Recovering Leader

Leaders: Understand Your Impact

As a leader, it’s important to understand the nature of your impact on the world. For better and worse, you are affecting your people, and, collectively, you are all affecting communities and lives beyond your organization’s walls. No need to wait until some unintended consequence or difficulty makes you take stock of how your leadership is touching the world. Better... Read more →

Podcast: Executive Coaching Show on Boom Town Business Radio

Last week I joined two Bay Area executive coaches on the KDOW Radio Show "Boom Town Business" for an interview about coaching and related topics with host Mike Consol, to whom I offer my thanks for the invitation. (Check out his own website, Mike Consol, if you're in need of corporate training in writing, media, presentation, and/or verbal skills.) With... Read more →

Leadership and Responsibility

Leadership requires the discipline to claim responsibility when something goes wrong. It may be daunting, but it’s necessary—it propels those affected by the problem from confusion to solution, enabling the right actions to be taken. Concerns about saving face, job security, and/or institutional liability are no foundation for leadership. In fact, the longer you delay, the more collateral damage you... Read more →

When an Executive Needs More Swagger

Seasoned professionals described as analytical, cautious, or humble may plateau before delivering on their full potential as leaders. It’s avoidable, if the problem is not one of smarts or capability, but of missing a bit of swagger. Keeping too much to yourself, being too cautious or deferential, or talking about too many nuts and bolts when a blueprint will suffice... Read more →

Eight Ways for BP to Exercise Leadership Going Forward

With the ongoing oil hemorrhaging in the gulf region, and its actions since the tragic rig explosion that started it all, BP’s management proves itself unwilling and/or incapable of leadership. (At the same time, U.S. regulators and their counterparts world wide could immediately show greater leadership by canceling any and all licenses for deep-water wells for firms lacking immediate and... Read more →

Leaders: Help Yourself on Email

According to our recent leadership survey, most professionals receive, on average, over 50 emails per day. Buried in the hundreds of words “conveniently” delivered to your in-box is the information you need to assess, decide, and act. Help yourself by using the “reply” button to coach your people—particularly those who are prone to wordy emails—to make their messages succinct. Request... Read more →