Next Level Blog

MARCH 22, 2013

So, it’s pretty clear that Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, doesn’t need any help from me in promoting her new book, Lean In. (For more on Sandberg on this blog check out Wondering ‘Am I A Good Leader?’ Take the Sheryl Sandberg Test.) In what is the most impressive book launch I’ve ever seen, Sandberg and her book on women and leadership have received a ton of coverage and conversation online.

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COO Magazine Review Blog 247

Next Level Blog

AUGUST 19, 2013

'Along with my normal routine of coaching, speaking and writing, my big project this summer has been taking a 200 hour course to become a certified yoga instructor. While I don’t plan to chuck everything else and start teaching yoga full time, it’s been a really great experience – enlightening, challenging and humbling all at the same time. And, I’m happy to report, it wraps up next week.

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Stress Class System Report 243

Next Level Blog

AUGUST 5, 2013

'The title of this post is the title of one of my favorite songs, Your Life is Now, by John Mellencamp. It has been on my mind since the very unexpected passing last week of an old high school friend, the Reverend Greg Hamby. As is often the case with news of long ago friends, I learned from Facebook of Greg''s death. He broke his neck while body surfing with his son on vacation at Myrtle Beach and died in ICU the next day.

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Next Level Blog

JULY 15, 2013

'I don''t remember where I first heard it, but one of the best questions I was ever asked was are you a human being or a human doing? A big portion of my life has been spent as a human doing. Lately, though, I''ve spent time and attention on being in the midst of all the doing.My schedule is usually pretty crazy and I''m guessing yours is too. It sort of comes with the territory when you''re a leader.

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Next Level Blog

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

'A few years ago I wrote a post called Three Reasons You Should Fire the Prima Donna. That one was about why leaders should be decisive in exiting high performing but totally disruptive members of their team. Consider this post the next level up companion to the Prima Donna post. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been in multiple conversations in which experienced senior leaders have discussed their lessons learned along the way.

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Team Talent Management Leadership Development 239

Next Level Blog

MAY 9, 2013

'A couple of months ago, I was talking with an executive leader I’ve known for a few years. One of the things I’ve noticed about him in that time is that his confidence has grown in a very appropriate and admirable way. I mentioned this to him and, in reply, he laughed softly and said, “It’s a fine line between confidence and indifference.”. Click headline to continue.

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Execution Leadership 236

Next Level Blog

FEBRUARY 14, 2013

Being the topical kind of guy that I am, on Valentine’s Day I find myself asking what does love have to do with leadership? As it turns out, quite a lot I think. In surfing the web while writing this post, I came upon this Wikipedia article which addresses the differing concepts of love from culture to culture. It was a good reminder of how limited my perspective can be.

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Leadership Definition Course Article 235

Next Level Blog

JUNE 20, 2013

'As an executive coach, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the title of this post may not be the world’s best business development strategy. But, after more than 12 years as a coach, I think I’ve learned when it makes sense to hire a coach and when it doesn’t. I’ll get to the reasons why you should hire a coach next week. This week, though, I want to start with three of my favorite reasons why you shouldn’t hire a coach.

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Executive Coaching Execution Business Development Strategy 233

Next Level Blog

JULY 8, 2013

'Do you say things to yourself that you would never say to someone you care about? Most of us do from time to time. Some of us more than others. We chastise ourselves when we don''t live up to our own expectations. We berate ourselves when we make a mistake. We kick ourselves when we forget something important. That voice inside your head that''s saying all of that is often called the inner critic.

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Committee Leadership 232

Next Level Blog

MAY 29, 2013

'Effective leadership is all about getting stuff done through and with other people. Even for the most powerful leaders (think of the President of the United States for instance) getting stuff done is more often about influence than it is authority. In a recent conversation with a fellow executive coach and author, Joel Garfinkle, we brainstormed what influence is all about and simple, actionable ways that you can increase yours.

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Influence Brainstorming Executive Coaching Career 232

Next Level Blog

JANUARY 21, 2013

One of my favorite things in our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program is when the high potential participants come together in the fourth session to debrief each other on their Executive Shadow Days. Before they show up for a day of coaching on Organizational Presence, they spend a day shadowing a senior executive in their organization. During their shadow day, they do whatever the executive does.

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How To Participative Execution Organization 232

Next Level Blog

FEBRUARY 12, 2013

As I write this, it’s the evening of the day that Pope Benedict XVI announced that he intends to resign the papacy at the end of this month. Considering that the last time a pope resigned was 600 years ago, his announcement qualifies as a pretty big story. There’s been a lot of reporting and commentary today about the impact of Benedict’s resignation.

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Letter Morale Analysis Leadership 225

Next Level Blog

JANUARY 10, 2013

During the past couple of months, I’ve been in four or five conversations with leadership development professionals who are looking for a way to build executive presence in their organization’s high potential managers. Most of them have tried different programs and approaches and they’re not happy with the results they’ve gotten. I have a theory about why that’s the case.

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Execution Leadership Development Course Article 224

Next Level Blog

JUNE 24, 2013

'One of the biggest barriers to being present is worrying about what might happen in the future rather than what you can do right now. Two of my favorite quotes speak to this challenge. The Renaissance writer, Montaigne, wrote, "My life has been full of misfortunes most of which never happened. A few hundred years later, Thomas Jefferson expressed the similar idea, "How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

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Class Cost 222

Next Level Blog

JANUARY 15, 2013

Believe me, I don’t usually take pictures in restrooms but, in a “can’t believe what I’m seeing moment”, I had to snap the shot that accompanies this post. In case it’s not showing up as you’re reading this, it’s a sink faucet with a working video screen affixed to the top. I saw it today in the men’s room of a major conference center somewhere in America.

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Execution Conference Video 223

Next Level Blog

JUNE 13, 2013

'News stories don''t get much bigger than this week''s revelation that government contractor Edward Snowden revealed classified information to The Guardian and the Washington Post that the National Security Agency has a program that collects and analyzes the phone records of millions of Americans. This post isn''t a commentary on the NSA program or what Snowden did (although I agree with Jeffrey Toobin''s argument on why he should be prosecuted).

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Information Leadership 221

Next Level Blog

JUNE 27, 2013

'When I wrote a post last week called Three Reasons You Should Not Hire a Coach, I promised to revisit the topic this week with the reasons you should hire a coach. Upon further reflection, I thought it would be more useful to share three signs that you’re ready for a coach. Much like last week’s post, my point of view is informed by more than a dozen years of working with scores of great coaching clients and, frankly, a few that I shouldn’t have taken on.

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Executive Coaching Execution Information Leadership 219

Next Level Blog

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

'Do you think you’re creative? Are you a font of innovation and new ideas? Do you regularly spark your team to think differently? If your answer to these questions is yes, that’s awesome – keep going. If your answer is no or I don’t know, there’s a single best thing you can do to be more creative. In a recent conversation I had with David Burkus, assistant professor of management at Oral Roberts University and author of the new book, The Myths of Creativity, he made the point that most creative

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Creativity Innovation Books Team 217

Next Level Blog

APRIL 4, 2013

'If you follow sports or even just the news in general, you’ve likely seen the video of Rutgers men’s basketball coach Mike Rice shoving his players, hitting them with thrown balls and screaming homophobic slurs at them during practices last year. Make that former Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice because once the tape was aired on ESPN this week, went viral and commentators started calling for his head, he was fired within 24 hours.

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Leadership Sports Video 218

Next Level Blog

OCTOBER 30, 2013

'It''s a bad sign when a leader gets to the point where both friends and foes are asking, “What did he know and when did he know it?” That’s where President Obama is this week with lots of questions being raised about what and when he knew about big problems with the Healthcare.gov website launch and more than five years of NSA eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone conversations.

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Definition Leadership 214

Next Level Blog

AUGUST 12, 2013

'How are you feeling as the week begins? Is it a peaceful, easy feeling or something a bit more frantic than that? If there is one common denominator I see in the leaders I work with across a range of industries it’s that most of them would check in on the more frantic and overwhelmed end of the spectrum than the peaceful and easy end of the scale. The irony is that a bit more of the peaceful and easy approach can help lessen the frantic and overwhelmed feeling that a full calendar, inbox and to

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Industry Productivity Products Leadership 214

Next Level Blog

JUNE 6, 2013

'This weekend, President Obama will host the new president of China, Xi Jinping, for two days at a resort called Sunnyvale in Rancho Mirage, California. As reported in the New York Times and other outlets, the two leaders will spend a lot of time in relaxed and unscripted conversations with the goal of getting to know each other better. While there are risks involved in such an approach, they seem to be outweighed by the potential rewards of the leaders of the world’s two biggest superpowers bet

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Next Level Blog

MARCH 18, 2013

A big part of being a mindful leader is knowing your triggers. As emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman and others remind us, one of the biggest differences between human beings and other animals is our capacity to manage the gap between stimulus and response. A trigger is one form of stimulus. Quite often when we’re triggered, we react instead of respond.

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Goleman Emotional Intelligence Management Leadership 213

Next Level Blog

NOVEMBER 22, 2013

'For more than 50 years of his almost 96 year life, Peter Drucker was known as the "Father of Modern Management." His dozens of books included The Concept of the Corporation, The Practice of Management and The Effective Executive. Drucker was one of the few big thinkers who changed the way people view leadership. Can you imagine what it would have been like to have had him as your personal coach?

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Drucker Execution Books Management 212

Next Level Blog

JANUARY 2, 2013

Like millions of Americans on Monday night, I watched Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve to count down to the new year as the ball dropped in Times Square. Of course, it wasn’t the same show as in decades past because Dick Clark passed away last April. But, it was still Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest. And, as the title of the show implies, among his many other accomplishments, Dick Clark left a world class lesson in leadership succession planning.

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Ryan Planning Succession Class 212

Next Level Blog

OCTOBER 23, 2013

'One of the few encouraging things that came out of the Federal government shutdown fiasco that ended last week was that the women of the US Senate were instrumental in working together to solve it. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, the women of the Senate from both sides of the aisle took it upon themselves to start talking and keep talking until they figured out a way out.

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Cooper Report Leadership 210

Next Level Blog

NOVEMBER 8, 2013

'If you’ve been in organizational life for any amount of time, you’ve probably been a member of a toxic team. Not to be a downer, but if you haven’t been you likely will be in the future. The good news is there’s something you can do about it no matter what your role is on the team. Team dynamics expert Liane Davey shares practical steps on how to do that in her new book, You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along and Get Stuff Done.

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Team How To Team Building Books 210

Next Level Blog

DECEMBER 18, 2013

'This is the time of year that instills fear and loathing in the hearts of managers everywhere. The good news is that you may be planning on taking some extended time off during the holiday season. The bad news is you may also be planning to spend some of those precious hours writing up annual performance reviews for the people that report to you. If that sounds like what you’ll be doing over the next couple of weeks, I’m here with three tips to help make it at least somewhat pain free for you a

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Performance Review Review Tips Report 208

Next Level Blog

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

'At the end of a Next Level Intensive workshop yesterday, I asked the participants for some ideas on topics they''d like to cover in future sessions or what they''d like to see me address in my blog. As people were leaving the room, one of the managers sidled up to me and said she''d really like to see a post on navigating organizational politics. That''s one that I have some strong opinions on so here we are.

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Politics Workshop Influence Participative 208

Next Level Blog

APRIL 25, 2013

'A big part of my job as a coach is delivering colleague feedback summaries to my executive coaching clients. Sometimes the feedback is hard for them to hear. I have sympathy for them. I was once a corporate executive and, in one particular case, got some blistering 360 feedback that had me licking my wounds for a month or two before I finally gathered up the gumption to act on it.

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Executive Coaching Execution Leadership 208

Next Level Blog

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

'Last week I wrote in the first few pages of a new journal. I haven’t counted all of the old, filled-up, dog-eared journals I have. I’d guess there are around 10 of them. I started journaling in the mornings for a few minutes around 15 years ago. If you’ve doing the math, you’ve probably figured out that I’m not a very consistent journal keeper. Some weeks I’ll write every day in a row and other weeks not at all.

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Examples 207

Next Level Blog

JULY 29, 2013

'How many decisions do you think you make in a day? The research I’ve seen says its anywhere from 600 or so to 10,000 on average. When I think about all of the relatively inconsequential decisions I make every day (e.g. what shirt to wear, what I’m going to have for breakfast, etc.), I’m inclined to go with the higher number. Any way you slice it, it’s a lot of daily decisions for most people.

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Argyris Analysis Learning-by-Doing 207

Next Level Blog

OCTOBER 21, 2013

'It was three years ago last week that I started practicing yoga. I got into it because I was looking for a way to stay in shape when my knees and other health challenges more or less brought an end to my thirty five year career as a runner. I thought I was in pretty good shape but my first yoga class seemed like it would never end. Three years later, I’ve taken close to 1,000 classes and, about a month ago, completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training program.

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Class Leadership Review Career 206

Next Level Blog

MAY 16, 2013

'A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called Five Ways to Get Your Calendar Under Control. Since then, I’ve used it as the starting point for a conversation among high potential leaders in our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program. As the inflow becomes heavier and the expectations become higher, taming the calendar beast is a common challenge for leaders.

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Tips Management Leadership How To 206

Next Level Blog

JANUARY 30, 2013

Last week I wrote a post called How to Run a Staff Meeting that was based on some of the wisdom learned by participants in the Next Level Leadership® group coaching program during their executive shadow days. Today’s post is based on another lesson learned by a high potential leader during his shadow day. It’s why you need to occasionally hang out with the competition.

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Participative Execution Leadership How To 206

Next Level Blog

OCTOBER 2, 2013

'Well, here we are again. This week’s Federal government shutdown is the latest in a series of sad and maddening examples of a leadership class that’s disconnected from the people it’s supposed to lead and serve. There are plenty of commentators from across the spectrum who are offering their opinions on the issues and the politics behind the shutdown so.

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Class Politics Examples Leadership 206

Next Level Blog

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

'A client who frequently travels internationally told me a fascinating story recently. My client is a regular visitor to Africa and told me about a safari tour guide he met in Botswana. This guide is so skilled and experienced at what he does that he can approach an 18,000 pound bull elephant with no fear of being charged. The guide and the elephant go eye to eye.

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