Leadership Caffeine Archives

Leadership Caffeine™—Don’t Back Off Leadership Development in a Crisis

When things break bad (even momentarily) in an organization, a number of predictable reflexes kick-in. Expenses are cut. Operations reviews evolve into extended, public proctology exams with everyone taking a long look searching for answers and blame. Some of the responses are reasonable and expected. Others are destructive. Suspending the work of developing your leaders and managers is destructive. Instead of letting your training budget dictate your team and leadership development efforts, here are 5 high-contact ideas to turbo-charge your efforts:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:23:22-05:00August 30th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—When It Comes to Toxic Employees, Don’t Hesitate

The toxic employee has a “special” knack of destabilizing groups, destroying trust between coworkers and stifling conversation and creativity in nearly every situation. For a number of reasons…none of which are worth much, too many leaders hesitate when it comes to purging these radioactive waste products from their teams. If you’ve been rationalizing retaining one of those characters that creates fallout with every encounter, it’s important to recognize what you’re doing to everyone else and then to take action.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:23:27-05:00August 16th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

Leadership Caffeine™ Are You Making Time for the Big Topics?

When it comes to the forward-looking issues around talent, team and strategy development, the uncomfortable answer to the question in the headline for this post for just about all of us (myself included) is, “Not enough.” Here are 4 ideas to help you manufacture time for the critical developmental and strategy discussions needed to push your business forward:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:23:31-05:00August 9th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—Resist the Urge to Shield Your Team from Bad News

In difficult situations, reality tinged with optimism and backed by encouragement serves as a more effective motivator than a saccharine-sweet message of false praise and manufactured positivity.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:23:37-05:00July 27th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—Running Uphill Against the Wind

The oft-cited and disturbingly dismal numbers reported about employee engagement tell an interesting story about leadership effectiveness…or the lack thereof. Even in an environment of aberrant leadership behavior and high levels of unengaged employees, you have the ability and obligation to carve our a "safe" zone where people are treated with respect and support.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:23:46-05:00July 7th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—The Alchemy of Great Leadership

Newsflash, there are no shortcuts to great leadership. Much like the failure to change nature's principles in search of longevity or turning lead into gold, one's ability lead develops slowly over time and with much strain. Here are 10 lessons learned in search of success as a leader:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:23:50-05:00June 29th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—The Inner Game of Leading

Leadership is played on an open court in the workplace for all to see, yet, I submit that the game is won or lost in the mind of the individual as he/she pushes self-doubt and hubris back into their respective corners. This is the inner game of leading and it is very difficult.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:23:52-05:00June 23rd, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|4 Comments

Leadership Caffeine—Becoming Agile and Adaptable is THE Leadership Issue

The Leadership Caffeine™ series is intended to make you think and act. -- What if everything that used to work for your business no longer did? The business challenge of this era for long established firms is much about escaping the powerful pull of the past. Approaches that worked so well for so long are [...]

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:24:01-05:00June 8th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|4 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™—Ask, “How Can I Help?”

One of the more powerful leadership learning moments in my career occurred when I was part of project team that was struggling to find traction around an important and complicated strategic initiative... . (note: this post by Art Petty originally appeared at The Management Excellence blog.)

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:24:05-05:00June 1st, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

Leadership Caffeine™—Letting Go of Your Need to Be the Smartest Person in the Room

(Note: This post first appeared at the Management Excellence blog https://artpetty.com/blog/ by Art Petty. Copyright 2015 Art Petty.) One of the most common and damaging of a leader’s blind-spots is the compulsion to regularly provide evidence that he/she is the smartest person in the room. Here are some helpful suggestions to recognize and combat your own or your boss's "smartest person" tendencies:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:24:23-05:00May 4th, 2015|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments