It’s all too easy to let ourselves off the hook for the performance of our teams and team members. Here are 9 sets of truly stark-naked, challenging questions that every manager must hold himself or herself accountable to asking and answering:
Much like the repeating sounds that bring substance and meaning to great works of music, there’s a recurring set of notes and chords that emanate from all effective leaders. These include…
Of the eight valuable leadership lessons shared in the HBR article, “Ferguson’s Forumla” (subscription or $), number 2, “Dare to Rebuild Your Team” is critically important and often bypassed in the workplace due to friction, tentativeness on the part of managers and HR groups and lack of vision and courage on the part of managers. Sadly, in too many cases, we allow a number of challenging but controllable impediments to get in our way of doing the right thing. These 4 are…
Looking for a boost in morale and team or departmental performance? Try spending some time helping your colleagues connect their work efforts and goals to the bigger picture of your firm’s strategy. Here are 6 practices that effective leaders apply in pursuit of creating clear context for individual and team challenges:
There’s no formula, no strategy, no approach to building a great business that allows you to short circuit the need for great people. If you’re facing this issue, here are a few thoughts to help you get this equation for success right:
Leading is a privilege and you serve at the discretion of the people on your team. While you might have hire, promote or fire authority, the people around you make the choice to go through the motions or invest their hearts and minds in pursuit of their tasks.
There are few attributes more valuable to leaders than the ability to stare uncertainty in the face and recognize it as a golden opportunity to shape and form the situation to their own and to their firm’s advantage. Here are 5 ideas to help you flip fear and uncertainty in the workplace upside down:
The fundamentals of leadership never go out of style. Whether you are a first-time leader, an experienced professional taking over a new team or a senior leader who can use a little leadership pick-me-up, focusing on these five fundamentals will serve you and your teams well:
With few exceptions that I’ve encountered, most senior leaders lose sleep over how fast their organizations and employees are moving. Their minds and mantras are: faster to change, faster to improve, faster to add new capabilities, faster to explore and develop competence in new markets and with new customer groups. However, at the same time senior leaders are looking for ways for their firms and teams to move faster, most employee groups and their managers are bogged down slogging through the reality of getting stuff done. Here are 3 ideas to help you and your team strengthen the balance between the need for speed and the need for performance:
Part of growing up as a leader involves letting the people you’ve supported and coached, sometimes from day one of their careers, move on to new opportunities inside and outside the organization. Here are 5 thoughts to help you keep things in context when faced with losing a valued team member:
