Leadership

SmartBlog on Leadership – Can Your Team Say No?

May 17, 2012

    Twice a month, Lead Change Group authors write a blog post on the SmartBlog on Leadership site. Today it’s my turn with a post called How to Get Your Team to Speak Up. It’s based on my observation that many team leaders create a culture where saying “no” is unacceptable, thereby causing their team [...]

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May Leadership Development Carnival by Dan McCarthy

May 7, 2012

Dan McCarthy, founder of the blog Great Leadership and host of the monthly Leadership Development Carnival keeps it simple this month and offers us a straight-forward carnival. No theme– just 27 excellent essays on leadership. Speaking of keeping it simple, you can see my carnival entry titled The KISS Model of Leadership Development. Other interesting [...]

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The KISS Model of Leadership Development

May 3, 2012

Has developing future leaders at your company become a complex web of activities? With formal processes like talent reviews, individual development plans, and high-potential candidate reviews, it’s no wonder that you feel swamped and put leadership development on the back burner. There is another way to develop leaders. I suggest that when you are overwhelmed [...]

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A Vision is a Promise. Are You Keeping Yours?

April 26, 2012

Are you a person of your word? As a leader, when you lay out a vision, you are creating a promise— that the future state will be better than the current one. People buy in to that vision based on their trust in you to get them there.   It’s up to you to deliver. Making [...]

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How to Tell If Your Boss is a Psycho or Jerk

April 19, 2012

Overhead at my favorite coffee shop the other day: “My boss is a total psycho!” I wanted to turn around and say, “Oh, really? And just how exactly do you know this? Are you clinically trained to diagnose mental illness?” But of course, someone’s medical credentials aren’t the point.  The point is, humans crave linguistic shortcuts—a [...]

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Do Your Words Encourage or Deflate?

April 10, 2012

I love “people equations”—any formula (scientific or otherwise) that can provide a framework that helps us interact more effectively with clients, peers, suppliers, leaders, and team members. I recently encountered an article that quoted positive-psychology expert Martin Seligman as saying that he uses something called the “Losada Ratio” when talking with people he cares about.  [...]

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How To Gain Buy-In From Your Team

March 28, 2012

Last fall, I chaperoned a group of second-graders on a field trip to the ArtPrize exhibition in downtown Grand Rapids. Picture this: ten 8-year-olds, excitedly dashing around parks and gardens, in and out of exhibition buildings. They were so excited to experience the art displayed throughout our city. Naturally, their first impulse was to run. And [...]

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What to Do About Employees Who Don’t Care

March 20, 2012

I’ve never been much for watching sports. So when my kids started playing organized athletics, I was not very enthused. A friend who has already been there, done that told me “it’ll be different when you’re watching your own kid.” She’s right.   When it’s my kid (and by extension, the other kids on the [...]

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9 Questions to Help Your Team Create Vision

March 9, 2012

Think back to the last project you led. How did you begin? Were you successful getting people on board, or was it more like herding cats challenging than you’d planned? No matter what you’re leading, getting people to line up behind a vision is the first order of business when you take on a new [...]

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Leadership Development Carnival – March 2012

March 4, 2012

The March Leadership Development Carnival is up at Dan McCarthy’s Great Leadership blog. This month’s theme is going “green”, as in celebrating the Irish in all of us. I’m pleased to be featured as a lucky Shamrock– thanks, Dan! Go on over to the carnival to see 7 things employees want to know in a department reshuffe, [...]

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