At some point in your executive career, you’ve probably walked into a new role in a new organization only to be met with a total mess and a “Good luck with that” welcome mat. This is where most of us find ourselves at the beginning of our career, and we dive in with every intention Read More >
Leadership
Millennials as Leaders: How to Make it Work
If you stay in an executive position for long enough, there will inevitably come a day when someone younger moves into a position parallel (or even above) your own. For many Millennials entering the workforce today, they’re finding themselves in a leadership position over people much older and more experienced than them. For the first Read More >
Just Because You Can Do More Doesn’t Mean You Should
In this fast-paced business world, it can be hard just take a moment for ourselves. As executive and leaders, we don’t get many opportunities to reset and relax, especially during a project launch or company shift. You do more and more and, before you know it, you’ve hit a wall. Executive burnout is a very real risk Read More >
Self Management – Not Micromanagement
One of the hardest parts of leadership is figuring out how to get your company, team, or fellow executives to work without constant interference. While executive personalities do enjoy many aspects of management and leadership, that doesn’t mean they want to spend every minute giving specific directions or checking in. Instead, you want to create Read More >
Why the “Hands Off” Approach Doesn’t Work
Most leaders and executives know that micromanagement can be damaging to self-sustainable progress in their employees and teams. We even know that most people operate best when they have some sort of autonomy in decision-making and work styles. But many executives, when they try to avoid micromanaging, tend to pull back too far; they slide Read More >
5 Obstacles to Great Leadership & How to Address Them
What is your Achilles heel – your weak point – as a leader? Is it delegation? A short temper? Maybe it’s statistics and analytical analysis. Whatever your weaknesses are, you are probably much acquainted with them by this point in your career. You’ve probably found work-arounds that help you function on a daily basis that Read More >
Being Politically Adept Is Not BS
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard aspiring executives ask, “Do I have to BS or kiss ‘you know what’ to succeed?” I’ve even heard CEOs ask if they really have to pretend to like board members. But there is a big difference between being emotionally intelligent and politically aware within an organization Read More >
The Middle Market Executive’s Challenges
When I wrote about Peter Drucker in a previous issue, I realized something that will seem very obvious to many of you: Most of the big names (Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, John Kotter, etc.) write about leadership life in Fortune 1000 size companies. How many of you work for companies that large? Most of my Read More >
How to Lead Top Performers in a Global Econonmy
In our modern global economy, most businesses rely on well-educated people — or “knowledge workers,” as the late Peter Drucker called them — to develop their products or deliver their services. In these organizations, many executives are finding that traditional forms of leadership don’t work. “Heroic leadership,” as it is called, is the conventional idea Read More >
Executive Blindspots: How to Avoid Them
Do you know anyone who can bat 1.000? The best baseball players hit in the low to mid .300 range and we think that is terrific. Executives don’t bat 1.000 when it comes to decision making — nobody is perfect. However, executives’ “batting average” may be lower if they’re making decisions without addressing potential blind spots. What are Read More >