70% of American workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” (Gallup, 2013). That figure represents a failure of leadership. Leadership is the ability to impact and engage people in important work that causes positive disruption. That clearly … [Read more...]
Move Your Own D@%# Needle
There’s a phrase that many in business have been using for some time now. Typically it’s a manager in a leadership role telling someone else that they need to “move the needle.” That is, they need to cause some change, they need to increase revenue … [Read more...]
Self-Awareness Drives Corporate Performance
How self-aware are you? Do you know what your blind spots are? What skills do you excel at? What traits make up your personality and drive your behavior? These are important questions for anyone wanting to practice authentic leadership. And, it’s … [Read more...]
Executive Coaching: Don’t Be a Firefighter; Be an Explorer.
Leaders at every level – from CEO to frontline people manager – show up to coaching with issues they want to discuss. Whether you’re a leader who coaches or an external executive coach, you always have two options. You can cover the items they bring. … [Read more...]
3 Spring Cleaning Tips for Leaders
Spring is a time for renewal and rejuvenation. For many of us, it invites a ritual known as "spring cleaning." To lead others effectively, we need to undertake some spring cleaning as well. Some of our spring cleaning focus is external; some of it is … [Read more...]
Three Cs of Transformative Leadership, Part I
Transformative Leaders are Conscious Transformative Leadership is the capacity to impact and engage others in an important work that causes forward movement with positive effect. To put it simply, transformative leadership drives real and profound … [Read more...]
The Inconvenient Truth of Leadership Development
It would be terrific (and terribly convenient) if leadership development occurred uniformly in a two or three day workshop. It would be great if our organizational change efforts happened instantaneously and all the result of a single email … [Read more...]
Leadership Development is a No-Brainer
A 2007 McKinsey report (“Management Practice & Productivity: Why they matter”) on the impact of effective management practices on productivity has gotten a lot of attention on twitter recently and is yet another example of the power of leadership. … [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...]
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...]