Recovering Leader

Every Day is Bring Your Kindness to Work Day

A friendly leadership approach works wonders when you want to enable those around you to free up their most powerful talents and skills in service of a shared vision or goal.  Read more →

It Takes Sponsorship to Make a Leader

It takes a village to make a leader -- many helping hands. A mentor gives you advice, while a sponsor will pound the table on your behalf, expending their political capital to help you get to your next step. Read more →

Why a Leader's Emotional Impact Matters ... A Lot

“Why do I need to worry about my people’s feelings? Why don’t they automatically just FEEL like doing their best? They’re lucky they have a job! Am I there to coddle them?” These are bottom line beliefs and questions among my executive clients who tend to be more task / directive / deadline-driven. Some are thinking these things mainly when... Read more →

Reinvention and Fighting the Status Quo Fetish

Like those with power in war, politics, religion, and even charities and greater-good enterprises, business leaders share the strong human need to preserve things as they are … to tinker rather than transform. Building modestly on what is, jiggering with it, making small corrections—preserving the status quo no matter what, either deliberately or non-consciously, is the object of our desire.... Read more →

Leadership: Loving and Leaving the Chronically Marginal

Most leaders eventually have a chronically low or marginal contributor among their team. While avoidance and rationalization in such situations are quite common, they simply amplify the problem. In my experience as a leader and executive coach, clarity, compassion, and consequences are the keys to skillful handling of persistently problematic performance: CLARITY that you expect their best on an ongoing... Read more →

Revaluing Your Pack Mates

We humans are basically pack animals. We surround ourselves with many of the same faces day in and day out. Over time, that familiarity tends to limit our clarity and curiosity about our “pack mates.” We inadvertently discount their ideas and contributions, often in small ways that can really add up. It’s as much a problem for leaders as it... Read more →

5 Ways to Lead with Trust

There’s nothing worse than behavior from your boss that says s/he doesn’t trust you, particularly if you don't deserve it and they don't intend it. Failure to give you responsibility along with authority, not introducing you to a VIP, and micromanaging are all simple and avoidable ways a leader may be sending a motivation-killing signal on the trust front. To... Read more →

Best of 1950’s: Hit Your Targets or You’re Out

I ask leaders: how can you be of service to your people and your bottom line at the same time, rather than serving one at the expense of the other? It gets the leadership juices flowing. In contrast, “Hit your targets or you’re out,” which I’ve seen more frequently recently, sacrifices those you lead for results. If this weed-out-the-weaklings way... Read more →

Great Leaders Ask Better Questions

You're paying your people too much to think for them. Guide them to do their own best thinking, and their contributions multiply exponentially. Directive behavior does the opposite ... it shuts people your up, and shuts them down. "Why doesn't she do what I tell her to do?! " This CEO mentioned he was having trouble getting one of his... Read more →

Five Steps to Superb Delegating

Delegation at its best sets up capable people to do their best work for you in their own way. Low-yield delegation is command and control. Here are five simple steps to delegation excellence, based on many executive coaching assignments where I worked with clients on developing their best in this area: 1. Engage the best person or team. Look with... Read more →

Leadership and Frustration: 5 Steps to Respond rather than React

Life in general, and the workplace in particular, seem designed some days to test our ability to deal with frustration--our own, and that of others. It takes awareness and skill to behave well—rather than react—when facing a frustrating/angering person or situation. Since there’s no shortage of these, it’s well worth it for a leader to develop strong mental muscles for... Read more →

"I Know" is Ego, Not Leadership

Saying "I know" doesn't reflect understanding or knowledge—it says "My ego has an issue with what I know or don’t know." I can’t think of a good reason for a leader EVER to say it. Even at its best, it’s not smart and/or cool-nerdy and/or charming. It’s distancing, distracting, and ultimately shuts down the other(s) in conversation with you, none... Read more →

How Does Your Organization Impact the Common Good?

My workforce research showed most workers put organizational integrity ahead of financial gain. Yet in the current practice of capitalism, as organizations grow, gaining financial sustainability, influence and impact on society, they tend toward self-protection and self-interest. What's a well-meaning worker to do? When buying a car, or a mattress for that matter, we'd look at Consumer Reports. When taking... Read more →

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 →

LeaderTip: High-Performing Leadership Teams

It’s not uncommon for an organization’s senior executives to call themselves the "Leadership Team." Yet frequently divisional self-interests drive their actions more so than teamwork—a lower-performing model for people at all levels of the enterprise. In contrast, members of high performing leadership teams watch out for each other, share resources and knowledge, trust each other, are brutally honest, embrace healthy... Read more →

Letting Go of Lonely Leadership

“It’s lonely at the top” is not the way of leadership. If that’s the case for you, the quality of your leadership, your life at work, and your P&L, would likely be enhanced with some work on changing how you relate to others. I’ve seen this play out in my executive coaching work with clients. Their successes add up to... Read more →

LeaderTip: Caring Connection

One’s ability to form caring relationships in the workplace is highly correlated with business results. While a mountain of hard data led to this conclusion, many consider warmth, approachability, empathy, and personal accountability to be the “soft stuff.” Such thinking, and the behavior that goes with it, only gets you to the table—it doesn’t keep you there. Developing a more... Read more →

The 1-2-3 of Using Self-awareness to Resolve Conflict

Whether you're dealing with someone difficult, resolving a conflict, or simply broadening your perspective, here are practical approaches and practices to help you be at your best. Make sure you read down to the simple exercises, and try them! It boils down to this: the more you make yourself look through another person's eyes, even if you can't stand them,... Read more →