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Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 8, 2009

Mar 8, 2009

Welcome back for this week’s double-shot of leadership motivation. I’m taking my leadership cues this week from Michael Beers, a Harvard Professor with a forthcoming book: High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage.

While I’m not certain that a Harvard Professor is the first one that I seek out to help me lead my way out of a crisis, I like what he has to say. Mr. Beer’s focus is on building high performance teams and organizations on the back of what he describes as high commitment leaders.

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Smile, Your Mirror Neurons are Firing Everyone Up & A Homework Assignment

Mar 6, 2009

Intuitively, it makes sense that leaders that are more engaged and engaging tend to elicit better responses and better results from their teams. Perhaps nice people can finish first.

Now, the father of the concept of Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman (What Makes A Leader), along with Richard Boyatiz are pushing the envelope by integrating new research in social neuroscience with their studies of effective leaders. Their recent Harvard Business Review article, Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership, is fascinating reading for anyone intrigued by the role that our biological makeup plays in our leadership abilities.

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The Recurring Labors of a Leader or, “It’s Deja Vu All Over Again”

Mar 4, 2009

It seems that Yogi Berra was right (that’s the former Yankee player and manager, not the Jellystone Park character on the lookout for a quick meal).

One of the reasons that so much business writing and advice sounds familiar is that we conveniently keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again, allowing new generations of pundits to dispense similar advice in new packaging.

In a short piece entitled Learning from Heroes found in the March, 2009 Harvard Business Review, Jack Covert and Todd Satterson suggest that this recurring pattern in business actually mirrors the hero’s journey found in mythology.

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Too Many Projects Chasing Too Few People-It’s Time to Learn to Say No!

Mar 3, 2009

One of the themes that I hear consistently in workshops and in discussions with the professionals in my MBA classes is frustration over the propensity of a firm’s leaders to never say “No” to a project. Lacking a viable mechanism to compare, evaluate and select and reject projects, decisions are made based on politics, gut feel and the squeaky customer wheel.

The net result of this lack of discipline is that the people doing the work end up overloaded and overwhelmed. They operate in compliance mode, focusing on surviving until the next deadline and adding little creative value or innovation to their activities.

You can end this chaos and rebuild your team’s morale and effectiveness by building in new systems and proper rigor to project evaluation and selection.

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Celebrating a Leadership Milestone at the Three Star Leadership Blog

Mar 2, 2009

Today is an opportunity to celebrate post number 1,000 by Wally Bock at the Three Star Leadership blog. Many of you are readers and subscribers of Three Star Leadership, but on the off chance that you have not benefited from Wally’s consistently outstanding and practical content for this profession, his blog is a must on your professional development to-do list.

Click through to the Three Star Leadership blog to share in the celebration and gain some tips and resource suggestions for this most difficult of professions. I’m honored to have been invited to contribute to this great milestone in leadership content! Looking forward to the next 1,000, Wally!

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Leadership Lessons from the Road

Feb 27, 2009

One of the great things about leading workshops with talented professionals is how much I learn about the very real challenges that people face in trying to get work done inside their organizations. After spending a day together working with a group technical professionals at The Data Warehouse Institute’s World Conference, I gained some insights into the challenges and barriers that are slowing down progress and inhibiting performance improvements inside organizations.

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The Right Stuff: Sprinting Towards the Future

Feb 20, 2009

It’s easy to focus on the bad news. Everyone’s talking about it. We’re bombarded with news flashes and human disaster stories as the layoffs mount and the foreclosures climb. And make no doubt about it, these are tough times, but let’s start giving some coverage to the firms, leaders and entrepreneurs that have turned off the news channels and are too busy building or rebuilding to worry about the dire forecasts.

For a good dose of “can do” spirit, get out of your office and go talk with some smart people working to strengthen, build or start businesses. I’m doing just that, and here’s why I continue to be optimistic:

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The Challenge and Opportunity of the Product Manager

Feb 17, 2009

Product Managers face significant organizational challenges in their quest to expand their roles and increase their value-creating contributions to their firms.

Through a recent and on-going series of interviews with senior executives as well as product managers across a variety of technology and manufacturing organizations, it is becoming clear that more and more organizations recognize the potential for product management to create tremendous value. It is also clear that enlightened executives increasingly recognize that the professionals that wok in product management roles are a ready-made source of high potential contributors and emerging leaders.

Senior executives are looking for their emerging senior contributors in product management to bring more advanced skills to the party, in the areas of: Leadership, Strategic Thinking, Executive Presence and Process Optimization.

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“Why Did We Fire You?” Talent Gaffes of the Big and Clueless

Feb 12, 2009

If it wasn’t so sad, it would be laughable. The question, “Why did we fire you?” expressed with surprise and genuine confusion was asked by a senior HR exec to a talented and fired sales rep at MegaFirm.

This sales rep was the “last one standing” that actually understood how to sell the products that MegaFirm had inherited with one of its many acquisitions. The products are still there, but the people aren’t. MegaFirm unleashed the neutron bomb from its powerful HR arsenal.

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No Leadership Training Budget, No Problem. Nine Tips, No Charge

Feb 10, 2009

As someone who is passionate about leadership development, it is heartening to see articles like the one that ran recently in the Wall Street Journal, indicating, “Despite Cutbacks, Firms Invest in Developing Leaders.” Good for these businesses and the leaders. The notion that it is always time to work on identifying and grooming leaders is healthy. However, if you happen to work in one of the firms that is not as fortunate or as enlightened as the ones highlighted in the article, don’t despair. You don’t have to have a stinking budget to improve your team’s/firm’s leadership development practices. You do however, have to have your head screwed on straight about this process, and you need to be committed to executing on it as a core, everyday part of your job.

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