Next Level Blog

AUGUST 3, 2015

Whenever we run a 360 or self-assessment based on The Next Level model of leadership presence, one of the lowest rated behaviors is usually “Gives others his/her full presence and attention during meetings and conversations.” If you take a little time to observe your own behavior and that of others you work or live with, you’ll understand why the behavior of being fully present is often rated so low.

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Document Leadership 194

Next Level Blog

APRIL 23, 2015

'The title of this post is a question I was asked yesterday during an interview for the book summary service Get Abstract. (Audio excerpts from the interview will be available in a few months.) While I guess I’ve thought about the difference between executive and leadership presence over the years (I wrote a book on the latter after all), I have never had the question put to me that directly.

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Execution Leadership Books 193

Next Level Blog

MARCH 19, 2015

'As I wrote here a few months ago, the biggest development opportunity for many of the rising leaders I work with as an executive coach is to play a bigger game. Once a leader achieves a level of mastery in leading his or her functional team, the next step is to play a bigger leadership role (informal, formal or both) in the broader organization. This dynamic has come up in a couple of coaching conversations I’ve had lately which prompts me to share these ten tips for how you or the rising leade

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Executive Coaching Leadership Development Tips Execution 191

Next Level Blog

FEBRUARY 6, 2015

'The title of this post comes from a comment made at a global leadership team meeting I was facilitating earlier this year. The purpose of the meeting was to review 360 degree feedback on the team and its members. In the format we were using, each team member had around 15 minutes in the spotlight to share what they learned from their feedback, what they are working on to take their game to the next level and to get advice from their colleagues on simple things they could do that would make a di

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360-Degree Feedback Advice Globalization Review 186

Next Level Blog

JUNE 29, 2015

In a first century A.D. epistle to believers in Ephesus, John the Evangelist wrote that “perfect love casts out fear.” In the United States over the past two weeks, we have witnessed remarkable example after remarkable example of love triumphing over fear. As we begin a new week, it seems worthy to reflect on recent events and how they might inspire our actions going forward.

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Examples 181

Next Level Blog

JULY 27, 2015

One of the big reasons you need a vacation this summer is to take a break from the chronic state of fight or flight that an overworked and overwhelmed lifestyle generates. By doing some quick math based on email statistics collected by the Radicati Group, I’m ball parking that the average business person gets 113 emails per day. When I ask the people in my leadership workshops how many they get in a day the responses are usually in the range of 200 to 300.

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Workshop Leadership Strategy 179

Next Level Blog

AUGUST 17, 2015

The executive that signed professional golfer Jordan Spieth to a long-term endorsement deal with Under Armour should get a raise. In the year, since he signed on, the 21 year old Texan has won two major golf championships, missed winning the other two by a total of four strokes and, with his second place finish in the PGA Championship yesterday, captured the number one ranking in the world.

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Short-term Long-term Execution 178

Next Level Blog

OCTOBER 12, 2015

As I’ve gotten older, my operating theory has been that each passing year feels shorter because it’s a smaller percentage of my overall life. (I was so excited to see that idea visually represented in a cool article in the Washington Post this year.) That principle has never seemed more true than in the year since my wife, Diane, and I launched my latest book, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative.

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Operations Books Article 174

Next Level Blog

OCTOBER 26, 2015

Is there a mindful approach to failure? You may reject the question on its face. After all, if you were mindful in the first place, wouldn’t you succeed rather than fail? You might if you had perfect knowledge or controlled all the variables, but, of course, none of us do. Failure is a fact of life. Since it’s ever present, shouldn’t you and your team try to learn from it so you do better next time?

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Class Globalization Influence Course 174

Next Level Blog

JUNE 4, 2015

Earlier today I was presenting a Leading Next Level Teams workshop to about 70 senior leaders in a global financial services company. It was a fun session made even more so by the use of a cool interactive technology called SpotMe where everyone could use special iPads to answer a few questions I was interested in. One of the early questions was "Which is harder, picking up new skills and behaviors or letting go of old skills and behaviors that used to work for you but likely no longer do?".

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Next Level Blog

MAY 4, 2015

As I was skimming through the headlines from the New York Times on Saturday morning, I was stunned to read the news of the death of Dave Goldberg. You may not have heard of him until this past weekend. He was the 47 year old CEO of the online questionnaire company, Survey Monkey. He was also the husband of Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO and author of the mega best-seller, Lean In.

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COO Survey CEO Company 172

Next Level Blog

APRIL 9, 2015

'It’s common for leaders who want to make a bigger impact to work on building their executive presence. It’s so common, in fact, that my company offers a seven month group coaching program for high potential leaders slated for executive roles. Our goal in that program is to make the often discussed but rarely clearly defined topic of executive presence a tangible and actionable thing to develop.

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Next Level Blog

JULY 20, 2015

Every so often you hear a story that’s the exception that proves the rule. In this case, the rule is don’t compare yourself to others; just do your best and play your own game. The exception is the story that David Duval shared this past weekend at the British Open. Even if you follow golf, you may not know or remember David Duval. He used to be the number one player in the world back in 1999.

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Next Level Blog

APRIL 13, 2015

'So the original plan for this past weekend was to get caught up on some work while my wife, Diane, was away at a conference in Las Vegas. To some degree, that was the plan for both of us. We have a couple of big new projects coming on line so Diane took her computer with her and planned on doing some work in the evenings as well. And that’s pretty much how Friday night went down.

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Next Level Blog

JANUARY 8, 2015

'If you work in an organization with other people, this is the time of year that you''re likely having conversations about goals and expectations for the year. You may be the boss having those talks with your team members. You may be the team member talking with your boss. You may be both.

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Next Level Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2015

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to have a beginner’s mind and why, especially if you’re a non-beginner, it’s so important to have one. The thought process started for me a few weeks ago when I was in a yoga class. If you’ve read my blog for awhile you know that I’m a committed yogi. I started in depth five years ago (last month was the anniversary of my first class) as a way to get back on my feet (more or less literally) after receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

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Next Level Blog

JANUARY 5, 2015

'Have you found yourself already Googling the topic, “Why do New Year’s resolutions fail?” On what is, for many of us, the first full work day of 2015, I’m reminded that this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of all the intentions and resolutions that were made over the holidays. There’s a lot of research and opinions out there about why resolutions fail.

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Next Level Blog

JUNE 10, 2015

One of the elements I love the most about our leadership development programs like Next Level Leadership® group coaching and Developing Leadership Presence is the peer coaching. In both of those programs, the participants are expected to pair up with a peer colleague and spend 20 minutes a week coaching each other. That might sound complicated, but it's not.

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Next Level Blog

MAY 27, 2015

Where or when do you get your best ideas? I ask that question to a lot of clients and executives attending my presentations and seminars. The answers I often hear are things like "In the shower," "Walking the dog," "Working out," "On my commute," "Taking care of the yard," or "Cleaning the house." But do you know what answer I never hear?

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Next Level Blog

JANUARY 22, 2015

'Being a leader can be and often is a high stress job. The demands on your time, the tough calls, the conflict resolution - it can all add up. If you’re not paying attention, it can leave you feeling stressed out, burned out and even depressed. In this episode of The Next Level Podcast, I’m sharing a conversation with an expert who can help teach you how to avoid that.

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How To Stress Productivity Products 166

Next Level Blog

JANUARY 19, 2015

'Ah, the third week of the new year. The holiday break is an increasingly distant speck in the rearview mirror and we’re all back up to our eyeballs in work. And, of course, our brains are working overtime trying to churn through and process everything we have to do. Gotta’ stay focused, right? There’s too much to do to just let your mind wander. That’s the wrong call.

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Course Productivity Products Process 165

Next Level Blog

MARCH 2, 2015

'When I looked earlier this morning, more than 1,000 people had left comments on The New York Times obituary of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Mr. Spock. Obviously, I haven’t read all of them, but I have looked at a few dozen. Many of them are quite moving in the way that they describe the impact that Nimoy’s portrayal of Spock had on their lives.

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Next Level Blog

MAY 21, 2015

If you’re a leader in your organization, there will be multiple times in your career when you have to get a new team off to a strong start. One of the critical steps in that process is when you bring the team members together for the first time. That’s a rare opportunity to define the purpose, build trust, establish the ground rules and set the priorities.

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Team How To Career Process 163

Next Level Blog

JUNE 15, 2015

As I wrote here earlier this year, a word that's working for me this year is the Sanskrit word sankalpa. As explained to me by one of my teachers, Sara Ivanhoe, sankalpa encourages us to focus less on what we're going to do and more on how we're going to be. Of course, those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. How we show up in any given situation has an enormous impact on what we actually accomplish.

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Course Leadership 163

Next Level Blog

MARCH 30, 2015

'I''m a little late writing this post this morning because I’ve spent the past 45 minutes clearing the decks. When I sat down at my desk this morning, it looked like it had been through a hurricane. I’ve got lots of reasons (excuses) for that. I’ve been away on business a lot this past month, we have multiple projects underway, there have been deadlines to hit for clients and, finally, we’ve had a ton (that’s probably a literal word) of stuff to sort through that’s come back into the house follo

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Project Organization 162

Next Level Blog

APRIL 27, 2015

The news from the devastating earthquake in Nepal this past weekend is tragic and heart rendering. It’s a natural impulse at times like this to want to help. Most of us, of course, are not qualified to offer help on the ground. Fortunately, there are organizations with volunteers who are. If you want to contribute to their efforts by sharing some of your own resources, this link provided by the New York Times will provide you with the donation links for over two dozen organizations that are movi

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Course Resources Organization 162

Next Level Blog

SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

Last week I had a vivid reminder of why, when a health crisis or some other kind of major life setback occurs, you should never write yourself off. As I shared here last year, I was diagnosed with MS in the summer of 2009. My primary form of exercise, head clearing and general sanity maintenance before MS was distance running. In the months surrounding my diagnosis, I went from running six or seven miles at a time to barely being able to walk around the block.

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Crisis 161

Next Level Blog

APRIL 6, 2015

'Sitting at your desk for hours on end can take a toll on a lot of things – your mental performance, your overall outlook on life and your general health and wellbeing. There’s a reason that researchers have concluded that sitting is the new smoking. Unfortunately, for many of us, the nature of work today leads to a lot of sitting and the subsequent declines in health.

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Next Level Blog

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

'As I''ve been out talking about and coaching around the book for almost 10 years, I''ve recognized that I stumbled on to something deeper than I realized when I was writing The Next Level back in 2005. Most people that are talented enough to reach next level scenarios in their careers are pretty good at picking things up. That''s primarily a cognitive exercise of learning to do something new.

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Resistance Career Skills Books 161

Next Level Blog

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Like a lot of people reading this post, I’ve spent a good part of the past weekend trying to process what happened in Paris last Friday night (and Beirut a few days before and the apparent bombing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai a few weeks before that). I know that’s not the kind of opening you’ve come to expect in these Mindful Mondays posts, but that’s what’s on my mind as I write this and it doesn’t feel honest to write about something else today.

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Simon Airlines Hotels Workshop 161

Next Level Blog

MAY 11, 2015

If you’ve been reading my posts, articles or books for awhile, you know I do my best to keep things simple. Most of us have too much on our plates to make life any more complex than it already is. Hence, my emphasis on simplicity. For instance, the definition of leadership presence I introduced in The Next Level breaks that concept down into three sets of behaviors: personal presence, team presence and organizational presence.

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Stress Definition Article Examples 160

Next Level Blog

SEPTEMBER 14, 2015

In case you haven’t noticed, summer is more or less over. As we look back fondly on the somewhat lazier days just ended, it’s a good time to ask, “What did I learn this summer?” One of my big lessons learned is that stay-cations can be fun, mind-expanding and energizing. That’s what Diane and I decided to do the last week of August. The calendar was completely clear which gave us time to catch up on some projects that required extended blocks of uninterrupted think time.

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Project Creativity Video 159

Next Level Blog

JULY 22, 2015

The science of economics is often described as being about the division and allocation of scarce resources. Any leader has been through a corporate budgeting or capital allocation process has experienced this first hand. A lot of time and attention gets spent on the division and allocation of financial resources. Decisions about how to deploy them often turn on a expectation of return on investment.

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ROI Budgeting Leadership Resources 159

Next Level Blog

AUGUST 10, 2015

Do you know how many results come back when you do a Google search on “work-life balance”? I just did one and the answer is 176 million. That’s an awful lot of discussion on a problem that no one has really solved. You could keep trying to solve for work-life balance or you could try to solve for something else that is more attainable, accessible and would likely make a bigger difference for you anyway.

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Company 158

Next Level Blog

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

'My son Brad and I spent a couple of hours at CarMax yesterday afternoon. After moving to a new apartment building without enough parking spaces for his car, he decided to sell it. He strongly prefers public transportation over driving in Los Angeles anyway so the decision to sell it was pretty easy. He had to move pretty quickly, though, because finding parking on the street around where we live is a very hit or miss proposition.

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Management Transportation Process 157

Next Level Blog

FEBRUARY 2, 2015

'As I write this, I''m in Munich, Germany on a business trip. Last night, I was tagging a photo of a classic German Biergarten meal and noticed that Dachau came up on the list of geotag options. This is a very quick trip that I''m on and, to be honest, I did zero research on what I might see or do in Munich before I came over. When I saw Dachau on my smartphone screen, though, I immediately knew how I was going to spend my Sunday.

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Next Level Blog

MARCH 12, 2015

'There''s a very high likelihood that you''ve heard the counsel to spend your time on the things that are important but not urgent. Easy to advise, hard to do, right? It''s all too easy to end up spending your day reacting to things that are both urgent and important or, worse, not that important to you but urgent to someone else. And, after hours and days of that, burnout can easily occur and you end up wasting your time and attention on stuff that is neither urgent or important just to get som

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Covey Management Books 157