Recovering Leader

Imagination and Leadership

Couple an active imagination with a healthy amount of pragmatism, and you will move mountains. Whether you’re a facilities manager, CFO, or running the project to develop the next generation of cancer therapy, all of which my clients have done, doing your best work starts with using your imagination. What we imagine solves problems, sparks us to do our best,... Read more →

Ask Your Team the Hard Questions, Like…

Much has been written on how to upgrade team performance. Not rehashing that here, but rather underlining the usefulness of asking REALLY tough questions, and providing several specific suggestions for you along those lines. When evaluating a group that thinks it wants to be a higher performing team, I always ask three “raise the stakes” types of questions. If you... Read more →

3 Reasons to Avoid a Directive Approach

A very senior client got feedback recently that he should be "more directive" with his people--in fact, to tell them what to do and how to do it more frequently. When contacted for clarification, that person was unavailable because they were too busy. Of course they are. Let's go with that notion. Why not be VERY directive? Because: 1. You... Read more →