Smartbrief

Want to Improve Your Leadership? Get Inside Your Head

July 9, 2018

As leaders, you’re often told to that in order to stem overthinking, you need to “get out of your head.” And while it’s true that too much introspection causes either oversimplification or excessive rumination, a new leadership book suggests that you should consider what’s going on in that noggin of yours. Want to improve your […]

Read the full article →

Leaders Who Know When to Shut Up Get Better Ideas from the Team

February 26, 2018

For many years, I worked with a highly effective (and very respected) leader named Jack, who at the time was a senior executive at a large insurance company. After working together on a few corporate projects, Jack asked me to lead a three-day strategic planning session for his team. About two hours into the first […]

Read the full article →

Renewing Your Leadership Purpose with Compassion

February 19, 2018

Years ago, when I was a 23 year old assistant human resources manager at a department store, one of our sales associates suffered a heart attack and died while at work. At the time, I was out of town, attending my grandfather’s funeral. Upon my return to work, my boss Mary told me what had […]

Read the full article →

Real-World Ideas for Developing Your Team

February 14, 2018

What does internal career mobility look like at your company? Maybe it’s a fancy program spearheaded by your HR or talent development team. Or maybe it’s a boot strap operation with limited funding. Providing your employees with “career mobility” inside your organization starts with you, the leader, providing professional development opportunities. No development dollars, you […]

Read the full article →

Is Failure to Speak Up Impeding Your Team’s Productivity?

October 5, 2017

As a leader, you know that productive employees bring value to your team.  Recent findings from a white paper by consulting and training firm VitalSmarts highlight the magnitude of high performers’ productivity: they are 21 times less likely to experience tasks or responsibilities that “fall through the cracks.” Moreover, the research found that these same […]

Read the full article →

Don’t Overload Your Team Ecosystem With Star Players

August 31, 2017

You want a team loaded with star players, right? What leader wouldn’t want a team filled with high-performing folks?  Isn’t a team stacked with rocks stars is a good thing? It depends. Research into team performance reveals a surprising element: you can have too much of a good thing. Consider the study reported in Gartner’s […]

Read the full article →

4 Tips for Staying Humble

January 16, 2017

One of the biggest egos in the cartoon world belongs to the character Plankton from the Nickelodeon cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants.  Plankton’s over-inflated sense of worth (and his never-ending quest to steal the coveted Krabby Patty recipe) leads him to run roughshod over the inhabitants of Bikini Bottom. To wit: It’s funny in cartoon-land. But the […]

Read the full article →

4 Ways to Make Better Leadership Decisions

December 5, 2016

Kendra* is a newly promoted vice president of IT at a rapidly growing mid-sized firm. She’s been working overtime to staff up her department to meet the demands of her company’s growth. With each job candidate Kendra interviews, she feels the pressure to make job offers quickly. Her team is swamped, but she knows that […]

Read the full article →

10 Simple Phrases that Cast Sunlight

October 12, 2016

Last week I wrote about how we are naturally drawn towards positive people because they inspire us. In nature, that’s called the “heliotropic effect,” which describes how plants grow or move towards sunlight. This week, I penned a similar piece, but this time from a leadership angle. I bet you can easily think of managers […]

Read the full article →

Are Unspoken Issues Creating Mischief on Your Team?

September 29, 2016

When the results of Google’s research on team effectiveness (called “Project Aristotle”) were revealed earlier this year, the conclusion was surprising: the best teams have just one thing in common. Factors such as clear goal-setting and team member dependability are certainly important, but they’re not what definitively sets great teams apart from their average counterparts. […]

Read the full article →