Great Leadership By Dan

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Like it or not, “presence” is an important competency for any leader. You know it when you see it – a leader with presence exudes self-confidence, is self-assured, can be passionate about their beliefs, commands attention, communicates well, and makes people around them feel better and more self-assured. Regardless of where you stand on the presidential candidates, it’s clear that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan had it, while Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter did not.

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Great Leadership By Dan

AUGUST 19, 2011

With all due respect to Google, Zappos, and these guys , here are 11 real-life examples I’ve seen managers try to force their employees to lighten up and have some “fun” at work: 1. Creation of a “fun committee”. There are a few committees that I would recommend avoiding if you can: safety, quality, employee satisfaction, social, and the dreaded fun committee.

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Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 14, 2011

One of the best ways to learn leadership is from your bosses – both good and bad ones. It’s a pretty simple technique – emulate the good ones and do the opposite of the bad ones. Given that most of us will be lucky to have had the opportunity to work for even one great leader, the majority of our leadership lessons will have to come from the bad bosses.

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Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 19, 2011

A colleague and I recently talked about the challenge of selecting participants for leadership development programs. With limited resources and budget dollars, companies often have to be selective when it comes to who can attend and who ends up on the old “waiting list”. Then there’s always the inevitable political landmines that need to be navigated, i.e., “So why was Sparky selected and not Snooky?!”.

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Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 7, 2011

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”. -- Confucius. Even the most brilliant, credible, and talented instructors with the most dazzling PowerPoint slides won’t guarantee participants in a leadership training program are actually going to learn anything. In order for all that good content to actually sink in, people need to have a chance to do something with it.

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Great Leadership By Dan

AUGUST 10, 2011

I just made this up. Comments? PLEASE steal it, adapt it, (there's no copyright), use it to assess talent, and stop tolerating crappy behavior in exchange for results.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 8, 2011

I have a gut feeling that this post is going to rub a few people the wrong way. Why? Because many, if not all of the items on the upcoming list are grounded in some degree of reality. Readers may point to any one of them and say “Hey wait a minute, I do that, and here’s why…”. Many of them are come right from well-meaning articles on how to be more confident, smart or assertive.

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Great Leadership By Dan

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

Guest post from David C. Baker. Does a manager/leader need to be really good at what they manage? I would say for some professions, like sales, they do. What do you think? After interviewing more than 10,000 employees at 600+ companies, you start noticing patterns in effective leaders. Recognizing these patterns is a crucial step for first-time (and long-time) managers, as I’ve written about in Managing (Right) for the First Time.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 12, 2011

Guest post from Dave Mastovich on the importance of clear expectations: I have a friend who leads a Human Resources Consultancy. He often uses the phrase: “Why don’t employees do what they are supposed to do?” to market his services. I have often told him that he should add “Why don’t bosses explain what they really want?” to the mix. When it comes to getting things done with people, ambiguity breeds mediocrity.

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Great Leadership By Dan

MARCH 22, 2011

Is it ever OK for a manager to be friends with their employees? Believe me, this isn’t just a question brand new managers struggle with (and most of them do). It’s an issue a lot of experienced managers are questioned about as well, and many of them don’t think it’s a problem at all. The issue of “buddy to boss” might not be as black and white as you might think.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Guest post by Mark Royal and Tom Agnew, from Hay Group , regular contributors to Great Leadership: The term “doing more with less” is being used increasingly liberally by organizations today. However, there are often gaping holes between what is asked and what is executed. In many cases, organizations fail to understand or recognize the detrimental effect their “do more with less” approach has on employees’ productivity and rising frustration levels.

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Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 11, 2011

Guest post by Tom Salonek: Hundreds of leadership books suggest various theories and exercises designed to awaken one’s inner leader and other mystical secrets to unlocking one’s rightful leadership potential. Others suggest that some people are meant to lead and others are destined to be followers, as though leading an organization is on par with the priesthood.

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Great Leadership By Dan

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Conferences are a great way to learn some new best practices, expand your network, and hopefully come away energized with lots of new ideas to implement back on the job. There are usually two types of sessions at a conference – general sessions and concurrent sessions. The general sessions are the ones where you don’t have a choice, so everyone attends.

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Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 28, 2011

Here's the 2nd in a series of guest posts by Professor Jim Clawson , one of our Executive Development Program instructors for a custom program we offer on Leading Change. I introduced Jim to Great Leadership readers a few weeks ago with a post called "A Four-wheel-drive Diamond in the Rough Leadership Model". In this second installment, Jim offers his take on the difference between managers and leaders.

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Great Leadership By Dan

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

One of the cool perks of making the switch to university-based executive education is that I get to work with and learn from a lot of awesome business school professors. At the University of New Hampshire’s Whittemore School of Business and Economics , we often use our own faculty; however, I do have the flexibility to partner with external instructors when appropriate.

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Great Leadership By Dan

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Succession planning is the systematic assessment and identification of individuals to fill key leadership positions that may or will open up sometime in the future. It’s otherwise known as “what do we do if so and so gets hit by a bus or wins the lottery”. I’ve listened to speakers and authors say that it’s imperative that every organization do succession planning.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 6, 2011

Last month Aon Hewitt, The RBL Group and Fortune announced their Global Top Companies for Leaders list. It's been two years since the last list, not to be confused with the competing " Best Companies for Leaders " list sponsored by Businessweek and Hay Group. I like to look below the hood of these rankings, to see if there's anything new to learn when it comes to leadership development.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 19, 2011

According to research from the book Why Woman Mean Business , women now represent a majority of the talent pool, a majority of the market, and better gender balance in leadership yields better corporate performance. The data is compelling: • TALENT : Women represent 60% of university graduates in Europe and North America. • MARKET : Women make 80% of consumer goods purchasing decisions in the US. • BETTER BOTTOM LINE : - Companies with more women in leadership have a 35% higher return on equity.

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Great Leadership By Dan

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

Here's a guest post by Gina Abudi , who I've had the pleasure of meeting a couple times here in New England. Gina's also hosting a guest post from me over at her blog. Developing a Leadership Training Program for High Potentials: A Case Study. Given the number of baby boomers expected to retire between now and 2030 (the last group of baby boomers reach of the age of 65 in 2030, and, of course, some may choose to work past age 65) organizations need to prepare others to take over leadership roles

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 15, 2011

Guest post by Paul Eccher: On October 31, 2011, baseball legend Tony La Russa announced his retirement as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. Announced just three days after the Cardinals won the World Series, La Russa’s retirement follows an impressive, 16-year career with the Cardinals and 33-season career in Major League Baseball (MLB). He was also the third winningest manager in MLB history—behind only Connie Mack and John McGraw.

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Great Leadership By Dan

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Here's another guest post from Beth Armknecht Miller: In the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell , many of the stories focus on those outliers who were successful, often due to circumstances and luck. What if you have an outlying preference that holds you back? A behavior that if modified, moves you closer to the norm and makes you more effective? Let’s take a look at Decision Outliers.

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Great Leadership By Dan

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Here's a guest post by Steve Farber. Check out the contest at the end of the post for a chance to win a copy of Steve's latest book. When was the last time you modeled your behavior after something you saw on the X Games? Well, as leaders, we can all learn from these crazy athletes because they each experience what I like to call the OS!M. Imagine yourself on a street luge, lying flat on your back on a long wheeled sled, like a skateboard.

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Great Leadership By Dan

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

An effective new leader onboarding process can greatly reduce the time it takes a new leader to get up to speed, improve teamwork, and improve retention. Most organizations do a pretty decent job at the basics, i.e., a meeting with the boss, the team, and a few key stakeholders, directions to the rest room and cafeteria, etc…. Although, I’ve heard my share of horror stories, as I’m sure many of you have.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 13, 2011

By now you may have heard about the recruiter, Gary Chaplin , who lost his job for telling a job seeker off? Well, he didn’t just tell him off – he ripped him in an expletive-riddled email and accidentally copied 4000 fellow recruiters. To make matters worse, Chaplin signed it using the name of another recruiter (Richard Vickers), and ripped another recruiter (Dan McCarthy, no relation) in the email.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 4, 2011

The December Leadership Development Carnival is being hosted by my friends Becky Robinson and Kevin Eikenberry over at their Leadership and Learning blog. For this December edition, Kevin and Becky are breaking the Carnival up into multiple days - today through the rest of this week. You can find the first installment here. Be sure to check back each day for the rest of the Carnival.

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Great Leadership By Dan

AUGUST 7, 2011

The August 2011 Leadership Development Carnival is up! It's hosted this month by Jason Seiden, at his new profersonal blog. Jason has done an awesome job of screening and organizing over 40 recent posts on leadership development, submitted by some of my favorite bloggers. Good stuff - read all about it here.

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Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 2, 2011

The October Leadership Development Carnival is up! This month's edition is being hosted by Rochester, NY blogger (my old home town) Lynn Dessert , at her Elephants at Work blog. You can read it here. Next month's Carnival returns to Great Leadership. See the Carnival sidebar widget for details.

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Great Leadership By Dan

AUGUST 17, 2011

The August Leadership Development Roundtable Challenge is being hosted by leadership coach extraordinaire Mary Jo Asmus. Mary Jo wrote the challenge (based on a real case), selected the guest expert (Gwyn Teatro, from You're Not the Boss of Me ), herded up the Roundtable responses, and is hosting a voting poll for readers to select their favorite answers and/or add their own comments.

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The end of the year is typically a time spent scrambling to do all the things you need to get done but still haven't finished. However, it’s also a time to reflect on our accomplishments and think about what we want to achieve for the New Year. That includes individual development goals. In a business context, individual development goals should be closely aligned with your short and long term job responsibilities.

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Great Leadership By Dan

AUGUST 31, 2011

There’s been a lot written about how organizations can design and implement bullet proof 360 assessment programs. However, very little guidance has been provided to the hapless manager who ends up on the receiving end of one of these things. For those new to management or leadership development, a 360 assessment is a questionnaire designed to solicit feedback on leadership and management capabilities from a manager’s employees, peers, and manager, and includes a self-assessment as well. 360 asse

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Great Leadership By Dan

DECEMBER 22, 2011

Guest post by Great Leadership regular contributor Beth Armknecht Miller: Why is it important to develop future leaders within your company? Continuity of company culture, labor shortages, and an unexpected death of a senior manager are just a few important reasons. In his book, Built to Last , Jim Collins describes the very successful succession planning process that GE’s CEO, Reginald Jones, took to find a new CEO.

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Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 21, 2011

Thanks to Ken Kuzia and Rand Gee, from Up Your Leadership, for allowing me to re-print these valuable tips for setting performance measures: Setting clear, achievable, challenging, and unwavering (as much as possible given today’s rate of change) measures is critical to employee success. Appropriate measures are also strong motivators because most employees want to excel, and knowing the target helps them self-measure. 1.

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Great Leadership By Dan

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

Here's a guest post from one of my regulars, Beth Armknecht Miller. It's great advice - what a simple yet powerful way to improve your leadership effectiveness and relationships! Multi-Tasking: Is It Worth It? You see it at work. You drop by an employee’s workspace to discuss a current project and she continues to work on the computer while you are having the discussion.

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