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Leadership Caffeine™: Cultivating the Confidence to Act

Jan 20, 2014

For leaders at all levels, there’s much to gain from James D. Murphy’s excellent book, Courage to Execute: What Elite U.S. Military Units Can Teach Business About Leadership and Team Performance. Of the many quotable and thought-provoking items in the book, one that jumps out at me is Mr. Murphy’s perspective on courage. His words: “…but remember, courage is not bravado. Courage is the confidence to act that comes from preparation.”

It’s the lack of confidence to act that I observe as a derailment factor for so many teams from senior levels to functional or project groups. Here are 5 ideas to help cultivate the confidence to act on your team:

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Guest Post: Building High Performance Teams with Heart

Jan 17, 2014

The best teams I’ve been a part of had something beyond high performance—they had heart. When the chips were down, these teams pulled together and delivered against the odds with brio. High performing teams with heart have a tremendous will to win, learn from failure, think hard work is a blast, trust their leaders, and never burn out. In this post, I’ve tried to distill the leadership behaviors and strategies I’ve observed throughout my career that create the kind of team dynamic that boosts performance to the highest level.

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Leadership Caffeine™: The Leader and Constancy of Purpose

Jan 9, 2014

Deming’s idea of Constancy of Purpose strikes me as perhaps the best way I’ve heard to describe that intangible but palpable drive that propels the most effective individuals and the most successful organizations. From long observation, this unyielding focus is often missing in our workplaces and in the behaviors of those in roles of leadership. Here are 4 ideas to promote focus and cultivate constancy of purpose on your team or in your organization:

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New Leader Tuesday: Teaching is More Powerful than Criticizing

Jan 7, 2014

Confession time. I started by titling this post, “Even Experienced Leaders Make Rookie Mistakes,” because I’m the culprit here. I recently committed the classic gaffe of assuming that I had reasonably set expectations for performance around a set of fast moving, first-time activities. When the results didn’t meet my very clear (to me) expectations, I became a bit agitated until it dawned on me that I owned this issue.

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From the Archives: 5 Priceless Lessons from Amundsen and Scott

Jan 5, 2014

In preparation for an upcoming presentation, I’ve become a bit obsessed with studying the 1910 expeditions and race between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott to 90-degrees South (the South Pole). The lessons for leaders and managers practically leap off the pages of this classic example of coping with risk, uncertainty and volatility. Here are 5 of the more noteworthy lessons gained from this jour

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

Dec 30, 2013

I’m as guilty as the next person of finding the impending resetting of the calendar a cathartic cleansing, where the failures of the past year are suddenly washed away and replaced by the empty and unknown space filled with promise and time stretching out in front of us. However, if you are motivated to serve as an effective leader, you cannot afford to fall victim to the boom and bust cycle of annual resolutions. Here are six key questions to arm you with critical insights about your own performance and to help you resolve to improve your performance daily:

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Guest Post: Inside the Mind of an Ethical Leader

Dec 19, 2013

Ethical expectations are continuing to increase as we know more about the impact of our choices on others and the planet. As leaders, we have to stay sharp, not just in terms of best leadership practices, but also in terms of our ethical competence. Guest author, Linda Fisher Thornton shares her thoughts on the mind of an ethical leader and offers guidance for all of us on the 5 levels of ethical competence:

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Leadership Caffeine™: Get Your Team Moving on Change

Dec 15, 2013

The Leadership Caffeine series is 200 installments strong and is dedicated to every aspiring or experienced leader seeking ideas, insights or just a jolt of energy to keep pushing forward. Thanks for being along for the journey! -- We all know that leading and...

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