Self-Awareness Leads to Leadership Success
The way to leadership success is making good decisions. But that begs the question: How do I make good decisions? Start with deep self-awareness. Know Thyself Well Your staff knows you pretty well. To manage their boss, it’s in their best interest to know your strengths and weaknesses. At a minimum, you need to know […]
Four Rules to Coping with Setbacks
Leadership is a high-performance sport. You have to learn to deal with disappointments, you have to train for the long haul, keep yourself healthy and peak at just the right time. No one gets to the top without dealing with falls and setbacks. So what are the rules of this high-performance sport? Just Say No […]
Why Smart People Resist Change and What to Do about It
“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This saying captures the culture of many organizations these days as they struggle to reinvent themselves, stay competitive, or grow. Why is this the case, when organizations are filled with smart, successful people? Successful people got where they are because they were good […]
How to Build a Culture that Encourages Risk-taking
When Nik Wallenda crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope recently, the feat itself was overshadowed by Wallenda’s decision to defy the television network and remove his tether at the last minute. His reason: The Flying Wallendas are not thrill seekers; they are prepared professionals taking reasonable risks. The public’s response to Wallenda’s defiance was not […]
Leading Lego by Mastering Paradoxical Thinking
Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, who rose from Director of Strategy to CEO of Lego in under three years, does not shy away from a challenge. The legendary toy company was looking at ten years of sluggish sales and underwhelming product launches, and analysts were predicting that old-fashioned construction toys would never appeal to a new generation […]
Wanted: Transformational Leaders
Lowell McAdam, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, said in the 2017 annual report, “what distinguishes great companies is how they respond to change.” Verizon is at the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with lots of new opportunities with the 5G network and the Internet of Things. We are entering an age of continuous disruption […]
How and Why to Make Business Personal
I have a radical proposition to make: all business is personal. Whether you are calling a customer, running a meeting, presenting to your board or having a performance discussion, the impact on yourself and others is a deeply personal one. In fact, everything you do in business affects who you are and your relationships with […]
Lead with Toughness and Tenderness
Have you ever found yourself working your butt off and not accomplishing what you want? Revenue growth is slower than you would like. Clients and customers are not closing deals fast enough. New products are slow in the making. Bonuses look slimmer than last year. How do you make sense of all this? Shouldn’t there […]
Why We Should Humanize Our Leaders
Many of us tend to see our leaders as heroes or villains. We love them or hate them, idolize or demonize them, in much the same way as the press portrays our presidents. But this conception of leaders as larger than life, as the organization’s Big Brain, undermines leaders and followers alike. It puts tremendous […]
Focus on Values, Leadership and Culture for Business Success
Everyone is looking for the secret sauce to success. I have personally spent the past thirty years traveling around the world searching for the recipe. Though I can’t say that I’ve found the leadership equivalent of the Holy Grail, I have noticed that the most successful leaders among us have a very distinct way of […]
