Recovering Leader

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 →

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 →

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 →

Need More Time to Think? Try the Delta Project

One of the biggest problems in leadership today: we have a thinking gap. Doing your best work -- be it running your embryonic start up or managing a global organization -- is impossible to do well without a regular practice of stopping to think about things. Seem obvious? Well if you do it -- if you take a daily "time... Read more →

8 Coaching Tips for Email Overload

It's time to work, and you fire up your email with a sense of foreboding. If you're like any of my executive coaching clients, you've received between 200 and 2,000 new emails ... since the previous day. Arggh! As if managing an overcrowded Emergency Room, you triage the new messages as quickly as you can: this one's dying in the... Read more →

Survey Results: Slaying The Email Dragon

At just 21 years old (plus or minus) the email dragon has replaced the paper tiger of the pre-PC era. And beyond that, instant messaging is becoming a part of life in many organizations, while whatever comes next (brain implants?) will probably also be piloted by teens, so just watch what they're up to and you'll see the future. Meanwhile,... 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 →

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 →

Monday’s LeaderTip: What’s Your Leading-to-Doing ratio?

Daily demands create a tidal pull toward “doing” versus leading—tasks and challenges tempt us to jump in and fix, suggest, organize, manage, etc., “in the interest of time.” Yet every minute you’re driving the day-to-day is one minute with your eyes off the road ahead. Over time, this pattern hinders your ability to guide your people toward the future vision... Read more →