Leading Blog

OCTOBER 16, 2012

Imagine for a moment that you as a leader didn’t have all the perks that seem to accompany positions of leadership—no lease car, no reserved parking space, no special dining rooms, offices, furnishings or refreshments and certainly not the compensation that creates jealousies. Would you still want to be a leader? What if no one had to think that your way was always the best way?

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Leading Blog

OCTOBER 30, 2012

This is a guest post by David Grossman, author of You Can’t NOT Communicate. Grossman says that there are very few things in this world that are neutral. Everything you do, and everything you say, communicates something. And, importantly, everything you don’t do, and everything you don’t say, communicates, too. In our world – and in the world of business – virtually nothing is neutral.

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Leading Blog

AUGUST 24, 2012

Jazz has always been a good metaphor for the art of leadership. In Yes to the Mess , Frank Barrett, knocks out of the park. How do we create a culture where people can innovate? Barrett wants us to look at leadership differently and increase our leadership repertoire beyond hierarchical models, “so that we more fully appreciate the power of relationships.

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Leading Blog

AUGUST 17, 2012

As leaders, if we take too much control and do not encourage others to take responsibility, we set ourselves and others up for failure. Roger Martin calls it the responsibility virus and it always begins with the germ of fear. “This vacillation between over- and under-responsibility is an endless loop. Fear of failure drives them into an initial extreme position.

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Leading Blog

JULY 9, 2012

Jim Shaffer, author of The Leadership Solution , believes that top companies are guided by these three best principles: They value their people. Everyone says it but not everyone lives it. Consultant John Guaspari says, “Our people have to jump in because there isn’t time to wait for ‘the answer’ to come from on high. And even if time weren’t an issue, ‘on high’ doesn’t know ‘the answer.

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Leading Blog

JULY 27, 2012

Leading without a title is about taking personal responsibility. We—the world—is in desperate need of people who will choose to lead whenever and wherever they can. In The Titleless Leader , Nan Russell describes where we are: Everything isn’t alright in our workplaces. People are frustrated, angry, disillusioned, tired, and afraid. Not to mention skeptical, cynical, and distrustful.

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Leading Blog

APRIL 2, 2012

“I deserve.”. Leadership is demanding. It takes a personal toll and if we are not careful, we can begin to make it about us. It’s not a difficult position to rationalize. The problem with “I deserve” is that it changes our perspective. We see our contribution as more important than anyone else’s contribution. It creates a lack of proportion. It leads to a wrong motivation for leadership: leadership as a means to better get what we want.

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Leading Blog

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

Max McKown accurately argues in Unshrink that our beliefs have shrunk us. They have limited our responses. And it profoundly affects our ability to adapt. Adaptability is a book about how people adapt. It is about how to win more often. “In the future,” writes author Max McKeown, “you can try to maintain what you already have, or you can attempt to transcend the constraints of your situation.

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Leading Blog

DECEMBER 7, 2012

Are individual leaders truly responsible for the end result, or do they just happen to be there—for better or worse? asks Gautam Mukunda in Indispensible. To be sure, Lincoln and Churchill have mattered, but does every leader matter? Of course, every leader matters to someone. But here Mukunda is talking about leaders who matter on a larger scale—those that matter to all of us.

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Leading Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2012

This is a guest post by Jack Zenger, co-author of How To Be Exceptional: Drive Leadership Success By Magnifying Your Strengths. Readers will learn not only how to pinpoint their best leadership traits but will learn ways to leverage their strengths into ones that truly distinguish them. Why do people all over the world enjoy participating in games and sports?

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Leading Blog

MAY 21, 2012

Gary Burnison considers leadership to be a privilege. Most people like the idea of leadership but few count the cost. He says, “To lead is to be all in, transparent and accessible, calm in the face of upset and even crisis, and always mindful that you are a steward of something bigger than yourself.” That’s not easy. To whom much is given much is required.

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Leading Blog

AUGUST 16, 2012

Bill Lane was Jack Welch’s speechwriter for nearly two decades. In Losing It , he draws on his experiences primarily at GE to highlight the behaviors that are career killers. Naturally, Welch figures into much of this book. Reading the stories you might recognize a few areas where you may need to rethink your approach or behavior. Most of his insights are the kind of common sense that we easily see overlooked by others but forget to put into practice in our own lives.

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Leading Blog

MAY 16, 2012

Ritch Eich says that Real Leaders Don’t Boss. “Real leaders are rare in today’s fast-moving, financially driven world. In their place are fast-track wannabes and imposters, intent on instant gratification in the form of quick (and unsustainable) bottom-line results.” As Eich observes, there are far too many bosses and not enough leaders. Bosses who are too narrowly focused, see employees as tools, are respecters of position, controls rather than empowers, and sets expectations for others that th

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Leading Blog

MARCH 22, 2012

Fistitude is a fable about a basketball team at a small private high school that is struggling through a rough season. The coach must take a leave and it is up to the interim coach to try to turn things around. Through Fistitude —each finger representing a success attitude—author Sean Glaze presents five lessons to build leaders and teamwork. Glaze illustrates that leadership is taking personal responsibility for what happens, holding yourself accountable and setting an example for others.

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Leading Blog

JANUARY 16, 2012

1. Because you are generous with information. You know it enables and values others. 2. Because you eschew the trappings of power. You respect your position too much to let yourself become self-absorbed and disconnected from those you serve. 3. Because you know leadership isn’t about how well you are appreciated, but it’s about endlessly showing your appreciation of others.

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Leading Blog

AUGUST 28, 2012

The often repeated phrase, “There’s no ‘I’ in TEAM” is only half true. It ignores the fact that great teams have great individual members. And high performing teams are not always easy places to be. Mark de Rond acknowledges in There Is an I in Team , that “with few exceptions, the qualities that make individuals as gifted as they are can make them wearisome as team members.

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Leading Blog

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Thinking like a futurist isn’t a magical process. If it were, we would be a lot better at it. Practically, it is about creativity. It’s learning to step out of our present thinking to make connections with what we don’t yet know. Any good book on “future thinking” should help you do just that. Think Like a Futurist by Cecily Sommers, is just such a book.

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Leading Blog

APRIL 20, 2012

We all like to think we are in charge of our choices. But the fact is that most of the time we are reacting, not choosing. Most of what we label choice is habit. We’re really on automatic. It can even lead us to think that we have no choice. Only when we pause—slow-down to think and reflect—are we exercising our ability to choose. Nance Guilmartin writes in The Power of Pause that a pause is “any space between an action and your reaction.

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Leading Blog

MAY 15, 2012

The Strategist is not a book about strategy, but a book designed to equip and inspire you to be a strategist. Author Cynthia Montgomery, says we have reduced strategy to a right-brain exercise and have lost sight of what it takes to lead the effort. The essential component of the strategy-making process is the leader. Leaders must not ignore or underestimate their crucial and ongoing role as a strategist.

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Leading Blog

APRIL 25, 2012

This is a guest post by David Gebler author of The 3 Power Values. Gebler believes that employees already have embody the values needed to create a high-performing culture, so leaders need to remove the behavior-based roadblocks that keep people from being able to live their values at work. Commitment, integrity and transparency keep an organizations core values aligned with each other because they serve as counterweights to our human tendencies to go off-track.

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Leading Blog

APRIL 12, 2012

In trying to understand the dynamics of team interactions, Les McKeown writes in The Synergist , that people tend to act primarily in one of three naturally occurring styles: the Visionary, the Operator or the Processor. (A free assessment is available online.). The Visionary thinks big, generates creative ideas, and takes risks. They also become irritated by detail and can disengage easily when bored.

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Leading Blog

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

When our performance is in a slump or we get stuck, we tend to become anxious and reach for any quick fix or technique that promises to get us out of it. We apply more effort, focus, and willpower. And when all of that doesn’t work, we get even more anxious and our performance heads even further south. Instead, when we get stuck we need to rely on Stillpower , not willpower says Garret Kramer.

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Leading Blog

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Sara Canaday address a vital issue for leaders in You According to Them : self-awareness. While it is fundamental to our growth, we usually don’t make the time to explore it. And too frequently, we dismiss feedback or make excuses for the insights we receive into our own behavior. How we are perceived matters more to our leadership effectiveness than our intentions.

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Leading Blog

APRIL 10, 2012

In the New York Times , Stephen I. Sadove , chairman and chief executive of Saks Inc., explains that it is culture that drives results: It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.

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Leading Blog

MARCH 7, 2012

Gayle Beebe has written a book on how effective and moral leaders develop and more importantly, how they must continue to develop. Too often leaders think they have made it and stop working on themselves. Eventually they become leaders in title only. He writes in The Shaping of an Effective Leader : Our understanding of leadership does not come to us all at once.

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Leading Blog

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Brian Tracy and Christina Stein have written a book— Kiss That Frog —to help you root out the causes of the negative thoughts that are influencing your attitudes and behaviors more than you realize. It’s a critical issue for leaders. “All emotions, especially negative emotions, distort evaluations. A person in the grip of a negative emotion is incapable of thinking clearly or rationally.

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Leading Blog

JANUARY 11, 2012

“There are thousands of books on success. But very few on failure,” begins Siimon Reynolds in Why People Fail. “Yet mastering failure is surely a vital step in achieving your aims, hopes, and dreams.”. He is passionately driven to take the "taboo" out of failure. As Reynolds suggests it is a "forbidden subject. We're not supposed to fail and if we do, we're supposed to hide it from everybody.

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Leading Blog

AUGUST 8, 2012

Leadership is always a choice. In Leadership by Choice , author Eric Papp says it means “making a conscious choice to positively influence those around you by managing yourself and leading others in four areas: communication, leading teams, productivity, and personal development.” Communication — How well do you listen, ask questions, and speak with influence?

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Leading Blog

MARCH 9, 2012

“Most new hires do not fail on the job due to lack of skill,” says Mark Murphy. Attitude is a bigger issue than skill. Consequently, most of our approaches to selecting the right people for the job are dead wrong. In Hiring for Attitude , Murphy lists the top five reasons why new hires failed: Coachability (26%): The ability to accept and implement feedback from bosses, colleagues, customers, and others.

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Leading Blog

MARCH 19, 2012

Being smart has become a commodity. It's permission to play, says Patrick Lencioni. He writes in The Advantage : In this world of ubiquitous information and nanosecond technology exchange, it’s harder than it has ever been in history to maintain a competitive advantage based on intelligence or knowledge….I have become absolutely convinced that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little to do with what they know or how smart they are; it has e

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Leading Blog

DECEMBER 12, 2012

What I like most about the work of John Baldoni is that it is very practical. His advice is relatable, practical, and gets to the core if the issue. In article after article, book after book, he hits the nail on the head. The Leader’s Pocket Guide is the next best thing to having John as your own personal coach. He shares the lessons he’s learned coaching others.

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Leading Blog

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

Former CEO and president of Verison Wireless, Denny Strigl explores nine specific behaviors that leaders do and don’t do that make them serious performers, marginal performers, or failures. In "Managers, can you hear me now?" he says it’s all about behavior. Managers Fail to Build Trust and Integrity. The three major qualities of trust are Integrity, openness, and respect.

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Leading Blog

FEBRUARY 6, 2012

Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller have penned another business fable, Great Leaders Grow. People and organizations are not fully alive unless they are growing. They ask, “will you be a leader who is always ready to face the next challenge, or will you be a leader that tries to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems? The latter will ultimately fail,” say the authors.

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Leading Blog

OCTOBER 19, 2012

Jay Elliot, former Senior Vice President of Apple, has spent a lot of time with Steve Jobs. In Leading Apple with Steve Jobs , he writes that “ Isaacson’s Steve is not the Steve I knew.” He believes that there has been too much focus on the negative aspects of how Jobs dealt with people and not enough on the positive. “I think,” he writes, “most people who worked for him, including me, would say they did the best work of their lives for him and don’t regret the experience a bit.

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Leading Blog

NOVEMBER 19, 2012

Failure is not an option. And we learn a lot if we take the time to learn from our mistakes. But gain much more when we can learn from the mistakes of others before we find ourselves confronted with the same issues. The Wisdom of Failure by Laurance Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughey, examines the lessons learned by studying thousands of executives in hundreds of companies.

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Leading Blog

FEBRUARY 8, 2012

Without a clear sense of purpose, organizations become listless. John Baldoni says in Lead With Purpose that it falls to the leader to make certain that organizational purpose is understood and acted upon. Retired Army colonel, George Reed told Baldoni that the importance of this cannot be underestimated: I don’t think you can hit purpose enough as a senior leader.

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Leading Blog

JANUARY 27, 2012

We handicap our potential when we think we have to exploit others to get ahead. Succeeding is not a zero-sum game. We don’t look better when everyone else looks worse. Frank Sonnenberg makes the case in Managing with a Conscience , that the only sustainable way to succeed is the right way—not cutting corners—emphasizing the intangibles like trust, creativity, focus, speed, flexibility, relationships, loyalty, and employee commitment.

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