Great Leadership By Dan

AUGUST 28, 2008

The questions below relate to the skills and qualities needed for effective coaching. Use this assessment to evaluate your own effectiveness as a coach. 1. Do you seize development opportunities and focus on immediate performance problems for your employees? 2. Do you try to develop a supportive, emotional bond with your employees? 3. Do you observe your employee's behavior?

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Great Leadership By Dan

MAY 26, 2008

1. Practice “what’s possible” thinking. Don’t limit to yourself based on previous failures. Practice using the phrase “up until now…” 2. Avoid the temptation to jump to the quick fix when solving a problem. In many cases, speed and simplicity can serve you well, but if overused, can limit your strategic alternatives. 3. Learn and practice the characteristics of strategic thinkers: - Curiosity: You’re genuinely interested in what’s going on in your unit, company, industry, and wider business envi

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Committee Strategic Planning Strategy Creativity 126

Great Leadership By Dan

JANUARY 16, 2008

Guest post from Brad Smart , Author of Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People : I don’t know about you, but early in my career I was very disappointed with my hiring track record. Assessing selection candidates was my job, too! Thirty years ago I began studying why almost EVERYONE’S hiring record was so bad.

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How To Reference Cost Case Study 126

Great Leadership By Dan

MAY 4, 2008

Here's some tips for leaders on communicating during turbulent times: Act as if it Matters · Make communications important to you personally · Measure yourself on how well you communicate (up, down, around) · Work on continuously improving your communication processes (written, oral, contextual, intuitive, interpersonal) Trust in your Informal Channels · Use Open Doors to gather information on what’s actually happening (or not happening) · “Shop Talk” is really quite accurate More is ALWAYS Bett

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Tips Real Estate Uncertainty Crisis 125

Great Leadership By Dan

OCTOBER 29, 2008

I’ve always been a strong proponent of the importance of having a written individual development plan (IDP) for leadership development. That is, identifying: - What you want to get better at - How you’re going to do it - When you’re going to do it I have one. I make sure my employees have one. And I try to encourage all employees to have one, not just managers.

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Planning Development Power Resistance 124

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 23, 2008

Today’s global business environment requires more and more leadership teams to operate from a distance. So how do you provide effective feedback when you don’t see your leaders on a regular basis? Here are some guidelines for effective long-distance feedback. Don’t leave feedback to chance. Giving feedback to long-distance team members requires you to make a more formal effort.

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Great Leadership By Dan

APRIL 22, 2008

Here's a checklist I've used to evaluate the quality of a leader's individual development plan. Use to evaluate your own plan or to coach others. Robustness 1. Has the IDP been generated/updated within the last 12 months? 2. Is the IDP complete? 3. Are the development actions substantial? 4. To what extent is there connectivity between the career path, leadership assessment, development needs and planned development actions?

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Great Leadership By Dan

JANUARY 12, 2008

1. Challenge current approaches to your work. Think about whether you and your direct reports can work together in new, previously unimaginable possibilities. 2. Challenge existing beliefs and assumptions. Ask yourself, your colleagues and your direct reports whether your current views about how things are done in your company are correct. 3. Get educated.

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Creativity Tips Brainstorming Open-book 123

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 24, 2008

Delegation, put most simply, involves the assignment of a specific task or project by one person to another, and the person’s commitment to complete the task or project. It is one of the most important skills demonstrated by successful leaders and one often neglected or overlooked by "overworked" leaders. Effective delegators spend time planning work assignments and organizing resources to achieve business goals in the most productive way possible.

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Delegation Guidelines Short-term Long-term 121

Great Leadership By Dan

JANUARY 24, 2008

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", The Who Using a structured “New Leader Integration Process” can: - Reduce the time that it takes a new leader and his or her new work team to begin to communicate more openly and freely, and build trust, inclusion, and collaboration - Offer the new team the opportunity to surface, explore and discuss their perceptions with the new leader, focusing on needs and expectations, concerns and issues, team direction, goals, and current or anticipated projects.

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Process Learning Curve Project Team 121

Great Leadership By Dan

APRIL 6, 2008

Guest post by the remarkable Keven Eikenberry : There are many reasons why trust is important to us as leaders. With higher levels of trust we are able to influence change more easily and quickly. With more trust we are able to create higher levels of productivity and team cohesiveness. I could go on, but in short, being trustworthy and trusted are two of the most valuable attributes remarkable leaders possess.

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Learning-by-Doing Consultative Budgeting Definition 120

Great Leadership By Dan

AUGUST 5, 2008

Companies will often use external, university-based programs as a way to develop their high potential senior leaders. These programs typically are 1-2 weeks in duration and offer an intense (and expensive) learning experience. According to Iris Marchaj, Director of Smith Executive Education, “99% of leadership development programs offered by elite business schools are male-oriented.which is precisely why they fail when it comes to leadership learning for women!

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Leadership Bond Execution Education 120

Great Leadership By Dan

MAY 2, 2008

Here's 6 tips for helping an employee find a mentor: 1. Look for individuals who are able to understand and shape the employee’s long-term professional goals (e.g., someone who has a similar background or who is currently in a position the employee might like to have in the future). 2. Consider people who are influential within the company. These individuals know how the organization works and can help your employee navigate the system. 3.

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Mentor Tips Long-term Report 120

Great Leadership By Dan

MAY 1, 2008

There was a question over on the ASTD discussion board that inspired me to write this post. Pam asked: “ I am looking for ideas to provide training with limited resources (space, money and staff)”. It’s a great question. I’ll bet there’s a lot of small, one-person training departments and even big, global companies that need to run a lean organization that are looking for ways to train or develop leaders on the cheap.

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Great Leadership By Dan

APRIL 21, 2008

Pepsi has always been known as a great company for leader's. USA Today recently did an interview with Their CEO, Eric Foss. Here's the link: Retain talent, but develop it, Pepsi Bottling chief says. I like what he has to say. Here's a summary: 1. Most people quit because they feel underappreciated. Give talented executives stretch assignments. 2. It's a myth that all fresh ideas come from new hires and that long tenure creates stale thinking.

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Leadership Development Development Leadership Definition 120

Great Leadership By Dan

APRIL 20, 2008

Here’s 10 sure-fire ways to derail even your most promising high potential employees: 1. First of all, recognize that high-potential employees are a threat to your own job and treat them that way. These eager beavers are always exceeding expectations, are ambitious, and want nothing more than to step all over you to climb their career ladder. 2. Put them in a job rotation program, with a never-ending series of short assignments with no real accountability or opportunity to contribute.

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Mentor Follow-up Career Goal 120

Great Leadership By Dan

APRIL 13, 2008

The two major reasons people do not give effective feedback are lack of time and lack of comfort. Listed here are five easy ways to confront these barriers head on. Barrier: “I do not have enough time to give feedback on a regular basis.” Solution #1: Schedule one-on-one development sessions with each of your team members at the beginning of the year.

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Tips Information Efficiency Goal 120

Great Leadership By Dan

MARCH 31, 2008

1.Make time to get out and see people. When you are with them spend most of the time listening. 2. Resist the urge to try and take control of everything. Instead get your star performers involved and rely on them. 3. Tell your people everything that might matter to them. If there are things you cannot tell them, tell them that. 4. Strong emotions will not disappear overnight.

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Great Leadership By Dan

MARCH 3, 2008

The ability to listen effectively is an essential component of leadership, but few leaders know just what it takes to become a better listener. You can improve your ability to lead effectively by learning the six skills for active listening. CCL's Michael Hoppe recently authored the guidebook Active Listening to make CCL's approach to active listening more explicit and available to a broad audience.

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Great Leadership By Dan

MARCH 2, 2008

Teams and organizations can often get too insular and unable to think outside of their own boxes. Leaders need to encourage team members to look outside for new ideas. Here's 12 ways to ensure your team members are getting their daily dose of external perspective: 1. Send team members to external training, networking events, or conferences 2. Forward newsletters, articles, research, and best practice reports to your team 3.

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Team Brainstorming Newsletter Conference 120

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 23, 2008

The ability to think creatively is a valuable thinking skill that leaders can apply when faced with problems that require a fresh approach. What is creative thinking? It’s the ability to generate fresh alternatives, visualize new possibilities, formulate new approaches to getting things done, and open yourself to new information that does not support your existing assumptions about the way people should do things at your company.

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Creativity Efficiency Environment Process 120

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 16, 2008

Think “what if?” With every idea or course of action under consideration, ask yourself and others, “If we implement this idea, how will other units and stakeholders be affected? What might be the long-term ramifications of this decision?” Broaden your perspective. When making an important decision, resist any urge to choose quickly from the first few alternatives that emerge.

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Tips Long-term Resistance Magazine 120

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 16, 2008

We all dread it – the feedback session to: · Address a serious behavior or performance issue · Deliver news that will be an unpleasant surprise to the recipient Tough feedback is just that. tough. And while we may not ever get to a point where we look forward to sharing difficult information, there are ways to make these conversations less difficult.

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Tips Document Review Follow-up 120

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 3, 2008

Developing employees can be time-intensive. Matching direct reports’ interests, values, and skills to growth opportunities requires energy and careful consideration. How can you optimize the time spent on this activity? By understanding who on your team should be developed—and who requires performance improvement. To understand how successful leaders allocate their employee development time, it’s helpful to consider the return on management, or ROM, of developing your direct reports.

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Leadership Development Development Leadership Energy 120

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 2, 2008

It’s easy to recognize the employees in your organization who bring in the biggest revenues or win awards, or the A players. But there are others that are also important: those who consistently meet expectations but are not standout performers. While these B players may not seek the limelight, it’s still critical for managers to recognize, value, and grow these employees.

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Leadership Development Development Leadership Seminar 120

Great Leadership By Dan

JANUARY 29, 2008

In a previous post, I wrote about how to use a performance and potential matrix to assess your organization's talent : [link]. In this next series of posts, I'm going to describe how to use the results of this assessment process to determine what kind of development strategy is appropriate for every type of leader. Although there are nine boxes in the matrix , I find it more practical to group talent into four categories , each requiring a different leadership development strategy.

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Leadership Development Strategy Development Leadership 120

Great Leadership By Dan

JANUARY 29, 2008

Developing your stars is critical to an organization’s success. Your best employees, or A players, boost company performance, both directly—by working harder at their jobs—and indirectly, by their ability to inspire and motivate others. Therefore it’s critical to invest the time and energy to keep them satisfied and engaged. Understand what drives A players Finding out what motivates your top employees on an individual level is critical.

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Great Leadership By Dan

JANUARY 3, 2008

Most of us have heard of the concept of "leader's teaching leaders" - Noel Tichy commercialized the concept in his 2002 book, The Leadership Engine. Jack Welch was known for the amount of time he spent in Crotinville sparing with high-potential managers in "the pit". Here's 10 practical ways to get leaders involved in leadership development programs: 1.

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Leadership Development Development Welch Leadership 120

Great Leadership By Dan

FEBRUARY 16, 2008

The Center for Creative leadership’s research on executive success and failure identified the significance of “derailers”, and how they differ than just mere weaknesses. They studied leaders who made it to at least the G.M. level, but then their careers had involuntarily stalled, or had been demoted, fired, or asked to take early retirement. A derailer is not just a weakness.

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Leadership Self-aware Career Teamwork 121

Great Leadership By Dan

JANUARY 13, 2008

DO: 1. Seek feedback on a regular basis, especially after you have identified development goals. Exchanging information and perceptions is a process, not a single event. 2. Receive feedback as a gift that provides you with honest information about your perceived behavior/performance. Be open to what you will hear. 3. Let the person finish what he or she is saying. 4.

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Tips Goal Information Process 158

Great Leadership By Dan

APRIL 18, 2008

Here's a list of modern office techie jargon, thanks to the gang over at Newly Corporate. Adminisphere: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. Alpha Geek: The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group.

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