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Credibility: The Foundation of Leadership
Credibility is the foundation of leadership.
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The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership: Model the Way
The two keys to "model the way" are 1) clarify your values, and 2) set the example.
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The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership: Enable Others to Act
Foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships, and strengthen others by increasing their self determination and developing their confidence.
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The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership: Inspire a Shared Vision
Leaders have a clear vision of the future and share that vision in a way that allows others to see themselves in it.
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How Recognition Increases Performance
Recognition can have powerful effects because it helps our brain believe our behavior matters.
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Emotional Contagion in the Workplace
A positive manager spreads positivity throughout the team.
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Democratization of Content
Tools are now available for many people to contribute to the creation and extension of documents.
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The Value of Socially Constructed Environments
Socially constructed environments apply a collective intelligence to problems.
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Organizational Learning
Organizational learning morphed into competency training, which measured employees against goals but did not encourage them to go beyond their job description.
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Increasing Productivity by Influencing Mood
Happiness is not always the goal. Moods can be influenced by body language, tone of voice, and room setting.
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Building Cathedrals
Good companies are focused on themselves. They know their own strengths and they operate in those strengths every day. There’s nothing wrong with that, Gary Krahn says. But if you want to be a great company, you have to take it a step further.
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Planting Seeds for Succession
A leader’s role is not only to lead, but also to ensure that new leaders are being developed and prepared to step up, explains Cheryl Gray. Here she talks about how to prepare new leaders for that transition.
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Give Them Options, Not Answers
Whether they’re in a formal or informal mentoring relationship with you, people will often come to you for answers. To truly help them grow in their careers, says Cheryl Gray, you shouldn’t give them answers. You should guide them in arriving at the answers on their own.
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Look Inward for Your Vision and Goals
Don’t define your vision and goals by looking at the outside world. Look inside instead.
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The 5 Elements of a Connection Culture
Inspiring identity, human value, voice, committed members, and servant leaders are the five elements of a connection culture.
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Executive Intelligence: Working With and Through Others
The best executives know how to “read” and work with others. An example is given of how Avon turned itself around.
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Executive Intelligence: Managing Yourself
Great executives recognize and adapt to their mistakes.
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Building a Team Connection the U2 Way
Michael Stallard tells how members of the rock band U2 have demonstrated their commitment to each other over 30 years.
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Shifting to a Collaborative Mindset
The shift from competition to collaboration is a slow, complex process.
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Three Requirements for Collaboration
Helpfulness, curiosity, and time are the three main elements needed for great collaboration.
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Incentivize Collaboration
In order to foster collaboration, companies have to create team performance rewards.
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The Need for Collaboration
Having the best people in the business is useless if they don’t work together.
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Scratchy Relationships Improve Collaboration
Margaret Heffernan explains what a scratchy relationship looks like.
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Barriers to Collaboration
Individualism is a huge barrier to high-level collaboration.
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Use Collaboration to Motivate Teams
Leaders have an array of tools that can foster collaboration.
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Before You Become a Mentor
Mentors need some amount of training and a lot of empathy.
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Involve Individuals in the Mentoring Process
The secret to good mentoring is asking questions, not providing pat answers.
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Retain and Attract High Performers
Mentorship can attract and, importantly, retain high-performing employees.
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Mentorship: Identifying Skills to Develop
Mentors help people discover what areas they need to work on.
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Skills: Mentorship vs. Apprenticeship
Mentoring and apprenticeships focus on two different areas of skills, and you need to understand the difference.
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The Job of Mentors
Mentors act as process consultants, teaching mentees how to solve problems on their own.
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How Mentors Help Others Understand Their Weakness
Most people are naturally resistant to negative feedback, so it should be handled with tact.
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When Mentors Don’t Have the Answers
Even the best mentor doesn’t have the ability to solve every problem, and that’s okay.
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Mentoring Informally
Teachable moments can happen anywhere and at any time.
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The Impact of Mentoring on Succession Planning
One of the jobs of every supervisor, regardless of level, is planning for succession.
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Mentoring in the Digital Era
Mentoring will evolve in the digital era but retain its key principles.
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Becoming a More Effective Mentor
Mentors have multiple options if they want to improve in their role, many of which Paul Levy shares here.
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The Leader Sets the Example
Leaders are constantly being observed and evaluated by the people around them. Learn how to set the right example.
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The Power of Culture
A company culture can encourage individuals to dissent, and feel their voice is heard.
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Be Your Whole Self
Blending in at work is tempting, but it is better in the long run to be yourself.
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Keys to High-Performing Teams
Swift-forming expert teams have the characteristics to be high-performing.
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Use the Wisdom of the Group for Better Decisions
Utilizing the wisdom of an entire group results in better, longer-lasting decisions.
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To Make a Change, Involve Others
Want to create a long-lasting change in your behavior? Set the goal, write it down, and state it publicly. Then, ask others to help you.
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Six Question Coaching Process
Becoming a better coach is easier than you think. It takes only six simple questions to make you—and your organization—better.
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Providing Positive Recognition
Recognizing others has a multitude of benefits, as long as you approach it the right way. Learn how you can succeed where others fail.
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What Most Bosses Get Wrong About Millennials
Smart leaders know how to provide what millennials are seeking.
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The Best Leaders are Great Teachers: Part 1
The best leaders are those who teach values and ethics by example.
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Live Event: Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life
This Live Event was initially webcasted on May 14, 2019.
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Live Your Vision
You need to live your vision all the time, wherever you are.
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Achieve Your Goals By Looking Ahead
Following a straight line to reach your goals happens rarely; be prepared to reset as needed to reach your destination.
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Relationship Mapping
Whatever change you desire, you can use the technique of relationship mapping to ensure all the right people are on your side.
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Communication During Downsizing
Honest communication is critical during a force reduction.
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Fear of the Perfect
The fear of perfection can be a mighty foe. Colleen Albiston describes the effects of taking too long to craft the perfect message about decisions that have been made.
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Playspace: Serious Business for Organizational Innovation, Learning, and Change
When organization are pressured and tested, this should be a time when organizations experiment with new approaches and innovative perspectives – creating more playscape – when it comes to innovation, learning, and change.
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The Importance of Mentoring Your People
A manager’s most important job is to develop his or her people.
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Engage Your Employee
It’s important to let employees have a voice in your decision-making.
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The Synergist
Leaders tend to be visionaries, processors, or operators.
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Managers Sit in a Powerful Spotlight
As managers, it’s important to realize you’re often in the spotlight. People are watching, paying extra attention to your words and deeds. You are a model for people.
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Message to Women: Celebrate Your Success!
By celebrating their successes, women create momentum to go bigger and take on influential positions of power.
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Tomorrow's Leaders Will Need Conceptual Flexibility
Traditional leadership models are becoming a thing of the past, especially in emerging markets. Venkatesh Valluri explains the concept of conceptual flexibility and why it will be a key trait of future leaders.
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How to Spot a Potential Great Leader
Potential leaders have followers. They prefer action to studying, listening to talking. They focus on the problem, not the product. They have emotional intelligence and generosity. They are “multipliers” not “diminishers.”
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How a Leader Can Develop Their Own Brand
Personal branding is about your leadership style and incorporating into all that you do professionally.
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Put Your Focus on the Top Line
The most important advice he ever received was to focus on the top line.
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Be Courageous and Authentic: Call it Like it is
The culture of a company should be intellectually honest, courageous and open, where people are free to speak the truth.
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Smashing Radios and Anger Control
Throwing a radio won’t fix a mistake. In fact, explains John Snook, it’s only the beginning of a bigger set of problems.
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Terminating a Long-Term Employee
Sometimes the most outrageous ideas are the ones you need most. Colleen Albiston explains how she learned that firing people was actually good for employee morale.
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Enabling Creativity in an Organization
Creativity is needed in every aspect of business, especially as business environments change.
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Be a Part of the Solution
Sometimes, leaders need to take a step back. Pam Laycock explains the benefits of putting employees in charge of problem solving.
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Working Through Influence
In the absence of positional authority, everyone at W.L. Gore has to sell their ideas and work through influence.
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Organizations Respond to Authenticity: Be Who You Are
As a leader, it’s important to be genuine, authentic. Organizations will respond to a person when they believe they’re really hearing the real person, not a rehearsed speech.
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Provide Clear Guidelines with Secret Doors
A friend installed an invisible electric fence for his dog but didn’t train the dog. Results were disastrous. Establish clear goals, reward meaningful progress within clear expectations, and let people decide, but also encourage them to jump the invisible fence.
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Leadership is an Act of Bravery
Campbell Jones, COO of a large Australian company, spends almost all his time in the field, meeting, listening, delegating, and supporting different divisions. Such behaviors are acts of bravery — choosing to be uncomfortable in a series of new situations.
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Use Empathy Instead of Sympathy For Better Results
Sympathy means agreeing that employees are victims of their circumstances. Empathy means calling employees to greatness, telling them they’re so great they’re bulletproof, that they can succeed under any circumstances.
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Guided Learning and Reverse Mentoring
Since young employees prefer to learn from mentors and coaches, not in classrooms or via elearning, companies are learning how to mentor in real time using media tablets and mobile devices. In reverse mentoring, young people help their elders apply social media.
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Two Techniques for Enabling Breakthrough Thinking (on a Team)
To every idea presented in a team, someone will respond, “Yes, but.” To keep divergent thinking alive, require that people say, “Yes, and” instead. Objections stated as facts, such as lack of time or money, are recast as challenges. How can we create time or do it faster?
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Leadership & Empathy
You are not a leader if no one is following.
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Leadership and Power
Leadership is about power.
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Understanding Feedback
At her first job out of grad school, Patricia Crull was given enormous amounts of feedback, a habit she has adopted for herself and taken with her throughout her career.
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How to Run a Creative Meeting
According to Lorraine Heggessey, conducting a creative meeting requires that participants be in relaxed environment, often off-site, which can produce the right mood. That right mood brings out a free-thinking state where new ideas flow.
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Don't Overlook Good People
Good people often get overlooked. As Lorraine Heggessey shares, a bit of praise, a new challenge, and new responsibilities can convert an employee from one who is about to be written off to one who works at his full potential.
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Being a Leader is about Creating a Positive Atmosphere
Being a leader, according to Lorraine Heggessey, requires cultivating a workplace atmosphere that is positive, energizing, and dynamic. Praising and rewarding the resulting good work of your staff means that you will see more of that same output.
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The "Values" Value Proposition
We can’t reinvent ourselves, but we can get closer to our core values and attract people who share those values.
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Building a Shared Vocabulary
To build trust among team members quickly, the person who signs the paychecks is not allowed in the room when team members present their values to the group. The person who signs the paychecks returns at the end when the team decides on its core values.
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Why Vision Statements Fail
Vision statements fail because they paint pictures of the future that appeal only to leadership. Vision statements leave out the people who work there.
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Relationship Building Begins with Interest
If you’re not interested in people and their development you probably won’t be an effective leader.
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Mindsets and Methods
To make the most of opportunities we need to know both how to think and what to do—mindsets and methods.
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Tips on Coaching
To grow as a company, leaders need to shift responsibility to others, grow more leaders within the company. John Foster talks about effective ways to do this.
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Leadership Defined
Leadership is of critical importance to business executives. Vishen Lakhiani defines his vision of great leadership, and how that vision changed over the years as he gained experience in the business world.
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Learn to Motivate People Internally
External motivation has a finite impact. In this lesson, Stuart Symington describes why real and lasting motivation must be born internally.
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Scaling Trust
To scale trust, model it. For example, a leader published the results of his 360-degree feedback. For people to trust each other they must have confidence in themselves. Adobe eliminated reviews in favor of constant feed forward, and let managers distribute bonuses.
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How Women Can Succeed in a Male Environment
Despite rising numbers of women in the workforce, females still face an uphill battle in some business environments. Monhla Hlahla shows how female leaders take on and win these battles.
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Leaders Build Excellence in Others
It might sound like a cliche, says Monhla Hlahla, but the heart of leadership is seeing the best in others and bringing them alongside you.
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Positive Versus Negative Motivators
Negative motivators, such as reducing budgets and insisting on quick results, can be effective in the short run but have negative long-term consequences. Motivators such as encouraging employees to be passionate about goals have a better longer-term result.
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Culture and Salary Isn't Everything
Employees want more than a salary; they want a job with meaning.
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Get Ready for the Millennial Generation
Millenials will be the largest generation in the workplace by 2020, and if you're not already adapting to their preferences, it's high time you follow Brown's advice.
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Leading from the Balcony
A leader should have an eagle-eye view of a team that encompasses more than what each individual sees.
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Coaching Across Distance
Coaching at a distance takes more effort, but it can yield results in the same way as face-to-face coaching.
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Embrace Who You Are to Realize Your Potential
To realize your true potential, says Natalie Maroun, you must embrace all that you are, instead of just the factors that you believe the business world wants to see.
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The Power of a Mantra
To find the soul of your organization, Grattan Kirk explains how you can use the power of a mantra to change its entire culture for the better.
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On Becoming a Better Leader
Becoming a better leader is a multi-step process, and Natalie Maroun gives her perspective on the most important parts of the undertaking.
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Qualities of Good Leaders
In the eternal quest for a good leader, there are three qualities to look out for.
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Defining a Coaching Culture
Creating a coaching culture starts with defining a coaching culture, and there’s much work to be done before that can happen.
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Two Contexts of Mentoring
Mentors help you learn about your internal and external worlds in order to make better choices.
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Coach vs. Mentor
Mentoring and coaching have different origins but work similarly to accomplish goals.
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At the First Mentor Meeting
During their first meeting with a mentee, it’s critical for mentors to identify whether they’re the right person for the job.
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Powerful Questions
What makes a good question? The answer is a PRAIRIE: questions should be personal, resonant, acute, incisive, reverberant, innocent, and explicit.
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Building Coaching Culture Inside Teams
A high-performing team is reliant on effective coaching, a process that involves greater complexity than coaching individuals.
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The Power of Intent
When a child is born in Africa, the mother writes a song. If the child cries while the mother is in the field the mother feels it, sings the song, and the child stops crying. Employees can feel your intent as a leader. You must be consistent in your intentions and actions.
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Admit You Need Help
Leaders should connect the dots between intentions and actions. A plumber doesn’t care about your house; he only wants to know where the leak is. A CEO needn’t talk about his or her organizations; they need only say to employees, “I have a problem. Can you help me?”
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Challenges Senior Leaders Face Most
Challenges include 1) trying to make the organization better while dealing with crises and day-to-day issues; 2) people decisions, especially not moving fast enough to replace people; and 3) focus; making decisions in the morning when you’re fresh, not in the afternoon.
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You Can't Lead Others Until You Lead Yourself
It’s hard to lead if you don’t have a clear purpose, an ability to absorb shocks, and an ability to manage your energy, as opposed to managing your time.
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How to Energize Others
To energize others, raise their ambition. Inspire them to reach beyond where they think they might go, to a place they might never have thought about. And tell the truth. Be honest. Barton Dominic found honesty helpful in his own career.
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Unleashing the Potential of your People: Inspire Hope not Fear
Fear makes us concentrate on survival and security, not engagement and innovation. Inspire hope, instead.
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How to Increase Collaboration and Innovation: Differentiate between Fact and Truth
“Incestuous amplification” occurs when aggressive people shut off others who are less confident.
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Using Vulnerability to Increase Mutual Accountability
A young CEO who tried to lead through force confessed his ineffectiveness and vulnerability to his top leaders and asked for their help. This led to a snowball of mutual accountability down through the organization, and great corporate success.
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Authenticity: The Two Masks that Inhibit Leadership Effectiveness
Leaders may hide behind masks. Ask, What are the costs of a mask, and how you can be more authentic at work?
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Leadership with Impact: Close the Gap between your Intentions and Actions
We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions, but everyone else by their actions.
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Horizontal Teams
Most organizations are hierarchical. By contrast, workers in horizontal teams are empowered and mutually accountable.
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The Neuroscience of Motivation
The brain responds to stimuli as threats or rewards. The threat response is five times stronger than the reward response, so threats get more attention, but also reduce creativity and collaboration. Rewards produce better, faster, and more sustainable results.
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How Leaders Can Improve the Quality of People's Thinking
Leaders usually try to help people’s thinking by suggesting what to do. Ask questions instead. Have a conversation. “What are you trying to achieve?” Help them come to their own insights. This is motivating, changes the brain, and helps them develop general rules.
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What Brain Research Says About Leadership
Successful leaders are adaptive. They are conscious of their options in the moment, and choose effectively. Depending on the situation, they may display strong emotions to inspire and motivate, or be calm, or care about what others are thinking and feeling, or not care.
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Coaching Team Members
When someone come to you for coaching, ask them for several solution options, invite them to consider the pros and cons of each option, then brainstorm the best option with them. Don't rush to the first solution. Step back. Ask what outcome you are trying to achieve.
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Coaches Build Self Confidence
Great coaches build self-assurance in the people they coach, so they have the confidence to tackle new challenges. As an example, Jay Conger tells how he taught his daughter to visualize a small change that helped her avoid belly flops while diving into a pool.
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Live Event: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
This Live Event was initially webcasted on April 16, 2019.
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Leading a Team Through a Vision
On a climb, you win together or you lose together; there's no middle ground. It can be the same with teams.
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The Multiplier Effect
Leaders can be multipliers or diminishers. Liz Wiseman tells of a woman who moved from a micromanaging boss to one who offered her a grand challenge. The change in leadership resulted in a dramatic increase in her capability.
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Asking the Right Questions
Liz Wiseman tells how she got her young children to go to bed by asking them what to do, instead of telling them. The approach works well for leaders. Don’t tell your people. Ask the questions and let them find the answers.
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Performance Management: Three Areas of Focus
In order for performance reviews to be relevant, they have to focus on the right areas.
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Managing Peformance
Performance management is not about new and different but about what drives success in the organization year to year.
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Feedback That Can Have the Biggest Impact
Short, frequent feedback is more useful than scheduled meetings to address issues.
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Great Coaching: Don't Give the Answer
Good coaching is not about finding better answers; it is about asking better questions.
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Success at Execution is About Enabling Others
Success as a manager means being great at execution, but execution doesn’t mean doing it all yourself.
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Mindsets Matter
Performance equals potential minus interfering mindsets. Scientists said a 4-minute mile was impossible, but when Roger Bannister did it 17 others followed within 18 months. Scott Keller gives examples of mindsets in the workplace that interfere with performance.
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Doing Cartwheels in the Hall
What would it take for you to do a cartwheel in the hall? Incentives are: formal mechanisms in an organization that influence how people think and behave, story telling, role modeling, and skill building. Applying all four incentives can produce a profound effect.
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Write Your Own Lottery Ticket
People who write their own lottery number value their number five times more than people who are handed a number. Scott Keller tells how “writing your own lottery ticket” can be applied in the workplace—how employees can be encouraged to invest themselves.
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Social Contracts
Market contracts often motivate with money. Social contracts are more powerful. Examples include having everyone over for dinner, and hand written thank-you notes, especially to spouses. Sam Walton said a thank-you is absolutely free and absolutely worth a fortune.
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Meaningful Motivators
When team members choose which word gives them the most meaning at work—“me,” “team,” “customer,” “company,” or “society—about 20 percent choose each word. This means that you as the leader must tell five stories at once, one for each group.
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Be Comfortable with Fear
When she starts getting scared, she asks, “Am I alive? Is my family okay? Yes!” Then it’s not so scary. Richard Branson’s book taught her to not let fear run her business. Ask, “Will I regret this decision when I’m 90 years old?” Do something every day that scares you.
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Great Collaboration
Great collaboration occurs when everyone in the organization wants everyone else to be a winner—when everyone is generous with each other, and have common objectives.
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Characteristics of Effective Teams
Jan leads wilderness expeditions that include Green Berets transitioning to civilian life and business executives seeking clarity in their lives. Effective teams incorporate three S’s: Selflessness, Simplicity, and a willingness to Slow down to speed up.
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Evidence-Based Management: The Keys to Great Decision Making
What gets companies in trouble is what they think they know that isn't true.
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Bridging the Knowing-Doing Gap
Jeffrey Pfeffer explains why people don't act on what they know, and provides suggestions for encouraging more action.
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Managing Up with Reverse Mentoring
Millennials who want to manage up may need to adjust their expectations on entering the workplace.
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Honing Your Leadership Effectiveness
Bill George describes five characteristics of authentic leaders.
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Staying True to Your True North
Bill George tells the story of a businessman who allowed his ego to pull him off his true north.
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Knowing Your Authentic Self
Learning to know yourself involves a cycle of experience, feedback, and introspection.
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Setting the Consequences of Performance
The consequences of performance in sports are easy to see. The consequences of high and low performance in business should also be known. Some organizations are comfortable in the mediocre middle where it’s safe. He wants to be in a company that aspires to greatness.
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Mindsets and Performance
To change performance you must change mindsets. They explained how individual roles relate to other roles, and introduced training that includes an accreditation system and an academy that provides on-demand training identified on individual “passports to success.”
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Your Downstream Impact
As we climb the corporate ladder our actions have ripple effects. If you bypass managers to ask for something it upsets priorities. If a boss on vacation remembers something it’s as if a submarine just surfaced and blew all the boats out of the water. Manage your impulses.
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Gen Z Demands Transparent Purpose
Gen Z wants to understand why you are doing what you’re doing. Whether you’re selling a cup of coffee or an automobile, they want to know how you’re supporting social institutions they think add value to the world. If you’re not completely transparent, they will walk.
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Who Is Gen Z?
Gen Z includes people born after 1995, and everyone who makes similar choices. Gen X, Y, Z and Millennials represent a renaissance of community, connected by the Internet. Gen Z is becoming a global society where everyone can contribute and extract economic value.
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Reverse Mentoring
When Cisco hires a young person out of school, they assign that person to a senior executive, to teach the older person how to navigate social media. It’s a form of reverse mentoring that benefits both parties. And the cost is zero.
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Resilience When Things Are Tough
You can’t control all the factors that determine business outcomes, but you can control how you feel about them and how you choose to deal with them. Taking control derives from a mindset that says you need to be resilient when things are tough.
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A No-Barriers Mindset
People are quitters, campers, or climbers. We know who the quitters are. Campers stop when they hit an obstacle. Climbers have a no-barriers mindset.
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Align Your Goals with a Vision
Goals can be fragmented and lead us in different directions. A vision should come first, a vision of how we want to live our lives—what kind of legacy we want to leave behind.
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Be a Pioneer
Erik Weihenmayer sees himself as a problem solver, a modern day pioneer motivated by a sense of discovery, not a crazy risk taker.
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Turning Adversity into Greatness
Although paralyzed from the waist down, Mark Wellman climbed El Capitan in eight days by doing 7,000 six-inch pull ups. After Hugh Herr lost both legs while climbing, he got a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and built prosthetic legs that help him climb even better.
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Success Requires Trust
Individual talent can take you only so far. Great things are done with a great team.
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Leadership Is a Relationship Built on Trust
Leaders typically fail because of a failure in a relationship. People will work harder for people they like, which is in proportion to how they make them feel.
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How to Build a Relationship
To build a relationship ask yourself, for every interaction, however long, whether the other person feels more competent, capable, powerful, and able to execute at the end of the interaction than when you started.
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Leadership Is Personal: The Ron Sugar Story
When it was his turn to speak at a conference, the Chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman started by playing the piano. He explained that people should know who you are, what you care about (such as playing the piano), and why they should follow you.
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Teams That Are Linked Together Are Unstoppable
People doing similar things at similar times aren’t a team. Climbing teams, on the other hand, are roped together. They link their fates.
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The Most Important Leadership Practice: Inspire and Share a Vision
The most important practice for leaders is to envision the future and communicate that vision in a way that others can see themselves in the vision.
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Envisioning Paris France
“Paris France” conjures concrete images and emotions in people who haven’t been there, because they have seen pictures, movies, etc., over a long period. Similarly, leaders should repeat a phrase, over and over, that triggers images and emotions of a shared future.
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Fixed versus Growth Mindsets
A fixed mindset assumes we are born with our abilities. A growth mindset treats failure as a learning experience.
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The Importance of Authenticity
Personal credibility is the foundation of leadership, and trustworthiness and honesty are at the core of credibility.
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Courage and the Importance of Brick Walls
In Randy Pausch’s last lecture, he said brick walls are there to remind us how badly we want something. As a leader, ask, what do you want, and how badly do you want it? Courage is the virtue that governs all others.
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Awareness Is Key to Unlocking Blind Spots
Everyone has blind spots, and leaders need to be particularly self-aware.
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Be a Leader That Others Want to Follow
John Maxwell shares the three things that people all over the world want from their leaders.
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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
The best leaders work with people, not over them or around them.
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Leaders See More and They See Before
In a fast-forward world, business leaders need to see more and see before.
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People Follow What They See
Modeling the behaviors you want to see is the most motivational way to lead.
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Be a Belief Magnet and a Belief Maker
People who are belief magnets and belief makers draw other people close to them.
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Give Your People the Authority to Make Decisions
People on the front lines know what the problems are, but don’t have the authority to fix them. Organizations can delegate that authority when the front line people have technical competence and understand the organization.
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How to Behave to Empower Your Team
When workshop participants were asked what good could happen if didn’t know anything about leading a new business, they said they’d have to trust their people, be curious, and listen. That's good leadership.
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Create an Environment for Leadership Development—Not a Program
Developing leaders is a natural concept—like breathing air. We under-appreciate the environment and overvalue programs. Eliminate programs and focus on the environment.
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Empowerment to Emancipation
We are naturally empowered; to be alive is to have power. Empowerment becomes emancipation when leaders give people decision-making authority that allows them to express their natural empowerment.
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The Most Important Role of a Leader: Give Control and Create Leaders
The role of a leader is to move people up the “ladder of control,” from “tell me” to “I did it.” To make people think, question their intent at all levels of the ladder.
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The Power of a Thank You
Working in the airline business, William Mitchell has learned in recent years how important it is to make people feel valued. A word of thanks, he says, can go a long way.
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The Difference Between I and We
William Mitchell has noticed how potential employees’ speech patterns can be a good indicator of their suitability for a position. Listening for “I” and “we” statements is a key component.
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The Difference Between Responsibility and Accountability
Compliance means that you follow rules and regulations; but on the other hand, accountability means that you try to enhance the common good, that you are interested in the interests of a higher purpose, interested in the interests of a higher purpose.
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Five Traits of Successful Leaders
In today’s world, leaders need to be continuously growing and developing their leadership. Steve Arneson, author of Bootstrap Leadership, describes five key self-development practices for building your leadership skills.
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The Gen Z Attitude toward Failure
Previously if you wanted to start a business you needed a lot of resources. Now you can build a business overnight, at very little cost, and keep experimenting until you win. Gen Z understands that failure is a byproduct.
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Collaborative Leadership
Collaborative leadership means 1) identifying important partners through a broad network, 2) modeling collaboration for team members, and 3) knowing when to stop collaborating. Collaborate with different people to innovate and get out of the daily routine.
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Track Your Relationships
List the contacts in key external and cross-functional groups, the depth of your desired relationship with each person, and how you’re going to do it, e.g., once a month over dinner with these two, coffee with those five twice a year. Then measure your progress.
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How to Leverage Gen Z Values
To lead Gen Z, managers should create a culture that values them. Gen Z values are transparency, a clear purpose, sincerity and authenticity, and the ability to have a voice. It’s not about work-life balance; it’s about integrating work and life in a way that’s meaningful.
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The Importance of Strategic Networks
Internal networks produce no new information. Managers are aware of the importance of external strategic networks but don’t work on them, because they’re busy or they think networking is sleazy. It’s important to reach out to people who are not like yourself.
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Situational Leadership
Situational leaders tailor their approach to the situation. Styles range from autocratic to participative, from push (fact based) to pull (listening and asking question), from analytic to relational. Practice different styles in venues that are outside your usual domain.
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Barriers to Women Leaders
Women encounter obstacles to leadership because of a bias that favors males for critical assignments, because women have mentors instead of sponsors, and they don’t match stereotypes about what leaders look like. Use your job as a platform. Grow it and network.
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Characteristics of Growth-Mindset Leaders
Growth mindset leaders love learning. They don’t pretend they know everything. They are committed to helping their people develop. They want to deal with reality, good or bad, because that’s how you learn. They think about long-term growth, not short-term results.
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How Mindsets Are Fostered
Companies with a fixed mindset foster a culture where employees fear failure. Companies that nurture employees promote growth mindsets. Praising results backfires; that encourages a fixed mindset. Praise the effort, instead. That encourages a growth mindset.
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How to Develop a Growth Mindset
Some companies teach a growth mindset in classes. You can think of how you became good at something, or how people you know succeeded. The company can recognize and praise process, reward effort more than results, and value risk-taking and teamwork.
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Results-Only Work Environments in Practice
Dan Glaser, CEO of Marsh, describes a next generation work environment experience they are currently conducting within their organization.
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Start with Financial Performance Discipline
Focus on Clients, Colleagues and Financial Performance means at Marsh that when considering any initiative or activity, every associate at Marsh must ask if it fits into at least one of those three pillars of focus.
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Think Like a Client, Act Like an Owner
To build discipline and continuity in the organization Dan Glaser believes it’s important to first define what your core beliefs and goals are, and then to “think like a client, act like an owner.”
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Reframing Work for Success
Reframing can shift the way people perceive situations and experiences at work—and can mean the difference between success and failure.
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How Leaders Learn from Failure
Not all failures are the same, and they have important lessons to teach us.
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Psychologically Safe Work Environments
Psychologically safe environments foster innovation, creativity, candor, and inclusivity.
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Leadership Is About Convening
The skill set that effective leaders possess today is complex and varied—but one of the most important skills a leader has is the ability to bring diverse people together and tap into their collective wisdom, explains Larry Dressler.
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The Meaning of Work
Knowing there is a higher goal raises success rates. The Manhattan Project was falling behind schedule until its purpose was revealed. Then two-thirds of the work was completed in one-third the time. A higher meaning brings greater job satisfaction.
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Creating Positive Team Environments
Praising people is important, but how you praise matters more. Instead of praising outcomes like report cards and work products, praise the process. This shows that behavior matters. Praise the process that leads to the desired outcomes.
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How to Support Other Women
When shut out of conversations in male-dominated workplaces, and even in the White House, women who band together and amplify their ideas make sure their message gets heard.
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Leaders Must Provide A Clear Direction
Leadership is figuring out what you believe, acting on those beliefs, and helping others achieve common goals.
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Succession Planning
Companies complain that their biggest problem is lack of talent.
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How a Senior Leader Can Facilitate Change to Get Alignment
There are always ten things that are not going well that you can’t see. Ask five people to build the business from scratch.
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Effective Coaching
Coaching takes a lot of preparation; coaching should be a #1 priority.
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Coaching: What Gets You 90% There
In coaching more than 90 percent of the battle is confronting someone with something they need to improve.
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The Biggest Challenge for Executives: How to Receive and Get Coaching
As you ascend the corporate ladder people above you are less likely to be your coaches. To get coaching meet individually with four or five subordinates.
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The Three Tools A Senior Leader Must Use: Self-Disclosure, Inquiry and Listening
Three tools a CEO or senior leader can use are self-disclosure, inquiry, and listening.
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On Becoming A Great Leader: Ask the Right Questions
Leadership is not about having answers.
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Aligning Vision with Priorities
If you know where you’re going it’s a lot easier to get there. Leaders who are struggling don’t have a vision and 3-5 key priorities.
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Lead the People Beside You
Leading your peers starts with helping them, not climbing over them.
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Why Am I Working Here?
The most destructive thing in an enterprise occurs when people can’t connect the work they do to the success of the enterprise — its financial goals, productivity goals, safety goals, development goals, innovation goals, etc. Else what’s the point of working there?
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Lead Up by Leading Yourself
Before you can lead up, you need to be in control of leading yourself.
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Achieving Smart Goals
Smart goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound—are dumb when “achievable” and “relevant” are overlooked. The individual must see the final result and feel it’s good for him or her.
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Mentoring Matters
Dianne Ledingham talks about how mentors were important to her development. When she left a client meeting where they had not met their objectives, a mentor congratulated her on their progress and her future potential. Having such a person was critical.
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Positive Feedback: Create Moments of Inspiration
Moments of inspiration can be pivotal to people. Remark on their accomplishments and positive attributes. Balance those moments with constructive feedback. Positive feedback is four times more powerful.
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Job One, Two & Three of Developing Your People
Great coaching starts with clear communication to your mentee that you are there for them.
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Understanding Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to notice an emotional reaction in yourself, understand what’s causing it, and then ask for what you need or let it go.
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Coaching Your Team Members
Great managers don’t tell or teach. They coach.
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The Power of the Introverted Leader
Many leaders in business and politics are introverted. They have accepted a leadership role because they are passionate about their vision.
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Enabling Success: Empowering People and Teams
True success is not about individual accomplishments. Instead, as Andy Mulholland shares, success is about team achievements and helping those around you do well.
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Adversity: Teamwork Delivers Success
Strong teamwork can see a group through adversity. Dan Labbad recounts a story of succeeding when the odds were against him and his team.
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Coaching and Mentoring are the Key to Leadership Development
Dan Labbad explains the difference between coaching and mentoring, and he offers tips for how to develop all levels of employees to their fullest potential.
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Ban the Hierarchy: Moving from 'I' to 'We'
Banning the hierarchy means there are no charts with up and down arrows.
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Women vs. Women
Biases against women by women can have myriad causes, but awareness is the key to changing behaviors.
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Leaders Energize with Emotional Intelligence
Certain people are energizers. Others are energy vampires.
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The Dark Side of Leadership
Leadership has a dark side, a "leadership shadow" that often creates an unknown, lurking fear.
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Women in Leadership
Women in leadership, whether on the board or as CEOs, make businesses and the world better.
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CEO = Chief Execution Officer
CEO's must be able to execute, particularly when it comes to making tough decisions and maintaining their authenticity during tough times.
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The Neuroscience of Leadership Resilience
Neuroscience teaches us to keep our resilience topped off so that we can overcome both the effects of our own stress and the effects our stress has on others.
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Gaining Engagement through Autonomy
People don’t engage through management or incentives; they engage through self direction.
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Increasing Engagement in Your Organization
Engagement is the connection employees have with the organization and each other.
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Attitude, Communication and Performance in Swift-Starting Teams
High performing teams tend to have balanced, stable, reciprocal patterns of communication.
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Team Routines Are a Double-Edged Sword
Routines help teams to be efficient, but most teams work in dynamic environments. Teams need to abandon their routines when things aren’t normal.
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Praise and Criticize Publicly
Pat Lencioni talks about the importance of praising and criticizing team members publicly.
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Four Types of Effective Meetings
Pat Lencioni describes four types of effective meetings, each for different purposes.
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Humility vs. Publicity Paradox
Pat Lencioni describes the balance between humility and publicity in leadership.
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Holding People Accountable
People don't want to hold people accountable because they don't want them to feel bad. But by not holding people accountable, you're protecting yourself, not them.
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Focus on the Mission
Marshall Goldsmith describes the value of abstract thinking and recognizing the mission, not only the task.
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Becoming a More Effective Delegator
Marshall Goldsmith describes techniques for effective delegating.
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Six-Question Approach to Coaching
The six-question approach to coaching: Where are we going? Where are you going? What do you think you are doing well? If you were your coach what would you suggest for you? How can I help? What suggestions do you have for me?
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Providing Positive Recognition
Marshall Goldsmith describes the importance of providing positive recognition - what works, what doesn't.
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Gender Differences in Leadership Feedback
Marshall Goldsmith describes considerations in providing feedback between genders.
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Inspiring Others: The Power of True Leadership
If you can get the best out of other people by simply being who you are, you are a true leader.
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How to Engage Your People to Win
Engage people by aligning their actions, building their sense of well being, and making sure managers apply these recommendations.
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The Likability Conundrum
The more women are liked the less competent they are viewed. To counter that perception, 1) take leadership roles in one or two organizations, 2) create content that demonstrates your competence, and 3) recruit a wingman and talk each other up.
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The Anatomy of Decisions
Chris Blake describes three dangers when making frequent, everyday decisions.
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Great Mentors Ask Great Questions
A great mentor asks so many questions you're forced to think about your life in a different way.
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The Person Who Sweeps the Floor Chooses the Broom
Instead of procedures, set goals. Then let people "choose their own broom."
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Set the Mood for Your Team
Leaders set the mood and atmosphere that either helps or hinders team members in achieving their goals.
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Priming for Meetings
It’s prime time! Elena Asterillos explains how priming builds top-notch, problem-solving teams.
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Opportunities for New Leaders
Demand for leaders is outpacing supply. Seize that opportunity.
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Your Personal Vision Statement
Helen Keller said it’s terrible to be able to see and not have a vision. A vision statement is the intersection of your strengths, what is meaningful to you, and what gives you sustained happiness. Benham Tabrizi’s vision is to transform a hundred million people.
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Persevere And Achieve The Unexpected
Amelia Fawcett shows how you can get a team to accomplish extraordinary things by encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and sticking with it.
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How Self Aware Are You?
Leaders with accurate self-perception are the top performers. But to increase your self-awareness you first need to be tested. Anonymous tests are best, but 360 evaluations or even self versus others provides good feedback. You can also bring in an outside party.
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Top Performers Have High EQ Scores
Emotional intelligence (EQ) accounts for 60 to 80 percent of a leader’s job performance, because understanding emotion improves decision-making, team effectiveness, and communication. Ninety percent of top performers are high in EQ.
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The Highest and Lowest EQ Scores by Job Title
Emotional intelligence (EQ) scores increase with higher job titles, peaks with middle managers, and goes down from there, bottoming out with CEOs. This is because higher performers pay more attention to the bottom line than they do to people.
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Be Clear What The Aim Is
Sir Gerry Robinson offers advice on making sure you and everyone in your company knows what you're trying to achieve and what their part in it is.
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Executives and Self Awareness
We are not trained to see ourselves as others see us, but cultivating that skill rewires your brain and leads to improved performance.
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Relationship Management: Don't Win the Battle to Lose the War
Relationship management involves finding common ground. Over time relationships can sour making it even more difficult to establish common ground. Emotional management is key, you're not looking to win the battle to ultimately lose the war.
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Characteristics of High EQ Leaders
Leaders with high emotional intelligence have a broad perspective, unlike leaders who just grind it out. High EQ leaders don’t accept negative people, negative self-talk, or dwell on past failures. Believing you can succeed improves performance even if you don’t.
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Increasing Your Team EQ
Each team has its own level of emotional intelligence. To increase a team’s EQ, don’t work with individuals; look at the group norms instead — behaviors it tolerates, whether it embraces or resists other groups, its awareness and management of emotions, etc.
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When You Have a Difficult Team Member
When there is a difficult team member the leader usually blames the person. Don’t jump to conclusions. Dig deep for the barrier that is in the way of change for that person. Is it fear? Capability? Seek to understand. It’s your job. You may need to go slow in order to go fast.
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Leading a Multigenerational Team
If you are leading a multigenerational team, don’t think about the multigenerational aspects. If company values, goals, and strategies are clear you don’t need to accommodate different generations. Focus on leadership development and management development.
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Adapt Your Leadership Style For Each Individual
Leaders are only as successful as their teams want them to be. David Brandon shows you how to prosper by treating every team member as an individual.
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If You're Not Getting Better, You're Getting Worse
David Brandon warns against complacency and presents ideas and attitudes to help you inoculate your staff and company against it.
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Remote Teams
The digital age is transforming the way you work. Use these helpful tips to determine which team approach best suits the needs of the team and the organization.
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Create an Agile Culture
The iterative process of the agile platform is no longer unique to software teams. Transform your team by using these agile characteristics.
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Recognize Your Reason to Believe
To accomplish what you never thought possible, you have to find your reason to believe.
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Connect to Build Trust
Building a team requires trust, and trust is possible only when people genuinely connect with each other.
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The Four A's of Achieve
Actually achieving a plan as outlined can be a challenge, but by practicing the "four As of achieve," your team can reach its destination on time.
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The Three R's of Respect
Creating an environment of contribution requires mutual respect. Apply the three Rs of respect to create a powerful team of contributors.
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The Three E's of Empowerment
Whether in response to a hardship or as part of an organizational philosophy, empowering employees builds ownership and makes them unstoppable.
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Team Up
A group of individuals assigned to work together does not a team make. Here's what you need to build a cohesive, functioning team.
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Build Your Team with CARE
Building teams takes great CARE, and teams that care are unstoppable.
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The Three Actions of Empowerment
Empowerment helps everyone—leaders, individuals, and teams. Learn what it takes to help others to grow and succeed.
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Plan in 3D
The perfect plan is impossible. That's why you should be planning in 3D.
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Leadership Lessons
Smart leaders know how to coach through mistakes.
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Shifting Mentality
Business schools often fail to teach leaders how to create learning organizations, which is a critical skill for success.
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The Challenges & Opportunities For Women In Management
Gender presents both opportunities and challenges in the workplace. Dina Dublon speaks to ways in which companies can break down gender barriers.
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Make Meetings Optional
Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson share stories about how Best Buy made a dramatic cultural change that cleaned up its calendar.
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You Can't Talk Your Way Out Of What You Behave Your Way In To
Because the message a leader's behavior sends amplifies throughout the organization, Gill Rider cautions leaders to make sure their behavior is consistent with what they're saying.
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Live Event: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Culture is not something you are—it’s something you do. Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group, or strengthen a culture that needs fixing? In this session, Coyle unearths helpful stories of failure that illustrate what not to do, troubleshoots common pitfalls, and shares advice about reforming a toxic culture.
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Stick To The Facts & Stand Your Ground
Retaliation is not the way to manage conflict. To resolve differences, Neville Isdell cautions people to keep their emotions in check and stick to the facts.
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Learn Not To Fear Feedback
Nobody's an expert at coaching and mentoring. Paula Barbary Shannon explains why providing supportive feedback is something you have to practice and do every day.
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Engage, Empower And Excite Your People
Impossible! This is the red flag that challenges people, and according to William Johnson, people love to be challenged to achieve what they think others can't achieve.
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Nail the Where and the Why
With the right essentials and vision, leaders can inspire their teams to accomplish tasks they never dreamed possible.
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Who Does What by When
Letting your team know who is responsible for what and by when gives your team confidence and the ability to collaborate on the vision.
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Making the Complex Simple
Facing a future of increased noise, change, and chaos, executives can simplify the complexities of business by mapping out their personal legacy.
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Overcome Your Blind Spots
Don’t get blindsided! Use these practices to identify potential blind spots so you can put a strategy in place to deal with unexpected events.
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Personal Branding Strategies for Women
To attract the professional opportunities and sponsorships that lead to promotions, women need to develop a strong personal brand.
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Mastering Body Language
If you want others to see you as a leader, your body language needs to match the words coming out of your mouth. Follow these strategies to clearly convey your ideas and build relationships.
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Behaviors of Effective Team Leaders
Team leaders that build high-performing teams are both candid and receptive. They tell others what they need to hear, and they want to know the truth about themselves.
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Coaching Skills Fundamentals
Coaching is about developing individuals to the point where they can think on their own, and the two essential practices that make this possible are asking questions and listening.
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Four Types of Leadership Conversations
Leaders wear many different hats—including manager, coach, and leader—and just like their goals and duties change to match the various roles they play, so too should the conversations they have.
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The Value Of Setting A Long-Term Strategy
When implementing a long-term strategy, connecting the overall vision with day-to-day operations is essential. Anders Dahlvig explains how setting such a strategy can provide for a comprehensive plan while creating a sense of stability.
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Leverage Your Resources
Companies like IMB and Google should 1) use the talent in their boardrooms, e.g., as mentors; 2) leverage digital everything, especially social media; and 3) leverage their own people. Employees want to do a better job. They only need to know how.
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Coaching and Mentoring Can Be Taught
It’s not obvious how to mentor or coach. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania offers each incoming MBA candidate a personal coach, who is hired and trained as a leadership coach. Companies are encouraged to think along similar lines.
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A Leader's Checklist: Vision and Appreciation
Pilots, surgeons, and firefighters use checklists to guide their work. So should leaders. Michael Useem has a 15-item checklist for leaders, starting with a vision and strategy. However, the item leaders miss most often is appreciation for the work the employees do.
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How CEOs Lead Their Companies in India
Major companies in India such as Tata invest heavily in their people. They also invest heavily in their communities and their country, by building roads, hospitals, and schools. Michael Useem thinks U.S. companies should do the same.
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How to Build Resilience and Adaptability
First, get out of your office and meet the troops. Second, be decisive. Decide, then adjust based on what happens; no decision is the worst decision. Third, be clear about you want to accomplish. Then don’t micromanage. You don’t have the time and they won’t like it.
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Enabling your Team to be More Externally Focused
More effective teams will focus internally as well as externally, to learn expectations, align their work vertically with the hierarchy, and coordinate their work with other teams and groups.
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What Makes an Effective Team?
To Deborah Ancona, effective teams are more than clear goals, clear roles, good internal processes, etc. which are more internally focused activities. It's also comprised of external activity--what team members do across their boundaries within the team.
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Motivating with Peer Competition
Motivation doesn’t always come from the carrot and stick, but from peer competition.
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Five Steps to Accountability
To ensure accountability, be clear: about expectations, capabilities, measurements, feedback, and consequences.
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Look After Yourself to Look After Others
Airlines tell us to put on our own oxygen mask before helping others. The same applies to managers.
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Transparency and Openness Foster Collaboration
People innately want to contribute, but it’s the leaders who model transparency and openness that actually get their teams to share their thinking and ideas.
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To Motivate, Clarify Expectations for Performance and Promotion
While compensation can serve as a motivator, leaders should never underestimate the significance of recognition and setting clear expectations for advancement.
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Hot Spots Bring Energy and Innovation to Organizations
Hot spots of energy and innovation are built from cooperation, networking, and an igniting purpose.
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Integrity
Rick advises bringing our economic self, our material self, our intellectual self – in effect, our whole self, to our work and life.
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Millennials Want to Know Why
Millennials want to do good work, but they need to know why. Otherwise they shut down. Explain why their job matters to the team and the company, and why others can’t do their job if Millennials don’t do theirs. Don’t just give them a task. Explain why the task matters.
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'Because I Said So' No Longer Works
Boomers and Gen Xers did what they were told, no questions. As managers, they don’t understand why Millennials won’t do the same. Millennials want to understand how their work relates to the work of others. Explaining how improves performance and saves time.
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What Millennials Want
Millennials want what the rest of us want: work that matters, a meaningful life, and knowing they make a difference in the world. They tell you that on day one. They don’t expect to wait. They want to start now.
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The Importance of Mentoring
Paula Kerger talks about the importance of being aware of all the people around you in the work place and making a conscious decision to mentor those climbing the ladder.
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Pay It Forward
When Doug Conant was fired from his job about 25 years ago, his outplacement counselor became his mentor and one of his best friends. The counselor showed up with a how-can-I-help mentality that was second to none. Doug tries to be that kind of person today.
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The Best Business Advice
Never ask someone to do something you would not do.
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Passion and Productivity
Nothing motivates more than the belief that what you are doing truly matters - serves a greater good.
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Five Principles of Employee Engagement
Capture the heart, open communication, create partnerships, drive learning, and emancipate action.
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Emotional Intelligence
Tim Sanders identifies key characteristics of Emotional Intelligence.
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Cultivating Realistic Optimism
Positive emotions drive high performance but optimism isn’t enough. Tony Schwartz recommends that optimism be tempered with realism. Be optimistic about the future but realistic about what is happening now — realistic optimism.
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Giving the Most to Your People
How do we invest more in our people, so they can bring more of themselves to work? There are four components: physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, and spiritual energy.
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Empowerment Rules
Empowerment doesn't happen simply because leaders tell employees they're empowered. Leaders must mandate empowerment.
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Simplification as a Habit
Maintaining focus on essential, high-value tasks requires making simplification not an event but a habit.
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Developing an Inclusive Environment
Developing an inclusive environment requires purposeful action and attitude.
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Delivering Results While Developing People
Meetings provide a forum not only for sharing information but also for developing talent.
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Humility Is Key to Collaboration
Kelly Thompson explains why, if you want to be a good collaborator, you need to be humble.
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Taking Your Team to the Next Level
Taking your team to the next level begins with viewing employees as a cohesive, integrated group.
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Close the Performance Gaps
Executives and managers who are responsible for coaching talent can employ the GAPS model to close performance gaps.
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Get Out of Organizational Gridlock by Building Trust
Organizational gridlock can destroy companies, trust and collaboration are the tools that alleviate congestion.
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Team Building
Marshall Goldsmith describes a simple, fast, effective method for building teams.
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Peer-to-Peer Coaching
A system Marshall Goldsmith intends to use for the rest of his life.
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Creating Commitment to a Vision
"Roll down" the vision; ask people below where the gaps are between where we are and where we want to go. Hone the vision; refine it. Use the vision — with customers; in considering promotions; talk about it.
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Building Peak Performance Winning Teams
Brian Tracy describes the one trait that is highly determinant of one's success in business - the ability to build teams.
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The Formula for Strategic Planning
Brian Tracy explains how the ability to think and plan strategically in business is the hallmark of leadership.
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Why Women Are Better Business Leaders
Only about 20 United States Senators and 24 of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Women are often better communicators, better at nurturing teamwork, and have better emotional intelligence and intuition. The feminization of business is great for society, GDP, and for business.
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Motivating Your Team
Jason Jennings describes motivation tactics that work.
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Build a Business Literate Workforce
To get employees more engaged: 1) operate the business transparently; everybody knows everything; 2) change the conversation from parent-child to adult-adult, 3) include everyone in business deliberations; and 4) focus on interdependencies in delivering products.
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Culture: Like a Garden, Creating a Vibrant Culture Requires Daily Practice
Culture is the behaviors that represent the values, the container that supports performance. Creating a culture is a daily gardening behavior: prepare the soil, plant the seeds of expected behaviors, weed, nourish, and tend to it every day.
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Learning to Provide Amazingly Powerful and Balanced Feedback
Apply specific-negative (corrective) feedback only after you have given specific-positive feedback.
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Breaking Down Silos and Creating Alignment
Silos are barriers to cooperation across departments. To break the barriers, identify the single priority the organization needs to succeed over the next six months. Then rally the teams around that theme.
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Succeeding as a Team Leader
Successful team leaders demonstrate vulnerability, encourage conflict, love clarity, hold people accountable, and focus on results, not their ego or status.
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The Five Root Causes of Team Dysfunction
Team dysfunction starts with a lack of trust. The absence of trust leads to fear of conflict, which leads to lack of commitment, which leads to lack of accountability, which leads to lack of attention to results.
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Shared Leadership
How to create shared responsibility teams.
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Creating High Performance Teams
High performing teams need a well defined, shared goal and feedback with respect to that goal. Teams also need people with the right skills, who are challenged at the right level to produce flow. Culturally diverse teams are especially critical to creative thinking.
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Closing Gaps to Execution
First, decide what you really want, not just a wish list. Second, tell people what to achieve and why, with what resources, but not how. Then ask them explain it back, in twice the time you explained it. Third, give them space and support to adapt to the unexpected.
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The Importance of Self-Awareness in Leaders
As leaders our whole person is present at every moment. Great leaders are aware of their strengths and weaknesses—when their strengths should be applied, and when they need to rely on others. Research shows that self-awareness is related to company performance.
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Converting Urgency into Significance
Kevin Cashman describes an experience that made him aware of the days left for him on Earth. As leaders, we should ask the same question: How many days do we have? Do we want to spend those days in speed or in significance? In performance or purpose?
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Purpose Should Drive Performance
Does purpose drive your performance, or the reverse? A client who was successful by any objective measure lacked a sense of purpose. Once his own purpose became clear, both his own performance and the performance of his organization improved.
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Allow your People to Take Risks
It's important to let your people take risks, even when you're not sure they're right.
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What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the ability to deliberately change an unconscious reaction to a purposeful observation. Improving your mindful capacity increases leadership effectiveness.
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The Leader of the Future
The leader of the future needs to think globally, possess cross-cultural awareness, be technologically savvy, build alliances and partnerships, and share leadership—ask, listen, and learn from others.
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Maslow's Hierarchy Applied to Investors
Maslow’s hierarchy for investors is the transactional investor, who wants the ROI when the relationship ends; the successful investor, who is interested in long-term relationships; and the legacy investor, who wants a transformative effect on something beyond themselves.
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How to Prepare for a Crisis
Don’t let crisis management be the task that paralyzes you with indecision. This three-step, proactive process can prepare you for whatever comes your way.
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Crisis Leadership: Assume the Boom
The best crisis leaders understand not only what a true crisis is, but also how to prepare for it. Get ready to “assume the boom.”
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Stay Close to Your Core Values
One of the principal reasons for Southwest's success is, they know who they are.
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Developing Trust
Paul Stebbins tells a personal story of trust when he was 16 years old.
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Motivation
To motivate people, connect with their passions outside of work.
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Building A Team Of Talent
Leaders can't help but admire the "shining stars" in an organization. Joseph Eckroth cautions that, while these individuals are important, it's truly the collective talent of a team and how they work together that gives an organization its strength.
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The Benefits Of Coaching
Jason Zeman relates a personal story about how continuous coaching can encourage people to achieve their goals even when they don't believe in themselves.
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The Secrets of Teams that Deliver
Breakthrough teams have a personal commitment to excellence: they are superior goal setters, good communicators, have high levels of trust, hold themselves accountable, and celebrate achievements.
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Fair and Just Decision Making
Implementing decisions efficiently and effectively means building buy-in and commitment from team members.
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Why Do Leaders Make Flawed Decisions?
Why do leaders make flawed decisions? Group think. Learn how to overcome it and make better decisions.
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Performance Reviews That Feel Good
Research has demonstrated that employees are more motivated to improve their performance if they are compared with their past own performance instead of with other employees. Both the reviewer and the employee feel good about these reviews.
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Mindsets and Gender
Little girls are told, “You’re so smart; you’re so good,” which promotes a fixed mindset — “If I don’t succeed at a task quickly, I’m not good at it.” Little boys are told to work harder, which leads to a growth mindset. A fixed mindset an be a problem for women leaders.
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Inspiration As The Catalyst For Goals
The energy that comes from inspiration is far better than the energy that comes from obligation and duty. Myles Downey talks about how to use inspiration to set goals.
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Allowing Employees to Express Themselves
Employees were given permission to be themselves—to grow and develop and exercise their passion, to care about each other and the planet—in addition to performing their job.
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Live Event: The One Firm Firm
This Live Event was originally broadcast on Wednesday, September 12, 2018.
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The Advantages of Cultural Diversity
Differences in how cultures see things, as alone or interconnected, brings the advantages of diversity to innovation and risk assessment.
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Confrontation On Global Teams
Different cultures express themselves differently, so leaders of culturally diverse teams need to depersonalize debates.
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How Individuals Can Contribute To Growth
Andrew Ray brings company growth down to an individual level and highlights how each person can contribute to overall progress.
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How to Stand Out from the Competition
Focus on being excellent at one thing to differentiate yourself, or product or service, to stand out from the competition.
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Getting Access to the C Suite
Bring your own ideas and relationships to the table beyond the product and service you are trying to sell.
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Effective Leaders Are Self-Aware
Everyone has habits or quirks of which they aren't aware. Bob Cancalosi illustrates an experience that helped him realize the value and necessity of being self-aware if you want to be a strong leader.
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Leaders Are Made
Leaders are made, not born, and fortunately, most people are capable of becoming good leaders by following six practical steps.
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When a Team Member Isn't Contributing
When a team member isn’t performing, start with questions. Don’t judge their outside with your inside — don’t judge their behavior with your assumptions. Be curious about what motivates them, how they want to contribute. Ask questions.
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'People Team' Coaches
The Motley Fool found that successful companies like Google collect many types of data on its employees. Similarly, the Motley Fool also collects many types of data on its employees that a large and growing HR “People Team” uses for coaching.
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Conscious Leaders
Conscious leaders know who their stakeholders are, and are willing to go to places they had not imagined. For example, you need a healthy relationship with your suppliers. Ask how you can engage stakeholders to help you get to a better place. Tom Gardner gives examples.
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Practice Perspective Transference
The leader has access to conversations and information that members of the team don’t have. The leader’s perspective is valuable only if it is shared with the team.
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Close the Performance Gaps
GAPS is a coaching model that helps employees understand where they are and where they need to be.
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Women Can Lead At Any Level
Women are not opting out of the workforce; in this economy they have to work. Women are saying, I can lead from the middle; I can lead from a cube. They don’t they have to climb the corporate ladder in an up-or-out manner.
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Fallen Eagles: What We Need to Let Go Of
Examples of “fallen eagles” include the idea that an elite group defines practices that others follow.
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The Need for Emotional and Social Intelligence in Global Leaders
Emotional and social intelligence is becoming important for leaders of teams that represent different cultures and different languages.
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Tools for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence
The higher the social and emotional intelligence, the better equipped the leader is to get work done through people, especially as the leader rises though management levels.
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Choosing a Successor
Gerard Ee knows that choosing a successor is about more than just finding the person with the right skill set, but involves searching for someone with a matching vision and passion.
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Engaging and Reenergizing your Team: Investing in Psychological Capital
To truly engage employees, you must tap into their emotional side in addition to their intellect.
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Habit 6: Synergize
Synergy refers to an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts; creating cohesiveness, energy and momentum.
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The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
The 8th Habit is about achieving greatness; finding your voice and inspiring others to find theirs.
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Meaningful Work Is Motivating
All employers want their employees to find meaning in their work. Ian Metcalfe uncovers how to find that meaning, and the role leaders play in helping employees find it.
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Applying Essentialism to a Team
Ask the team, what is the most important thing we should be working on now? The head of a highly successful high school rugby team uses the acronym WIN: What’s Important Now? Focus on doing the right things at the right time for the right reasons.
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Playing to Unrealized Strengths
Knowing your employees’ strengths is, of course, critical. But, as Sue Langley points out, your employees have realized strengths, unrealized strengths, and learned behaviors--and the understanding of these can play a vital role in how teams and companies perform.
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How to Coach and Mentor
A successful mentoring program can set attrition rates below industry standards. Sujaya Banerjee shares how her organization’s mentoring program works and why it’s successful.
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Coaching & Mentoring: Find the Guru
There is a strong business case for investing in coaching and mentoring programs. Sujaya Banerjee shares the lessons she’s learned from her organization’s “Find the Guru Within” program.
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How Alan Mulally Builds Trust and Transparency: The Rainbow Story
Marcia Blenko shares a story she termed "The Rainbow Story."
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Team Building Without Time Wasting
Marshall Goldsmith describes a seven-step process.
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Successful Mentor Relationships
Consider younger as well as older mentors, and different mentors for different skills. The mentor should be someone who will look out for you, not just someone more experienced.
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Without Vision, Companies Will Perish
Companies without a purpose will perish. Merv Hillier shares how to take an organization from “good to great,” all by starting with a purpose.
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Autonomy Creates Power
Raju Bhatia says, “That control is the best which controls the least.” He believes that an autonomous organization is one that gives individual workers the freedom to express themselves and to perform in an outstanding manner.
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Do-It-Yourself Leadership Development
In these challenging economic times, the concept of do-it-yourself leadership development as proposed by Andrew Simon’s company is a highly appropriate solution for the task of training an organization’s future managers.
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Adaptive Leadership: Letting Go
Being the hero can be addictive. As Lisa Vos, shares, however, as a leader it’s much better to let go of the need for everyone to be dependent on you and instead adopt an adaptive style of leadership.
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Building a Great Team: Start with Cohesion and Trust
Teams that have cohesion and trust can solve almost any task.
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Managing Relationships As You Move Up in an Organization
Relationships become difficult when you rise in an organization faster than your friends. Don’t pretend you’re better. Reach down.
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What Every Leader Must Possess: Empathy and Perspective
Empathic people make the best decisions. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know, and seek advice.
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Empowering Decision-Making
To decentralize decisions to people closest to the problem requires that they have information from above that provides context.
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Learning the Hard Way Can Be the Best Way
We can all learn from our failures--but there are also times, says Don Taylor, when we can wisely sidestep potential failure by knowing our own strengths and weaknesses and doing our homework before a presentation or event.
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What Teams Need to Work On To Be Great
The most important team ingredient is a shared sense that the team is up to something together—that team members are committed not only to the success of the team, but also to the success of each other.
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Teamwork: Build Individual Confidence First
Great leaders spend all of their time building confidence in others.
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Solidifying Your Team: Shift Accountability
Simon Sinek suggests that using “I intend” could have positive consequences for a company.
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Organizational Purpose: Start with Why
Many organizations know what they do and how they do it, but not why—their purpose, why they exist.
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Why Developing Leaders At All Levels Is Important
To deal with today’s global, complex, fast-moving times we need leaders at all levels, empowered to come up with new answers to new situations.
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Two Magic Ingredients for Engaging People
Change communication from one-way—telling people what to do—to two-way engagement. Second, to engage people they must feel valued and included.
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Lead Like Improvisers: Declare Your Point of View
Great improvisers declare their point of view in the first 3-5 seconds of a scene. Great leaders do the same.
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Lead Like Improvisers: The Importance of Diversity
Great leaders understand that the more diverse the point of view, the better the product.
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The Role of Senior Executives in Leading Growth
Senior executives should define how new business units should be different from their competition.
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What is Engagement?
Engagement is not loyalty or happiness or commitment. Engagement is a connection between a company and its employees.
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Keys to Performance Management
Performance management starts by setting goals that are connected clearly to the organization’s key priorities.
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Love the Crisis: Your Greatest Opportunity to Shine
Noah Blumenthal tells a story of a semi-professional cyclist who lost his leg in a car accident and how he embraced and learned to love his crisis and how it encouraged him to get back to cycling faster than doctors thought possible.
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Smash the Silos: Use Assumptions to Your Advantage
Noah Blumenthal shares a story about finding and sticking to your mantra.
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Never Be a Victim: Rise to Every Challenge
Noah Blumenthal discusses three behaviors (or stories) that one must practice that helps one make better decisions.
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Using Improv to Improve Collaboration
Improvisation as an art form is inherently collaborative, and leaders who integrate the key tenets of improv into their teams achieve greater success.
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Manipulating Status
By leveling the status of all individuals at a meeting, senior-ranking individuals no longer have the power their position affords. As a result, all individuals’ talent, participation, and engagement increases.
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Leaders Drive Change
Risk-taking is challenging by nature, because of the consequences it can bring. Rob James explains how to motivate employees to take risks and how to effectively manage those risks so that, even if failure occurs, employees won’t shy away from the next risk.
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Leaders Need to Be Authentic
Leadership styles can vary from person to person, but there are certain qualities that leaders need to possess to be effective, as Rob James explains.
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The Best Leaders Communicate Vulnerability
A leader must be comfortable being vulnerable. Vulnerable leaders admit their mistakes and weaknesses, and apologize when necessary.
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Executives Must Understand Their #1 Team
As a leader you are on a leadership team, as well as the leader of your own team.
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Optimizing Team Performance
Team performance comes from a small focused group that has a clear and compelling purpose, complementary skills, a common work approach, and mutual accountability. Real teams have a shifting leader role.
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Excelling at Team Leadership
When the team members have skills that apply at different stages in the task, a shifting leadership team may emerge, where it’s hard to see which member is the formal team leader.
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What the Best Motivators Do
The best motivators get the workers to feel pride in the work they have to do.
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Meaning Is the New Money
Money is less of a motivator these days. A more powerful motivator is the meaning behind the work.
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Cognitive Dissonance: Justifying Our Decisions
Once we make a decision, we tend to elevate the correctness and appropriateness of that decision because if we question it, we often personalize that into, “Maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am.” To be most effective and make the smartest decisions, we need to separate our sense of who we are from our decisions, says Jill Klein.
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Managing Overconfidence in Your Manager
Few people like to tell their boss that he might be wrong, especially if the boss is overconfident about his ideas. But there’s a way to do that, as Jill Klein explains, that will likely result in him accepting the ideas that run contrary to his.
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Performance Management: Be Clear on the Goals
Traditional performance management spends a little time defining goals at the beginning of the year, and a great deal of time at the end of the year evaluating performance. That’s too late. Reverse the effort.
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Feedback That Can Have the Biggest Impact
Feedback is like good health. You can never have enough of it. Frequent feedback sessions during the year has a bigger impact than a formal evaluation at the end of the year.
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Great Coaching: Don't Give the Answer
Coaching is helping persons come to answers on their own or with assistance. The process the individual goes through is important, not what you give them.
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Managing People: It Isn't About You
Managing is not about getting people to do what you want. It’s about making people winners and accomplishing your goals in the process.
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Managing Performance: Three Areas of Focus
Jason Jeffay details three areas of focus for managing performance.
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Emotional Intelligence
Many organizations are hiring more for emotional intelligence than for technical skills. Critical elements of emotional intelligence are self knowledge, self awareness, self regulation, self motivation, empathy, and interpersonal skills.
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Effective Leaders Use Power Well
Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see.”
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Understand the Boundaries Above You and Lead Accordingly
Leaders at every level know they should not take risks if their boss won’t support them.
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Engagement is More than Motivation
Engagement includes more than motivation, a sense of personal affiliation, pride in your work, purpose in your work, and belonging to something worthy.
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Leadership Presence
Because leaders are people, too, they can react in the moment, briefly forgetting their professional role. These tips make it easier to maintain and sustain leadership presence.
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How to Communicate a Vision
Communicating a vision doesn’t mean talking to the masses; it means energizing and engaging people in the future.
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Mentors Are All Around Us
Glen Senk’s first mentor was his riding instructor, when he was ten years old. She said it doesn’t matter what you decide, just make a decision. He still teaches and uses that advice 50 years later. Glen Senk also gives other examples.
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EQ and Leadership
Everything in business is gray; good leaders see all sides; they have high EQ. For example, a great negotiation is one where everyone wins. Try to see things from the perspective of employees, customers, and shareholders. We’re all in it together. Try to work it out.
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Making Collaboration Work
The key to effective collaboration is getting individuals to think together about the what, not the how.
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Celebrate Small Wins
Celebrations are an acknowledgment of progress and a means to re-energize for the next step of the journey.
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What Motivating and Inspiring Leaders Do Differently
The best leaders create simultaneous conditions of safety and stretch.
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Unlocking a Team Member's Potential
If you want to unlock all of an employee's potential, you have to ask the right questions.
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Handling a Team Player Who Won’t Play Along
The key to dealing with difficult people is to build a bigger relationship with them.
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Symptoms of Managing Less
Leading more—and managing less—means knowing when to stop being in operator/manager mode so that you can move back into leader mode.
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Building A Team Through Trust
Peter Leahy believes that teamwork is built on a common commitment towards a particular aim.
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Become a Better Leader by Using Meta-Skills
Leadership skills are like tools in a carpenter's toolbox; you need the right tools to do the job.
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Difference Beyond Diversity
Diversity in the workplace is about much more than just checking off compliance boxes.
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Two Leadership Components: Strength and Tenacity
We need to lead from our strengths—the strengths we have, not the ones we teach or the ones we emulate in others. Mother Teresa led from compassion, love, discipline, and equal regard for people. She was also tenacious; she never gave up.
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Coaching and Mentoring for Career Development
Career development, says Martyn Redgrave, hinges on four issues: intellect, energy, ambition, and choices. Here he details how people can use each issue to further their careers.
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The Five E's of Leadership
There are many ways to consider the critical aspects of leadership. Martyn Redgrave likes to look at leaders in terms of their ability to carry out the “Five E’s.”
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Good Coaches Ask Questions
Good coaches don’t give advice. They ask questions. First frame the discussion. What are the goals? Then ask questions to understand the situation, what success would look like, what action they decide to take, and how you can help resolve the topic.
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Advice for Leaders: Shift Your Mindset
Women fail to advance to leadership positions because they have limiting mindsets. To change a mindset, be self aware without judgment. Remember a time when you had a desired mindset, then shift, for example from being a victim to being in charge.
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Successful Women Leaders Build on Their Strengths
Although she was living an affluent life, Joanna felt invisible and empty. When she interviewed successful women leaders, she discovered she had their skills, and only needed to acknowledge her fears, find her purpose, build on her strengths, and connect with others.
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How to Identify and Apply Strengths
Ask team members to identify characteristics they value most in themselves. Those are their strengths. Recognize and deepen those strengths. For example, in a “check-in,” team members announce their strengths and how they will apply them to the issue at hand.
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Shifting a Mindset: Example #1
Joanna Barsh gives the example of a meeting that is going nowhere. You can intervene, but what to do? One mindset is, I’m the leader; I will decide. Another is to ask each person what they think the group should do and why. You can ratify their view or decide yourself.
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Don't Be Frustrated; Be Curious
When the group is not going where you want it to go, don’t get frustrated. Be curious. Ask why. Sometimes you need to tell people what to do, but most of the time you will be more effective asking questions and learning. The group has more experience than you do.
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The Role of Power and Influence in Organizations
Sources of personal power in an organization include expertise, a network of relationships, and interpersonal skills.
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Building and Leading Effective Teams
Team leaders need to manage both the team and the context surrounding the team.
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The Importance of Trust and Teamwork
Members of a team must rely on, trust, and help each other.
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Advice for New Managers
New managers should understand that they don’t have all the answers on day one, and that’s okay.
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The Next Level: Pick Up Regular Renewal of Energy, Let Go of Running Flat Out
Leaders need to alternate between the dance floor and the balcony. Scott Eblin offers a Goals Planning System to help them do so.
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The Next Level: Pick Up Confidence and Let Go of Doubt
Effective leaders are confident. They lead with confidence.
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Women: Use Your Diversity to Your Advantage
Diverse businesses almost always outperform homogenous businesses, and women can take advantage of that.
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Back Pocket Leaders
To be the kind of leader that others want to follow, leaders need three stories in their back pocket.
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Women in Leadership: Adapt Your Style to Avoid Pigeonholing
To avoid being pigeonholed, women in leadership need to vary their leadership styles.
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Using REPS to Measure Learning
REPS stands for 4 qualities present in people during “high velocity” learning.
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Give Meaning to Work
Giving meaning to work is more than telling people what to do and how to do it.
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The Importance of Diversity of Thought
The reason diversity in ethnicity, language, age, gender, experience and other factors are important to an organization is that they bring with them diversity of thought, which brings diversity in questions and solutions.
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Millennials: Curiosity, Courage, and Community
Changing the topic of what conversation from what we think Millennials want to how we can work across generations is how we get to the best solutions.
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Accelerated Relationship Development
Jeff Kaplan suggests three things to accelerating relationships: research their life, not just their professional career, have confidence that you have a meaningful contribution, and finally ask them about an important event in their lives.
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Your Values Are Your Actions
According to Antonio Carrillo, your set of values are your guiding light.
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The Differences Between Mentoring and Coaching
Mentoring and coaching are often used as interchangeable terms, but they aren't quite the same thing.
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Keeping Employees Motivated When Promotions Are Not Available
Do you know how to keep your employees motivated even when career advancement is stagnant? Alan Berson has some ideas to keep employees engaged.
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Curiosity Is the A Priori Requirement for Leadership
Curiosity is the number one requirement of great leaders today.
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Common Mistakes New Leaders Make
New leaders tend to make the same mistakes, but they can be easily avoided if you know what to watch for.
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Managing Teams Means Managing Emotions and Expectations
Setting the right expectations enables leaders to manage the emotions that stop teams from moving forward.
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The 3 Ps of Leadership: People, Purpose, and Performance
The leadership model starts with meaningful work for the people entrusted to you. Then, to inspire the people you must give them a purpose. Finally, you’ve got to perform — create value for all stakeholders. You need all three: people, purpose, and performance
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Inspiration is Foundational to Leadership
Inspiration is allowing people to be validated for their worth. Inspiration is sharing a vision of what we do, why we do it, where we’re going, and how their role fits that value proposition, no matter what they do. Inspiration is telling people that what they do matters.
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Leadership Is About Behavior
We judge ourselves by our intentions but we judge others by their behavior. Others judge us by our behavior, not our intentions.
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Difference Between Good Leaders and Great Leaders: Empathy
Great leaders possess what Marcus Buckingham refers to as “extended empathy”.
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Overcoming Fear: Techniques to Drive Performance
Vince Poscente outlines a four part technique to overcome fear when pitching a sale.
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Great Managers Take the Time
Great managers understand the relationship to be an essential part and are dependent on both the successes of the employee and the manager.
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How to Deal with Non-Performing Employees
Great managers set themselves apart from bad managers when they know how to deal with nonperformers. They act quickly, without spite or anger – because they genuinely care for the person.
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Managing Top Performers
You can develop your average performers into better performers through a genuine authentic relationship between manager and employee.
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Manage People for Who They Are
Research indicates that the more engaged a person is at work, the more engaged they are at home, in their family, and in their community. Engagement begins with the relationship.
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Leading from Adversity
People who start with struggles learn early how to recruit others to their vision. He had learning disabilities; Chuck Schwab and Richard Branson are dyslexic; Schwab was thrown out of Stanford twice; Branson never graduated college; Steve Jobs was fired from Apple.
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Characteristics of Successful Teams
The most admired companies and leaders have three characteristics. 1) They are clear about why the task in front of them matters, 2) everyone knows why they should show up for the task, and 3) everyone on the team feels like they belong to the team.
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Five Levels of Accountability
Levels 1 and 2 are accountability for yourself and your people. That’s usually as good as it gets. Level 3 is accountability for peers, level 4 is accountability for the boss, and 5 is for the enterprise. Division heads can demonstrate accountability at level 5. He gives an example.
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How High-Performing Leaders Perform
High performing leaders model the behaviors they seek in others, including behaviors they don’t want to do themselves. He will interrupt his own agenda to coach on request. He tries to make decisions more consultatively than unilaterally. He gives other examples.
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How to Be a Better Coach
1) Work on listening skills. Take a class; read; watch a video. 2) Demonstrate you’re at stake for the other person. 3) Be sensitive to behavioral triggers. Great listening includes body language like nodding, and verbal behaviors like mirroring. Also, don’t interrupt.
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Obstacles to Accountability
Employees who are rewarded for individual performance have no incentive to be accountable for others. These managers and teams play a game where they win and others lose. Some managers will play for the entire enterprise, but they are few and far between.
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Great Leaders Teach and Don't Leave People Behind
Leaders have a passion to win and truly care about people and their goals.
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Ask for Help
Women aren’t good at asking for help. As a result they don’t have space — for creativity, to increase their impact, to become leaders. Women need to ask for help — from an assistant, a delegate, a peer, or even a person more senior. Women also need to ask for help at home.
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Competence to Confidence
Confidence is an outcome of competence. When you become competent at something confidence will follow. Women downplay their competence — “Oh, I was just lucky.” Shift your self-talk. Congratulate yourself when you have done something well.
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What Separates High EQ Leaders
High EQ leaders refuse to fall into the isolation as they advance in their careers.
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Building a Great Team
The best leadership advice Nicole Piasecki ever received was to get the best talent in the right seat on the bus (“Good to Great,” by Jim Collins).
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Results Through Individual Accountability and Cross Functional Teams
Employees cannot tell you what motivates them over a cup of coffee. You have to observe them over time for how they react to things, how they go about their daily work, what frustrates them, and what they find energizing.
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Partner with Employees to Improve Poor Performance
Managers need to partner with employees having performance issues in order for the situation to improve.
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Alignment Depends on Behaviors
Getting everyone moving in the same direction starts with values and culture.
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Four Neurotransmitters That Enhance the Ability to Lead and Influence
Leaders have access to four naturally occurring, legal drugs--neurotransmitters, actually--that they can prescribe to improve the health of their leadership and the health of the people they lead.
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The One-Minute Rule for Relationships
Laurie-Ann Murabito's one-minute rule helps you build stronger relationships, trust, and loyalty in only 60 seconds.
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Accountability Raises Employee Performance
Help employees bring their best performances through accountability.
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How to Inspire Others to Inspire Others
Leadership is the ability to inspire. Inspiration comes through trust and empowerment — empowering people to make decisions based on trust, and then empowering their own people. This distributes leadership throughout the organization and allows it to go faster.
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How to Empower Others
Teenagers need to make mistakes to learn. The same is true in business. One tactic he used was to attend meetings and say nothing. It took several weeks, but it worked. Managers learned to make decisions, and then how to influence others to implement those decisions.
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Empower to Go Faster
When Steve Strout played chess as a child, his dad taught him to think ahead five moves. He teaches that approach to everyone, at all levels. It allows the team to go faster — to learn faster, decide faster, recover faster. But you can only go as fast as the person in the front.
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Motivate by Satisfying Psychological Needs
High-quality motivation comes from satisfying the three psychological needs that are foundational to all human beings.
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Optimal Motivation
People are always motivated, and different motivational outlooks produce different outcomes.
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Motivation Misconceptions
When intrinsic motivation is absent, leading with carrots and sticks isn't the answer. Instead, motivate by providing a sense of purpose and by satisfying psychological needs.
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Commitment to the Team is Critical to Success
The best way to show commitment to the team is through encouragement. When he was late for a briefing, his commander didn’t chew him out. Rather, he asked if everything was okay. His commander’s concern for him increased his commitment to the team.
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Walk the Flight Line and Connect with Your Team
When Waldo Waldman chewed out a 19-year-old crew chief for not topping off the fuel in Waldo’s F-16, his commander challenged him to spend a day in the chief’s shoes. Waldo learned to appreciate what went on behind the scenes, and apologized to the crew chief.
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The Four Ingredients of Employee Motivation
Employees want autonomy, opportunities to grow and collaborate with each other, and a sense that what they do is important to the company.
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From Behavior to Belief
Management is about persuading others to do things.
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Live Event: Leadership in the Digital Era
In this talk, Charlene Li will examine how organizations manage digital transformations, the leadership required to manage change, and the culture necessary to execute on growth strategies.
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Are You as Humble as You Are Hungry?
Humble leaders know that the best ideas can come from anywhere.
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Why Great Leaders "Talk the Walk"
Leaders have to walk the talk, but they also have to know how to talk the walk to their employees.
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Culture Counts: How Values Create Value
You can't be amazing in your marketplace unless you're amazing in your workplace.
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Coaching a Bad Attitude
You may not be able to coach away a bad attitude, but you can coach new behaviors.
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Be a Better Coach
Coaching a reluctant employee takes a little more patience and effort.
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Great Coaches Don't Have Answers
True leadership is about letting go of your own personal journey. Karina Andersen describes why great coaches share theories, not answers.
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Visualize Success
Even during the worst of circumstances, taking time to visualize success can give you what you need to achieve success.
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Growing Your Business Through People
Ken Wright replaced a Harvard-educated bank executive who bragged about the 60 percent ratings his section received for staff and customer satisfaction. Ken improved up on this. Learn how.
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The Key to Evolving as a Leader
Self leadership consists of changes in behavior.
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People Are Not Assets, People Are Your Company's Value
John Grant dislikes the phrase, “People are our greatest asset” because it treats people as commodities.
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Understanding Individual Contributions to Organizational Goals
It’s important that people understand their contribution to the goals of the organization—the “key results.”
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Setting Team Goals
Getting through the recession was a matter of survival. Now how can they go faster than the competition coming out of the recession?
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If It Were Possible What Would It Look Like?
Lincoln Crawley tells the story about a problem that seemed impossible to solve.
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Adversity Brings Out Our Best
Adversity helps to put down our narcissism and allow our good side to flourish.
