I was asked to observe a leadership team in action recently to give them some feedback on their interactions as a team. Throughout the meeting, people kept checking their cell phones for emails and texts. This happens every day in meetings in … [Read more...]
Leadership and Communication: First, Do No Harm
“A primary role of leaders is to design, convene, and host conversations that matter.” This statement by David Isaacs is true in light of the fact that conversation is a core business process. Business, like relationships, happens through … [Read more...]
Remembering MLK
Today in the US we fittingly remember and celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Time and circumstance called to a generation; and, Martin Luther King, Jr. in a courageous act of leadership, answered the call. Dr. King’s work was an ongoing … [Read more...]
The Influence Leader
All leaders face three realities; first, they cannot succeed without engaging others and convincing them to devote time, energy, and resources to the leader’s objectives. Second, leaders have no direct authority over most of the people they are … [Read more...]
The Incredible Lightness of Leading
“Lighten up, Francis.” I love this line from Stripes (great movie, by the way). It is a constant reminder to me and to any leader that we run into trouble when we take ourselves too seriously. Most of us are not in roles where we are making life and … [Read more...]
The Field
In Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, Peter Senge and his co-authors write: “We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed for accessing the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully … [Read more...]
Don’t Just Do Something. Stand There!
As we rush from meeting to meeting, task to task, project to project, how and when do we take the time to ask ourselves if we are doing more at the expense of “being” less? John Kotter talks of this as “false urgency.” We’ve all gotten very good at … [Read more...]
How Healthy are You?
In their new book, Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage (Wiley, 2011), Scott Keller and Colin Price make the case that organizational health is vital for sustaining high performance. They posit that … [Read more...]
When Leading Change, There is No End Zone
Doing change work there always comes a point early on, when structural changes have been announced and are almost complete, that someone will say, “Okay, the change is done. Now let’s get back to business.” This is the moment when I tell them (after … [Read more...]
Don’t Empower. Lead.
In our work we hear the word ‘empowerment’ a lot. I have to confess I’m not a big fan of this word. It is over-used and perpetuates a hierarchical, “I have power and if you’re good I’ll share some with you” view of leadership. In a business … [Read more...]