“No” is one of the most powerful and under-utilized terms in your management vocabulary. Here are ten situations where “No” might be the absolute right call.
Art of Managing: The Power of a Well-Placed “No”
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The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Art of Managing: Beware the Pursuit of False Precision in Planning
Chance are, you’ve seen this movie before. It’s the one where you or your team are on the hook for distilling the chaos and complexity of the market and the ambiguities and risks surrounding emerging opportunities, competitors and disruptive technologies, into a nice, neat multi-year forecast. As Eisenhower offered, In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Just One Thing: Leading is Lonely Work
Leading is lonely work. The higher you climb on the ladder, the tougher and lonelier the decisions become. Get used to it. No one ever signed on as a senior leader because of the potential for camaraderie.
Leadership Caffeine™-5 Priceless Lessons from Amundsen and Scott
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 lessons from these remarkable expeditions that you can apply in your work-life today:
New Leader Tuesday-Develop as a Decision Coach
The best leaders I’ve worked with and for are not only good decision-makers, they are effective decision-coaches. They understand the importance of teaching their teams how how to navigate the pitfalls and complexities of decision-making in pursuit of the best results for the organization. Here are 6 great habits of effective Decision-Making Coaches:
Leadership Caffeine™-Lessons from the Wilderness
Instead of teaching people to work within a self-contained system where the goal is to impose order, this new world demands much more of a sense and respond style of leading. Here are 5 ideas for cultivating tolerance for adversity and uncertainty on your team:
Leadership Caffeine™-Finding Right is Different than Having to Be Right
I want to know what you know.” One of my early career managers used this line regularly when engaging with her team members. She was genuine in her interest in our take on problems and opportunities, and you could almost hear her mind working as she processed the information and compared and contrasted it with her own views. Her employees genuinely appreciated her effort to see a situation from multiple vantage points. Here are 6 approaches that effective leaders use to guide their teams towards right, without having to dictate direction:
14 Ideas to Strengthen Workplace Group Discussion Quality Today
We spend a great deal of our working lives engaging with others in pursuit of ideas and solutions. Unfortunately, most of our workplace discussions tend to resemble a swirl of emotions, ideas and opinions, with little structure to help navigate these very human issues. To help strengthen discussion quality today, and to set the stage for continuous improvement with your discussions, consider applying these 14 suggestions:
Leadership Caffeine™-The Unpopular Decisions are Yours
There will be many days in your leadership life, when you will be challenged to make decisions that carry painful implications for teams, departments and individuals. Your ability to stare straight at the unpopular and difficult issues and make a decision that is contrary to popular opinion, is core to your evolution as a leader.
Just One Thing-A Lousy Boss is No Excuse to Let the Fires Burn
Some organizations seem to perpetuate a culture that generates talk and hand wringing and teeth gnashing on issues, but little constructive action. Instead of letting the heat from 1,000 smoldering fires melt away your spirit and initiative, take action, grab a hose and form a bucket brigade. Do something…just don’t stand around and watch things burn.