Good Leaders are Masters of Their Time and Priorities
Nearly everyone who steps into a leadership role at any level is asked to do many more things than can possibly fit on their plate. They’ve got essentially four choices: Say no to some things, negotiate others off the plate, delegate, or gag. Some might say there’s a fifth option; that we can always multitask. […]
Good Leaders Are Quick to Share Credit and Take Responsibility
I became a fan of Green Bay Packers quarterback, Aaron Rodgers recently. Not for what he did during his game-time 30 minutes with a football in his hand, admirable as it was, but for what he did and said with a microphone in his face in the televised press conference following his team’s win over the Detroit […]
Leaders Show Up
Two days before New Year’s day, I walked into a Kroger grocery about five miles from my home to pick up a few items. I should have known better. The parking lot was quite busy, and the store was packed with frenetic shoppers playing a nonstop game of chicken with one another using shopping carts, and […]
Being “Damn Right” Doesn’t Earn you Extra Points
Thirty-five years ago this week, when I was a young middle manager at a nascent FedEx, my boss flew to New York for exactly two reasons: 1) To go Christmas shopping with his wife, and 2) To do a little coaching with me. Though the time-split between those two objectives was about 90/10 in favor […]
A Few Words on Workplace Feedback for Millennials
Over the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of providing professional coaching for a diverse group of a dozen or so Millennial professionals, managers, and executives in the workspace. Though it is a disparate group other than the age cohort, we’ve individually uncovered and worked on a fairly short list of remarkably common performance […]
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Popular vote totals suggest that less than half of us got what we wanted by way of the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. Indeed, many had been, as Tom Brokaw said just prior to the election, “curled up in the fetal position saying, ‘get it over with’”, while hoping and praying to avoid getting […]
Carrots, Sticks, and Unintended Consequences
Having seen example after example of the “power of the carrot” I have long maintained that organizations large and small should be careful, very careful what they incentivize people to do, because it will absolutely, positively drive behavior… in every one of us. We’ve seen it on a super-sized scale in the healthcare fee-for-service model, where providers […]
Whether Your Management Style is Trending “Hard” or “Soft”, Some Iron Laws Are Immutable
Spurred by incessant jousting over whether one of the U.S. presidential candidates might be “hardening or softening” their position on immigration policy, I thought recently about an altogether different arena, the workspace, and the evolution of management style that many of us find ourselves in the midst of, as we journey between a top-down command […]
Bad Bosses are Bad Business
Who among us would keep seeing a dentist who was lousy at administering anesthesia? Or would knowingly board an airplane piloted by someone who’d never really learned to fly? I think I know the answer. So why, then, do so many of us tolerate people in management positions who have demonstrated a remarkable ineptitude for […]
Seven Reasons Why You’re Losing Your Leadership Bench, and What to Do About It
For nearly three years, CEO’s (and other C-suite occupants) have been voicing mounting concern about the length and strength (or lack thereof) of their leadership bench. Following are a few thoughts about the underlying causes of those concerns, and what can be done about them. Causes 1. Lack of developmental opportunity / assistance – They […]