes get in the way. We tend to focus on hiring those that package themselves as flawless.

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Leadership Lessons from Twitter

Jun 15, 2009

It takes a certain amount of curiosity and yes, even courage for forty-something corporate types to even admit that there might just be something to a social networking tool like Twitter. Many of my contemporaries scoff and mock the tool and anyone participating.

As leaders, we often lose our intellectual curiosity and courage as we move through our careers. We’ve seen it all before and we’re well aware in our own minds that when you take risks and do something a bit edgy, most of the time, bad things happen. We’ve seen fads come and go, and to many of us, this is just one more fad.

To those involved, it is part of the fundamental rewriting of the rules…

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A Fresh Voice and Leadership and the Art of Apology

Jun 11, 2009

There’s an excellent post entitled, “Sorry is not the final word, just the beginning,” by guest author and Product/Project Management Consultant, Lisa Winter at one of my favorite blogs: The Art of Project Management. hosted by the UCSC-Extension in Silicon Valley.

Ms. Winter describes a situation where she inadvertently upset a valuable but delicate team member on a conference call, and then went to significant lengths to apologize and regain his support. In addition to the happy ending, this fine post prompted some thoughts on a topic that I confess I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about: the role of the apology as a leadership tool.

I can’t help but feel a little guilty that I’ve not raised this topic in the past, and for that, I apologize…(OK, I had to work it in somewhere!).

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Executive Behaviors, Your Boss Has No Clothes and Revolution from the Bottom

Jun 9, 2009

Gary Hamel offers a post well worth reading on “Why Success Often Sows the Seeds of Failure,” in his Management 2.0 blog at the Wall Street Journal. He takes some tough and well-earned shots at the narrow-minded thinking of executives that foments the eventual demise of formerly good organizations.

In my opinion, the habits and traps that bedevil formerly successful companies also exist in those less-than successful organizations. Regardless of starting point, the tendencies and habits of ineffective executive leadership are not hard to see. In theory, they shouldn’t be hard to call out and change. However, we don’t. Why not?

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week: Coffee, Your Health and 8 Suggestions to Improve Your Team’s Problem Solving Skills

Jun 8, 2009

The best learning opportunities in the workplace occur when individuals or teams come face to face with a vexing problem. These situations provide outstanding growth opportunities and a great chance to generate and implement innovative and creative solutions. Of course, the manager has to play by the rules.

Unfortunately, there are still a few managers and leaders out there that insist on spoiling these ripe learning opportunities by requiring you to follow a specific approach or steps in solving a problem.

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A Follow-Up to My “Evil Leaders” post: Your Firm’s Values Have No Teeth

Jun 5, 2009

My recent post, “Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish in Some Organizations” struck a chord or at least a nerve for many, as the many insightful comments quickly outstripped the value of the original post. Thanks to all that jumped in and shared on this topic.

On the heels of what turned out to be a deluge of good thoughts on why some leaders and some people get away with less than agreeable (to the rest of us) behaviors in the workplace, I keep coming back to the topic of Values as a core issue.

The results of my informal polling as well as my formal surveying (as part of culture assessments) indicates that for many organizations, values exist as nice statements in a frame with little meaning or use in day-to-day business dealings.

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Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish Inside Some Organizations?

Jun 3, 2009

It’s always been a mystery to me why so many arguably evil managers and leaders not only last but seem to thrive inside certain organizations.

You know the type. Hey, maybe you are one. If so, chime in. I’ve never actually heard from an evil leader that was willing to talk openly about why he is the way he is.

Evil leaders tend to fit one or more of these profiles…

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Fresh Voices in Management Excellence: Greg Strouse and His Stories, Advice and Opinions on Working, Managing and Surviving the Corporate World

Jun 2, 2009

Searching through the sea of business and leadership blogs has become a bit like a treasure hunt. I enjoy searching for great voices that have not yet jumped out of the search engines and on to everyone’s screen. ne of those that deserves to be front and center is Greg Strouse’s Tales from an XOD, Stories, Advice and Opinions on Working, Managing and Surviving the Corporate World.

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