[email protected]

847-612-8420

Free Consultation

The Leadership Caffeine Blog

Explore by Category:

The Pursuit of Power and the Misguided Leadership Literature

Aug 13, 2010

Jeffrey Pfeffer’s article, Power Play, in the July-August Harvard Business Review (fee) is interesting and relevant for everyone working inside organizations as well as for those individuals actively engaged in the development of leadership literature and course-work. Pfeffer tackles the important topic of power. How to gain it, how to wield it, and in his opinion, why those that actively cultivate power are more effective at driving change and implementing a new strategy. He also suggests that the leadership literature is soft-selling or ignoring this very real and important part of organizational life.

read more

Leadership Caffeine™: Quit Managing Reduced Expectations

Aug 10, 2010

A great friend and talented product manager once offered in a moment of frustration that he viewed his principal job as one of “managing reduced expectations.” This brilliant, but depressing turn of words reflected bigger business problems, including a logjam in development that effectively precluded us from doing anything to enhance the competitiveness of our products in a timeframe shorter than something that you might find on a geologic time-scale. The “managing reduced expectations” seems to be a theme inherent in our society right now, and it is a dangerous mind-set.

read more

The Kids are Alright-Leadership Lessons from the Youngest Workers

Aug 9, 2010

Chances are, we’ve all read about and heard from mid-career managers complaining about the younger generation entering the workforce. The “don’t want to pay their dues,” and “you can’t pry them away from their PDAs,” and “poor work ethic” laments are in my opinion, lame copouts by managers stuck in their own inflexible ways. There’s good and bad in every generation, it’s just that this one feels different, because it is.

read more

Show Respect by Paying Attention

Aug 5, 2010

There are a million opportunities for us to shortchange conversations in pursuit of the urgent important. It takes discipline and the recognition that your attention as a leader is one of the best ways that you have for conveying your respect for individuals and teams.

read more
The Career Enhancing Benefits of Message Mapping

The Career Enhancing Benefits of Message Mapping

Aug 4, 2010

Critical and challenging communication situations demand crystal clarity. The discipline of message mapping is a powerful, simple-to-learn approach to helping you and your teams achieve clarity and consistency with your most difficult and strategic communication situations. 

read more

Don’t Spend Too Much Time with the Wrong People

Aug 3, 2010

The major “people mistakes” of my career have occurred as a result of investing too much time and effort in trying to change people. As leaders, we can enable change. We can help people that want to change. But trying to change people on our own is ultimately a fool’s errand.

read more

Leadership Caffeine™: 4 Signs that Your Leadership Approach is Working

Aug 2, 2010

Most leaders struggle to understand whether they are helping or hindering the cause. Except of course for those leaders/narcissists who believe that their every utterance is sheer genius wrapped in pure motivational gold. The feedback from your manager, while important, tends to be based on either numbers or fairly casual observation. And feedback from your team members is welcomed, but you never really know for sure whether it’s the unvarnished type. The “Am I Helping?” issue is particularly important when a troubled team or organization gains a fresh leader. Here are 4 measures that will help you gauge whether you are truly helping or hindering:

read more

August, 2010 Leadership Development Carnival

Aug 1, 2010

Many thanks to Jason Seiden for hosting the August Leadership Development Carnival. The Carnivals are outstanding opportunities to sample the favorite posts of some of your favorite leadership and business bloggers and to discover some great new talent. I’m grateful to Jason for running my recent post on Decision-Making along with so many outstanding contributions from other bloggers. Have fun, enjoy the blog and stay for Jason’s great content!

read more

Want to Lead? Consider These Questions: #7 of 7

Jul 29, 2010

The first six questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical. If you’ve made it through the investigation of questions 1-6, it’s time for you to consider what your daily work life will be like as a leader.

read more

Innovation is Everyone’s Business

Jul 28, 2010

Take a poll in your firm on whether people feel responsible for innovation in their jobs or in their departments, and I’ll offer an educated guess on the outcome. Those involved in engineering, design, marketing and product management will feel a strong sense of responsibility to innovate. For others in supporting or operations-focused roles, the need or ability to innovate will be rated towards the low end of perceived priorities or even capabilities. That’s a shame. A good innovator and good innovations are terrible things to waste, regardless of functional role.

read more