Leadership Archives

Effective Leadership: How Do You Know When You Are Getting It Right?

If you’ve spent time in a leadership role, you know that it is remarkably difficult to get good quality feedback on how you are doing and for that matter, how everyone else is doing under your leadership. If you haven’t wondered about this, you are either naïve or you are caught up in all of the nice things that people say in your presence. Newsflash: almost no one tells the boss he stinks, when he’s in the room. Some of the worst leaders that I’ve had the displeasure to cross paths with, plied their evil practices with glee, protected by the cheering throngs around them.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:27-05:00July 10th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

The Fourth of July in America

...And after you've marveled a bit at what our founding ancestors managed to pull-off, you might just want to pop a copy of The Sandlot into the VCR (my copy is still on VHS) and marvel at a nation that can produce baseball and hot dogs and Ray Charles and the sheer joy of freedom in spite of our many and recently very visible imperfections. The movie goes best with a cold lemonade next to you.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:32-05:00July 1st, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

Leadership Caffeine™: Strengthen Your Leadership Foundation

The best leaders in my opinion are guided by a strong sense of duty and responsibility. The individuals that succeed in motivating, inspiring and even changing the lives and careers of others operate with an underlying philosophical foundation that they draw upon to remain focused and steadfast in pursuing their daily activities. Everyone else sort of wanders through the leadership woods, reacting more on instinct than acting as if they are being guided by a stronger sense of purpose and duty.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:33-05:00June 29th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|8 Comments

Collaboration and the Leader

Many leaders are lousy collaborators. It doesn’t seem to matter that they spend a great deal of time encouraging, coaching and facilitating collaboration between their team members and across functional boundaries. When it comes time for Leader A to work with Leader B on something other than getting other people to do things, the dynamics get interesting and the output is often disappointing.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:34-05:00June 25th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|13 Comments

The Seven Critical Conversations of Great Firms and Great Leaders

You learn a great deal about an organization’s current state, near-term prospects and about the health and effectiveness of a firm’s leaders by looking for and listening to the quality of the conversations in the working environment. There are at least Seven Critical Conversations that I observe taking place over and over again in organizations that that are either successful or improving. These same conversations are often nowhere to be found except perhaps behind the closed doors of a firm’s leaders in less successful firms or organizations that are struggling and sinking.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:35-05:00June 23rd, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|6 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Power-Washed! Guest Post

One of the challenge that many leaders face in their seemingly endless string of days of teaching, leading, motivating, supporting, challenging and guiding their colleagues is how to refresh and recharge. It's an important topic and one that is under-represented (in my opinion) in the leadership literature, including my own. It’s difficult to be “on” all of the time, and for leaders, the stress fractures show through usually in the form of snapping or growling at someone. While never good form, the momentary break from behavior is indicative of the need to take a few deep breaths or to even look towards tomorrow as a chance to start over and get things right. Sometimes what’s needed is a good Power-Washing for the leader’s attitude and soul.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:37-05:00June 22nd, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

The Struggles and Mental Toughness of a Leader

I’m particularly drawn to the quality of “mental toughness” in great leaders. Where most would have cut and run, the best stare at adversity and seem to draw strength from the enormity of the challenges in front of them. Failures are but mere setbacks and when conventional wisdom and all of the advisors preach capitulation, these leaders see and seize opportunity. I look for this quality in leaders in the business environment, but often our hiring and screening processes get in the way. We tend to focus on hiring those that package themselves as flawless.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:40-05:00June 16th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Leadership Lessons from Twitter

It takes a certain amount of curiosity and yes, even courage for forty-something corporate types to even admit that there might just be something to a social networking tool like Twitter. Many of my contemporaries scoff and mock the tool and anyone participating. As leaders, we often lose our intellectual curiosity and courage as we move through our careers. We’ve seen it all before and we’re well aware in our own minds that when you take risks and do something a bit edgy, most of the time, bad things happen. We’ve seen fads come and go, and to many of us, this is just one more fad. To those involved, it is part of the fundamental rewriting of the rules...

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:42-05:00June 15th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

A Fresh Voice and Leadership and the Art of Apology

There’s an excellent post entitled, “Sorry is not the final word, just the beginning,” by guest author and Product/Project Management Consultant, Lisa Winter at one of my favorite blogs: The Art of Project Management. hosted by the UCSC-Extension in Silicon Valley. Ms. Winter describes a situation where she inadvertently upset a valuable but delicate team member on a conference call, and then went to significant lengths to apologize and regain his support. In addition to the happy ending, this fine post prompted some thoughts on a topic that I confess I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about: the role of the apology as a leadership tool. I can’t help but feel a little guilty that I’ve not raised this topic in the past, and for that, I apologize...(OK, I had to work it in somewhere!).

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:43-05:00June 11th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|6 Comments

Executive Behaviors, Your Boss Has No Clothes and Revolution from the Bottom

Gary Hamel offers a post well worth reading on “Why Success Often Sows the Seeds of Failure,” in his Management 2.0 blog at the Wall Street Journal. He takes some tough and well-earned shots at the narrow-minded thinking of executives that foments the eventual demise of formerly good organizations. In my opinion, the habits and traps that bedevil formerly successful companies also exist in those less-than successful organizations. Regardless of starting point, the tendencies and habits of ineffective executive leadership are not hard to see. In theory, they shouldn’t be hard to call out and change. However, we don’t. Why not?

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:44:44-05:00June 9th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments