Are you Developing The Next Generation of Leaders?
Leaders must continuously be creating leaders up and down the organization. You determine who will hold the keys.
Are you missing one puzzle piece?
Have you ever tried to put together a puzzle without a picture of the completed puzzle?  In doing a puzzle, it is necessary to get the right pieces in the right places. In most cases, people will give up trying to fit all the pieces together if they do not know the picture of the final product.  A strategic plan is the picture your team uses to make sure the business has the right resources (pieces of the puzzle) and […]
It’s All in the Definition
In working with leaders, teams and cultures, we often find the need to define certain terms. This ensures that everyone is clear on what's being discussed or decided. This post discusses some of our primary definitions.
Communication and Clarity
Productive communication is critical in every organization. Some of the essential aspects of communication include: listening, building trust in relationships, being honest in every interaction, and dealing with conflict effectively. Great team communication must be engaging, motivating and authentic. It must help the team to see the path and the destination. The larger the organization, the geometrically more complex communication becomes. With one-on-one communication, we can watch body language, hear tone of voice and create an immediate feedback loop. With […]
Key Characteristics of Powerful Leaders
Top leaders need to be especially good at what they do. The power they have available to them accentuates both their strengths and their weaknesses. Leaders are also not subject to the ordinary checks and balances like other employees.  Additionally, people will magnify the characteristics of the top leader, both good and bad, by mimicking their behavior without even knowing it and use the leader’s behavior as the excuse/justification for what they do. While there are many characteristics of great […]
Does Your Team Have Perseverance?
At the beginning of relationships, with new teams, and with new projects in business, there is often a lot of logical discussion regarding the best idea and how to implement it. We discuss both the “what” and the “how”. When others are involved in the decision (e.g., for an acquisition, funding a project, a joint venture, a new important hire), people consider logic and debate over what should happen, who should be involved, how it impacts the overall strategy, does […]
Unique Ground Rules for Effective Meetings
Handling meetings effectively today means that you spend only as much time as is necessary on the agenda, making decisions, and then adjourning. The best result from a meeting is full engagement, enhanced creativity and commitment to action from the team. Here are five unique rules we use among the other basic ones (e.g., issuing and closely following an agenda, providing data prior to the meeting) to ensure you get the most from your time. ELMO: this is not the […]
Surviving Success and Watching Failure
Have you ever seen a problem coming and not done anything to fix it? Was it someone failing at a project? Perhaps someone was ruining a relationship? A project where the team was not resolving the main issues? Someone was in great pain? Too often we see cultures in organizations where everyone stays in their own “box” very tightly. When they see an issue or problem coming, they do not say anything. (This is the “it’s not my job” or “not my […]
Leadership definition affects organizational culture
A great many people have attempted to come up with an effective leadership definition. Webster’s defines leadership as: “a position as a leader of a group, organization, etc.; the time when a person holds the position of leader; the power or ability to lead other people.” However, this doesn’t tell you what a leader actually does or the key attributes of a leader. We prefer this definition of leadership: the skill of influencing individuals and teams to enthusiastically accomplish common […]