Recovering Leader

7 Leadership Strengths Are Weaknesses When Taken Too Far

Consider a few of the typical strengths a leader may have: maybe they're a good delegator, a great relationship-builder, results-oriented, decisive, etc. Interestingly, our strengths become weaknesses when we overuse or misapply them to the situation. That's why I often hear my clients' colleagues say, "It's his strength, but also weakness at times..." So it's important to know which of... Read more →

Monday LeaderTip: Innovation’s Challenge

Innovation—in your own life, or as a leader of others—requires an open mind, creativity, capability, resolve, and courage. Many leaders get stuck in the status quo because it’s easier than tapping into these qualities in themselves or others. Beyond that, transformative change upsets our sense of normalcy, which can be uncomfortable. Yet you need not remain complacent. When you might... Read more →

Status Quo Fetish? Why Good Leaders Make Bad Choices

How U.S. health reform efforts offer a new understanding of an age-old leadership problem: preservation of the status quo over and above innovation for the greater good. With today’s signing into law of Obama’s long-awaited “health reform,” I find myself wondering why people leading our largest corporations, and the elected officials who regulate them, are so prone to tinkering with... Read more →

LeaderTip: Balance

We are surrounded by well-intended suggestions to achieve work/life balance. Yet in reality, technology surrounds and links us constantly to a virtual office of demands and expectations that blur the lines between work and life. To make matters even more confusing, it’s common in the workplace to talk up the need for greater balance while rewarding those with an excessive... Read more →

LeaderTip: Pattern of Leadership

Lessons in leadership are most evident in the mirror of our own successes and failures. Underlying them are patterns of recurring beliefs and assumptions worth a hard look from time to time. Such reflection opens them up to the revisions necessary to guide you to the next step in your development. Those who don’t spend time being schooled by yesterday’s... Read more →

LeaderTip: Informed versus Involved

Understanding the details has never been more critical for effective leadership. Yet it’s important to walk the line between being informed and getting involved. In my coaching practice, I’ve seen many examples of executives confusing command of the details with commanding the troops as to what do to about them. That marginalizes their skills, even as it drains your time... Read more →

Health Reform: Leadership in Sacrifice Still Needed

Someone commented today on a post I wrote last August regarding leadership in sacrifice and U.S. Healthcare Reform, Leadership in Sacrifice: U.S. Health Care Reform's Looming Lesson, which I just re-read and realized, much to my chagrin, that it's still true. Check it out (here's the beginning of it): (From August, 2009) The now-stalled U.S. Health Care reform effort shows... Read more →