1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles Archives

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

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:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:56-05:00August 2nd, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

August, 2010 Leadership Development Carnival

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!

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:58-05:00August 1st, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

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

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.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:59-05:00July 29th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Innovation is Everyone’s Business

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.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:00-05:00July 28th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|11 Comments

Starting Fast as a Leader With Your New Team

The "start-up" phase with a new team is challenging for even the most experienced of leaders. If you're an "all new" leader...someone hired from outside or at least outside of the team, there's an inherent degree of uncertainty and apprehension about you. No one knows your style or your agenda, and frankly, while you have authority and respect conferred by title, you have not earned credibility or trust. One of the fastest ways to ramp up and help people develop some early comfort with you is to sit down and listen to them.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:01-05:00July 27th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

Leadership Inspiration from the Howard Schultz HBR Interview

If you’re looking for a breath of fresh leadership air and some hope in this world after watching CEOs doing the Perp Walk or the Resignation Shuffle, read the interview, "We Had to Own the Mistakes" with Howard Schultz, Starbucks Chairman and CEO, in the July-August, 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review. While Schultz is no stranger to our world as an iconic founder of one of the world’s most successful and formerly fastest growing firms, one might argue that he didn’t earn his leadership stripes until faced with the unexpected challenging of turning the firm around.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:14-05:00July 27th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

The Triple Threat to Good Decisions: Data, Time and Emotion

There are few situations more challenging to teams than dealing with a tough, emotionally-charged issue and decision-choice while facing significant time pressure and seemingly contradictory data. If that type of situation sounds uncommon or unrealistic, consider that many firms and management teams make critical priority calls and strategic choices under just such circumstances. The decision to launch Challenger was a prime example, with all three factors playing a huge role in this tragic call. Countless corporate strategic misfires owe their outcome to this triple-threat of data, time and emotion. While many situations don’t involve life-safety issues, this triple-threat is something that every manager should be critically sensitive to in their group and strategic decision-making.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:15-05:00July 22nd, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|8 Comments

8 Quick Tips to Improve Your Effectiveness with Feedback

Leaders at all levels struggle with this most important of performance tools: feedback. We delay delivering it, we water it down, we sandwich it in praise and obscure the message or, we avoid it altogether. Like anything else, practice makes perfect, and a few simple guidelines can help ease some concerns and usher in more “practice time” in your workplace.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:17-05:00July 21st, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

Team Conflict? As Long as It’s Not Personal, Run With It

I’m leery of happy teams. Don’t get me wrong. I like positive experiences and working with happy people, however, in my experience, the happy teams are the ones that produce mediocre results or, they don’t produce at all. Give me a group of people that show up to do battle on the issues versus the team that strives for peace and harmony, any day.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:18-05:00July 21st, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|6 Comments

July Issue of the Management Excellence e-Newsletter: Subscriber Only Content

he July issue of The Management Excellence e-Newsletter is out, with subscriber-only content. The current issue includes content on: Improving Ideation & Creativity with Your Team, Surviving and Thriving at the Dreaded Annual Strategy Off-Site, Ideas for Jump-Starting Your Personal/Professional Development Program, New Suggestions for the Management Excellence Reading List and a tasteful promotion at the bottom of the newsletter outlining new beta test opportunities for upcoming Building Better Leaders programs and other services. (Hey, I am in business here!) If you're not a subscriber, please consider signing on and gaining access to content and opportunities not covered on my blogs. As always, I will guard your e-mail information with amazing ferocity!

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:19-05:00July 20th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments