The leadership team is one of the most important components of an organization, if not the most important. Collectively, members of this group determine where the organization is going and how it is going to get there. Yet, the percentage of leadership teams operating at dysfunctional levels is staggering. In 2007, 42 percent of senior leadership teams were considered dysfunctional. Read More >
Teams
The Importance of Commitment
Bill has been the CEO of a prominent financial services firm for nearly a decade. He knows the industry and his company well, has adequate visibility with his employees, and delivers powerfully-worded speeches that have the capacity to get them motivated. The only problem is… they’re not. In fact, morale is down, performance is declining, Read More >
Building Top Teams: What it Takes
If you want to build a top team, forget team building ropes courses or wilderness adventures. These activities do bring people together; they are usually fun and participants feel great afterward. But once people get back into the workplace and encounter real problems to solve, the carry-over learning fades quickly. Building effective teams is an Read More >
Building High-Performance Executive Teams
In a previous executive briefing titled Building Top Teams: What it Takes, I outlined the five basic conditions executives need to create and provide for ensuring the success of teams: Establish a clear and compelling direction Create an appropriate structure Select the right people Support the top team Provide development While those five conditions are Read More >
5 Ways to Create a Necessary Sense of Urgency
They may sound similar, but there’s a big difference between urgency and emergency. Emergency is an after-the-fact response to an action or consequence, while urgency is a proactive state of performance that CEOs often need to create. Urgency is often needed in times of change, which may arise for various reasons. Most often, change is Read More >
How to Create a Collaborative Approach at Work
As an executive, it’s your job to make sure that the team or your employees meet deadlines, provide deliverables, and continue to progress on your company’s goals. To keep things running smoothly, it may seem like you need to know exactly what’s going on all the time in every department. But micromanagement and overbearing leadership Read More >
Team Work Vs. Individual Work – How to Blend to Maximise Results
We can all remember those times at school when our teachers or professors said the term “group project.” It was usually met with glances to friends and a cacophony of groans. Little did we know then that our educators were trying to prepare us for the “grownup world.” Most professions rely on a great deal Read More >
Virtuous Companies Perform Better
Does organizational “virtuousness” pay? How do you help executives change their behavior when they have been successful despite their negative attitude? These are questions I come across often in my own professional career, with many executives struggling to establish virtuous behavior in today’s competitive corporate atmosphere. The good news is that recent studies have shown Read More >
Optimism: How to Cultivate It and Why You Should
Human psychology is a fascinating area of research. As much as we discover, there is still much more still to be learned. One aspect that particularly interests me is how your pysche: your feelings, your emotions, and your thoughts, can directly affect your day to day life. That includes not just your personal life and Read More >