Recovering Leader

Infographic: Here's How to Target Work that Works for You

I posted this several years ago and use it often for clients who get into career transition. I just added a sixth circle -- the one on "Fit with character / personality" as the more I use this with my clients, the more I find it valuable to call out the need for a good fit with personality/character and values. 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 →

How to Stop Delaying and Take Action

We all have good intentions to take important yet difficult actions. We aren’t intentionally avoiding them, yet we let ourselves off the hook too often. Here are coaching tips to stop delaying and take action! 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 →

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 →

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 →

Facing and Overcoming Your Inner Imposter

Feelings of fraud are common even among the greatest leaders, and are actually signs of diligence. So unlike other developmental issues that may linger for an entire career, the fraud misconception is resolved by turning that diligence toward the practices I've described here. Read more →

Self-Coaching on People-Pleasing

Leaders who make choices or avoid decisions primarily to please others are being validated constantly from positive reactions and popularity. Yet ultimately, that will turn negative when the burden of being likable turns to anger, or simply leads an organization off the rails. 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 →

“Good and Ready” is the Secret to Major Professional Growth

As a coach, I am referred to those who are ready / willing to change, and those who are not. Here's a little trade secret: if you have to push hard, to try and force someone into making a change, it won't work, or it won't last, unless they are otherwise ready and willing (in which case, forcing is overkill anyway.) 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 →

When Awe of Others Gets in Your Way

More seasoned executives than one might think get in the bad habit of self-marginalizing. In fact, your value doesn’t vary based on who else is in the room, no matter how amazing or awesome they may be. The only thing that limits the value you bring to any conversation is the choices you make about participating. When you choose to devalue yourself -- either consciously or unconsciously -- in comparison to someone else in the room, because you feel in awe of them, or less than them, you will of course shut down and stop short of giving your best. 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 →

Is Risk Management Managing You?

As CEO, Board Member, or Senior Executive, it’s incumbent on you to find a balance in managing risk -- the happy medium between prudence and paranoia. 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 →

Honestly, Like, Umm, 63 Bad Verbal Habits (new and improved!)

We all have certain bad verbal habits. Here are 63 of the most common ones worth addressing for leaders and managers to be at their most effective. 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 →

Perfectly Positioned: 5 Habits of Great Rainmakers

Great business developers, also known as "Rainmakers" have identifiable habits in common. What are they? Let's take a look ... Read more →

Leading from the Rut: 7 Ways to Snap Out of Complacency

It’s not easy to admit you’ve become complacent, but it gets the best of us, so you’re in good company -- the good news: there are steps you can take. 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 →