It's Time to Lead

It’s hard to work in the area of developing leaders without addressing the issue of management versus leadership.  Much debate has been had about what each of these words means in the business world and which one is more important.  Recently, I’ve even heard a lot of discussion about the issue of individuals leading too [...]

Often, when organizations are trying to make change happen, it comes down to a couple of levers that they need to pull to start the motion.  It might be organizational structure, or process, or communication.  Almost always, it’s a combination of things that need to be addressed in order to cause change to happen.  But [...]

On last week’s post about bringing leaders onboard in your business more effectively, I received a question about how to hire the right leaders in the first place.  I have a few clients that I am working with to solve that issue as well, so it leads us to this week’s post on how to [...]

I was working with a company recently that was looking for a way to improve the success of the leaders they bring into the organization.  They had hired several senior executives only to watch them struggle and ultimately leave or be forced out within the first 18 months. What’s interesting is that the amount of [...]

I’ve had the good fortune throughout my career to work with some incredible leaders. But for every great leader I’ve been around there were dozens of individuals who could have been great leaders and never were. I’ve known many people who have had the skills, the knowledge and the experience to lead people effectively and [...]

I had an opportunity to speak to business owners from across the country recently at their annual convention.  Prior to my keynote address they gave out several awards to members of their group.  There was one individual who, it seemed, hardly had time to sit down before she was called back to the stage to [...]

One of the attributes I have noticed in nearly every great leader that I’ve worked with is that they know how to get back up after they fall.  I don’t think they fall any less than the rest of us, or any less hard.  But they don’t lay there very long. I actually believe that [...]

One of the most basic questions leaders often ask is how do I get the people in the organization to do what the organization needs them to.  I was working with the president of a multi-billion dollar business when he said, “my biggest problem is that I know exactly what the people in this business [...]

Typically when I start coaching a new client, I spend our first meeting doing a lot of listening.  It doesn’t take long to figure outwhere the opportunities are to help someone if you just let them talk for a while.  A while back I was coaching an executive and he spent a great deal of [...]

In my last post I talked about the research done recently indicating that employee satisfaction across the country has tumbled to an all time low of 45%.  I listed one key to creating organizational satisfaction and in this post I’d like to touch on two more.  Take a look at my first post here to [...]