Recovering Leader

Three Must-do Practices for Leading Change

Beyond a great vision, strategy, roadmap, and a capable organization, the leader's or team's ability to build broadbased and sustainable support is the key to leading transformative change. Here are three great ways to do that. Read more →

6 Awesome Ways to Lend a Helping Hand ... Virtually

How to prioritize and practice finding peace amidst all the background radiation of ambiguity, chaos, and fear, and take that peace and use it to focus on helping others now more than ever; after all, it's food for the soul to lend a helping hand. Read more →

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 →

11 Coaching Tips to Seriously Upgrade Your Email Impact

Building executive presence (EP) is a hot topic. A dash of swagger when face to face are crucial; but how do you demonstrate EP on email? EP-busting email habits are rampant, according to my experience as an executive coach. With a few simple practices, and breaking a few habits, you can use email as an instrument of greater influence. Read more →

How to Strengthen Your Organizational Intelligence ... And Why You Should Care

Do you work with or lead anyone who people avoid, or maybe seems to be a bull in a china hsop? They may be described as having lower Organizational Intelligence or "OQ"? Here's what you should know to help them be more successful! Read more →

Infographic: 4 "DEFT" Steps to Goal Attainment

Awesome Questions Leaders Should Ask Regularly

Asking better questions makes better leaders. There are questions we could ask the people who work for us that we simply don’t think to ask: the ones that can help us clean out our own blind spots, and know what we need to lead, even if it's hard to hear. For example, when was the last time you asked someone... Read more →

How Relatable Are You as a Leader? Upgrade Your Interface!

The more aware you are of how your way of interacting impacts others, the more you can lead them in a positive, inspiring, sustainable way. It’s that simple. The reverse is also true. Read more →

How Good Are You At Feedback? Here Are 10 Power Tips on Giving Feedback

The way you (and your organization) handle feedback can have a profoundly critical impact on its success. So it’s worth spending the time to get it right. Here are 10 ways to do that! Read more →

Maturing from Me-leader to We-leader: Get Comfortable in Third Position

Far too many "leaders" are overly invested in their own ideas, opinions, and directives; they are me-managers and me-leaders: "me think this, so you do that." It's often just a bad habit, or self-styled way to manage. Specifically, they're partially to totally blind about how things look from others' points of view, and how they come across to them. It's fixable, and worthwhile to fix. Read more →

Four Secrets to Read the Room & Build Your Executive Presence

Failing to read the room and adjust our communication to others is a rampant problem in many if not most workplaces--whether we're too distracted or hurried, or too "busy." Even if you're the smartest most capable person in the world, if you can't read the room, you're going to fall down, time after time, because you lose the people around you. Read more →

3 Great Ways to Do More Better

If you run anything from a two-person team to a large organization, "doing more with less" isn't just an annoying cliché; it's reality. Until AI's and robots are running the world, we humans are called upon to be ever more scalable. Read more →

Physical Leadership 101: You're Larger Than Life

If you are an executive or emerging leader, you are indeed larger than life because your physicality is watched and read in a highly magnified manner by others. Here’s background and a “larger than life” exercise to help build consciousness and selectivity about your physicality. Read more →

8 Ways to Enjoy Your Work Most Days (a.k.a., "Success")

Most people settle for jobs that fall far short of “happy at work” for too many years. In fact, to some, the notion that we can enjoy our work most days, and have both rewarding and fulfilling (and even fun) careers seems absurd. Yet when you enjoy your work you’re going to do a great job—the best work of your career. Here are 8 tips for helping make that happen. Read more →

A Simple Formula for Distraction Subtraction

Whether you’re running a Fortune 500 corporation, a pre-IPO start up, or a government agency, the simple formula of choose, transmit, and filter can make the difference between success and failure. In fact, many leaders who under-deliver on their goals or fail in their roles, do one or two of these things well, but not all three. Read more →

One Formula to Lead and Live Better: 75+/25-

When you strike the right balance between a positive and negative outlook you lead more skillfully and live a better life, and help others do the same. It’s not magic: By resetting to 75+/25- each day, you enable engagement, creativity, good health, and reduce stress. Read more →

12 Great Job interview Questions

Hiring well means doing interviews that result in insights about each candidate. That begins with good questions that increase the likelihood you'll get some type of x-ray of the person – showing more of them than they are likely to want you to see. Here are 12 of my favorites for your consideration. Read more →

The Leadership Downside of Confidence

The data are overwhelming that professionals are rewarded more on confidence and appearance than substance. Whether we’ve been bedazzled in the interview process and hired a dud, or seen someone with plenty of swagger fail their way to top jobs, it’s worth noticing and addressing confidence-bias in ourselves and others. Read more →

52 Top Leadership Strengths You Need to Know

Every time I start coaching someone, I interview 8-12 of their colleagues. They list for me real-life strengths and development areas. Over 10 years, I've collected thousands, and recently analyzed them to look for common themes. 52 leadership strengths appeared repeatedly, and they fell nicely in 4 themes Read more →

Martin Luther King's Take on Leadership

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader who, like Mahatma Gandhi before him, and Nelson Mandela after him, showed us the way from weakness and division to strength in unity. He challenged and inspired us to reach deeper within ourselves, despite ourselves, for our best, which sometimes is, simply, better than yesterday. His power endures because it's rooted in... Read more →

How to Battle the Bulge in Leadership Communication

If you can say something in three sentences or less, then do it. Of course details and nuance are critical to success, but so is knowing when to keep it simple. That's where good things come in threes. While some would impose a blind-logic “rule of three” to emails and other executive communication, I think it’s best to consider these specific situations where threes that are particularly useful. Read more →

Leadership via Crowd-sourced Ownership

As an executive coach, I have plenty of clients at any given time wanting to make a bigger difference in their organization and/or the world. Ownership is a powerful mindset to do that. Thinking like an owner is a leadership approach that saves money, time, and upgrades everyone’s ability to make a more significant difference. Read more →

Leadership Lessons from Stressful People

You know the person at work who can walk in and derail a meeting, get way under your skin and drive you to distraction, or inflicts fear / loathing in others? If you do, you may have a minor petty tyrant (MPT) for a colleague, and it’s good to understand your choices. Read more →

Two Great Ways to Time-Shift Your Leadership

Leadership has a time-frame, and it’s navigating the present based on the future. The highest-achieving leaders spend the majority of their time focused on building and guiding toward the future, while keeping a close eye on any big barriers and drivers in the present that most impact the way forward. Read more →

Keeping a "Healthy Distance" Isn't Leadership at its Best

The stronger your relationships with your team, within the boundaries of professionalism, consistency and fairness, the more innovative, creative, and truly outstanding results you can achieve together. Read more →

The Leadership Virtues of Saying Nothing

“In some cultures, it’s a virtue not to speak your mind.” This advice came to me in the course of interviewing an American client’s colleague in the Asia-Pacific region. As I reflected on it, I see it has greater meaning than the obvious merit of good cultural adaptation. With the focus on transparency and authenticity in leadership, particularly in the... Read more →

8 Critical Ways to Tune Your Leadership to Your Organization's Needs

These eight questions help executives -- at any level -- define or clarify their leadership in an intentional way, best synched with their organization's needs. Read more →

11 Declarations of Personal Leadership

Our professional selves emerge from how we create and revise ourselves as people in the world. So for anyone wanting to be their best as a leader, as I do, it's equally important, in my view, to reconsider every so often what we stand for in the area of personal leadership -- meaning, as we define and redefine our self each day, what must be true for us to feel right with life and the world? Read more →

Great Leadership Lessons from Five Recent Failures

From Lance Armstrong to the IRS, 2013 has so far been rich with lessons to be learned from leadership failures. We get at least as many ideas about good leadership from failures as we do from successes, so these five should be instructive: 1. Innovate First for a Greater Good The example: Pfizer, for devoting billions of dollars to develop... Read more →

10 Essentials of Great Leadership

Here are ten themes I would categorize as “essentials” of great leadership based on 27 years of professional experience as a coach, executive, and management consultant. Read more →

How to Practice Leadership in Disagreement

How to be mindful of whether or not you are fostering debate. Short of that, the quality of your own leadership will be limited, as your team will give you what you want to hear, rather than what you need to know. Read more →

Leading Well: 10 Ways to Keep Good People from Caring Less

Every person who truly cares about the quality, volume, and overall mission of his or her work is a tremendous asset to any organization. In my experience as a coach and c-level executive, I learned the hard way how important it is to select people who care, and de-select people who don’t care. That’s basic leadership – surround yourself with... Read more →

Your Cluelessness is a Goldmine!

Whether an untapped strength, a development area, or elephant in the room, you need to know what you are not seeing about yourself as a leader or colleague, but that would help you significantly to know and change. Read more →

Future Leader Strengths Needed Now: Sustainability, Virtualization & Crisis Continuity

Sustainability, virtualization, and crisis continuity are things people talk about often, but, with some notable exceptions, tend to remain rote, reactive or status quo among most organizations. Worse, they are under-served topics in leader education and development worldwide. Yet as the saying goes, they will not be ignored, and will demand greater share of mind and wallet for leaders in the years immediately ahead. Read more →

Avoiding the Six Temptations to be a Bossy Boss

Even the best managers or leaders find themselves being too bossy. I see it all the time in my practice. I help clients overcome this by introducing them to (and helping them practice navigating) these six temptations: Read more →

Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew the Day I Became a Leader

When we get promoted to positions of leadership, we don't get a manual. Here are the things I wish I had known on day one of my leadership journey. Read more →

Practicing Worry Management

Some believe worrying is a positive, motivating force to keep us on our toes. Worrying never made anything better, faster, or more effective. It drags us down more than it motivates us to our best. Read more →

4 Ways to Reclaim Your Leadership from the Distraction Monster

If you're like my clients, you've noticed that productivity has simply never been so entwined with distraction, and it takes its toll. Here are four great steps you can take to reclaim your time from the monster. Read more →

Innovation Needs a Debate Culture

When you encourage vigorous debate, richer contributions from you and your team will follow. Read more →

Helping the Reassurance Junkie

Someone who needs a disproportionate amount of reassurance can be a burden rather than a blessing -- when you take the lead on alleviating this burden, it's best for you, the needy employee, and your organization. Read more →

Leaders Make Fun, Not Stress

It's up to the leader to encourage a playful spirit at work whenever possible -- do this, and you will unleash good energy and creativity on old problems. Read more →

Starter, Builder, Fixer, or Runner? How to Find Your Happy Problems

What type of situation best fits your leadership? Not only is it critical for a leader or executive to know themselves, but it’s also important to understand your team, and anyone you may hire. Read more →

To Post-Baby Boomer CEOs: Evolve!

It's up to baby boomers to forge an open road of capitalism for the common good, one where all may travel, confident that a better future is just ahead. Read more →

12 Keys to Leadership

Whether it's telling the truth, calling out the elephant in the room, or simply tackling the things you'd rather put off, here are 12 simple keys to leadership you can practice every day. Read more →

7 Leadership Strengths Are Weaknesses When Taken Too Far

If you don’t check your blind spot for your own blend of these seven strengths-become-weaknesses, you’ll be falling short of taking your A-game to the field every day, so why not give it a try? Read more →

Great Leaders Know a Good Fit means Good Chemistry

Seeking good "chemistry" / a good fit is a great way to hire, acquire, resolve issues, and promote – and ignoring or glossing over bad chemistry usually comes around to bite us, sooner or later. Read more →

How to Develop Your “Future You” Mantra

Having a “future you” mantra is an innovative and individualized way to make sure you attain the goals most important to you, and to lead in the most effective way. Read more →

Lance Armstrong's Remedial Lesson in Leadership and Hubris

Lance Armstrong is a case in point about why leaders and public figures need to show us how hubris can be kept in check Read more →

Get Your Gravitas On: 6 Secrets of Executive Presence

For most people promoted to senior positions, having a strong, influential voice at the big table is not standard equipment -- it takes work. Here you will find some practical steps you can take. Read more →

2013 Turbo Start: Design Your Job, Choose Your Boss

When searching for a new job or making a career change, we can tend to be "selling" when we really should be, in equal measure, "buying." Here's how to do that. Read more →