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Leading Differently Through the Pandemic

I’ve been tracking how leaders have shifted their thinking and acting since the world was gut-punched by COVID-19. In doing this I realized that some of these insights could help others in their own...

Flexible Leadership — And Yoga?

Evil bees were colonizing my brain. Their buzzing between my ears kept me awake half the night. The bees transmitted loud negative thoughts about what I did wrong that day, or what would go wrong...

Helping the Team from Hell

“In my twenty years as an executive I’ve never been on such a dysfunctional a team,” “Coming to team meetings fills me with dread,” “I’ve been thrown under the bus so often I have tread marks on my...

'Robert's Rules' of Collaboration

Every client I work with complains that they need more effective cross-organizational collaboration. They say that collaboration is more crucial than ever, due to increasingly complex environments...

Leadership and Poetry

I can’t blame you if you greet this post with skepticism. Leadership and poetry seems like an oxymoron, like rain and San Diego. I’m even a little surprised you are still reading. But here are...

Frame Your Leadership Differently

Take this thought experiment: Would you prefer a hamburger that is 90% fat-free or one that has 10% fat? Would you support a project with a 1 in 5 chance of succeeding, or a project with an 80%...

Critical Thinking or Emotional Intelligence?

Most of the coaching requests that I receive revolve around emotional intelligence: clients are described as lacking self-awareness, or are unable to control their impulses, or don’t empathize with...

Addicted to Approval

I hate to say it, but several people I work with have annoying habits. Some interrupt too much, some don’t say what’s really on their minds, some are so detail-oriented they make my teeth ache. But...

How to speak up to your boss

Ann was upset with her boss. During a leadership program I was conducting she complained that he scheduled team meetings every Friday at 5pm. Oh, I said, 5pm on a Friday does sound like an...

What's your conflict story?

Two founding partners of a technology startup asked me to resolve some of their conflicts. Hal initially convinced me that Dave was an antagonistic bully. Dave then convinced me that Hal was a...

Curb my enthusiasm

A client from Amsterdam used to watch me facilitate leadership programs for his company’s executives. At the end of each session I’d ask him how he thought it went. Mark would look very serious and...

Old dogs, new tricks?

Fast Company magazine recently featured 50 companies they ranked as most innovative. My attention was not drawn to the super-cool technology start-ups, but to some old-line companies that...

Speaking of trust…

Google recently conducted a study of their internal teams to answer the question, “what makes teams great?” After rigorous analysis and over 200 interviews, they found the most significant factor...

Lead change differently (part 2)

A client of mine is struggling to remain competitive in an industry where smaller, more agile competitors are nibbling away at their market share. They believe that their organizational culture...

Lead change differently (part 1)

Have you ever gotten in your car, driven to work, found a parking spot, sat at your desk, and wondered: How did I get here? If you ever experienced this, you were probably on automatic pilot,...

Mindful listening

I feel like I’m losing my mind from the mega-buzz surrounding mindfulness lately. Many companies, including Google and Target, are investing in mindfulness training for their employees. The National...

The scapegoat effect

Everybody believed Paul was the problem. His teammates complained in anonymous interviews that he was overly critical and negative. They said he dominated conversations, and became aggressive when...

Can I give you some feedback…

Your boss passes you in the hallway a few hours after you led an important meeting. She stops you and says, “Hey, about that meeting this morning. I have some feedback for you.” At that moment, what...

CPR at work

I boarded a plane recently (what’s new?) to an announcement that the city we were flying to was blistering in 95-degree heat. I groaned in complaint. Overhearing me, the man in the next seat started...

It isn't what it is

A dear colleague and I were talking at lunch about the usual subjects – our work, our families, the miserable state of the world. We commiserated about our aging parents growing more frail. I said,...

Change is personal

Last week I learned a lesson about leading change that I won’t soon forget. And it came from… an invoice… For 17 years I’ve used the same process after finishing a project: I staple expense receipts...

Unity in diversity

Twenty-six participants from twelve different countries! That’s what David and I found awaited us when we landed recently in Frankfurt (Germany, not Kentucky) to teach a leadership workshop. We...

The enemy of accountability

When clients proclaim, ‘we’ve got to hold people more accountable’ I can’t help but smile. Why? Because the declaration, itself, displays such a lack of accountability. ‘We’ve got to’ diffuses any...

Are you coachable?

Glenn had no problem asking for support.  As CEO of a financial services firm, he was accustomed to asking people to do things for him. So I wasn’t surprised when he asked me to provide him with...

Art and leadership

I occasionally visit art museums with family and friends, but I’m not very good company. My enthusiasms get the better of me and I become a tad, well, pedantic. I might go on about the difference...

We aren’t always who we think we are

Kevin sagged when he recounted his past few years as president of a troubled division of a major insurance company.  “I’m damaged goods,” he started.  “I loved my career until they promoted me to...

The lies of silence

I met with the head of the European region right after a daylong meeting of a global leadership team. I asked what he thought of the decisions the team had made. He said the meeting was “the usual...

Games strategic leaders should play

The challenge for most executives is that the skills they developed as middle managers are inadequate for the next step up.  They know their business, have mastered supervision, and have honed their...

Lead yourself through change (part 2)

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons depicts two excited executives sitting in a meeting. One says to the other, “Let’s keep things here exactly the way they are.” The other responds, “Yeah, let’s...

Lead yourself through change (part 1)

Leading organizational change without first changing ourselves simply doesn’t work. To enable change beyond superficial window-dressing, we must understand what we are doing to maintain the status...

Delegating to jug heads

Over half of my executive coaching clients have “improve delegating effectiveness” as a development priority.  All are experienced senior players; each has a long, successful track record.  And yet,...

Effective coaching: 'Here's what you gotta do'

The football coach stood frustrated on the sideline as his quarterback threw incomplete passes. He suddenly rushed onto the field, grabbed the ball from the quarterback’s hands, and started passing...

Falling forward

“I’m stuck…. I can’t move,” my friend stammered, as he stood frozen trying to exit my open front door. Brent has Parkinson’s, a neurological disease that sends conflicting messages within his brain....

The secret life of teams

I’ve always studied teams. The youngest of three boys, as a kid I was mostly a bystander to my family’s tumultuous interactions. While my teenaged brothers and parents sparred in cycles of argument,...

Empathy, the final frontier of leadership

I was recently exploring a new coaching relationship with a high achieving, successful executive. Paul insisted that he wanted to ‘bring his game to another level’ and thought I might be a catalyst...

Replacing a tyrant

In the historical, yet fictional movie The Mutiny on the Bounty Spencer Christian and crew cast out the autocratic Captain Bligh and commandeered the ship. Bligh is then punished for his appalling...

Use conflict to clarify strategy

Wayne is an accomplished and overburdened senior executive who hates dealing with his direct reports' conflicts. He once told me that he'd rather have a spike driven into his eye than listen to them...

Collaboration and “all that jazz”

In a PBS interview, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock described the magic of collaboration as he learned it in his twenties while travelling with improvisational genius Miles Davis. During one...

Forgiveness without apologies

As the saying goes, 'trust is earned by the penny, but spent by the dollar.' In other words, while trust is constructed through countless transactions, it can be shattered with only one negative...

Who are your leader heroes?

A recent article in the Times suggested that Americans' mistrust of each other has reached an all time high -- that we live in an era of unprecedented cynicism. Maybe so. But we submit that this...

Thanks giving

I love Thanksgiving.  But I wonder why so many of us wait for the third Thursday of November to express gratitude. God must surely end the day exhausted by the millions of people giving 'thanks'...

The physics of relationships

When my friend Ethan was transferred to another city we vowed to stay in touch. And we did, primarily with me initiating contact. Over time, the interval between our calls lengthened. I remember...

You can't manage time

If a genie offered you one wish to help you become more effective, what would you wish for? Many would say, "If only I had more time..." But if you’re like me and the genie is just a dream, you may...

Anger works

As a leadership consultant, I’ve made a career of helping executives heal the wounds they’ve inflicted, and mend the trust they’ve broken with their anger. I’ve seen uncontrolled anger ruin careers,...

What's your grapefruit face?

My dear colleague Sheila approached as I sat in the back of the training room and asked, "Why do you look like you just ate a grapefruit?"  It's true I was disappointed that her debrief of the...

Leadership requires uncommon sense

On a recent flight to New York I sat beside an energetic operations manager for a small bank. Hearing that I was a leadership consultant, he looked interested and started talking.  "'My problem," he...

Take them where you found them

Motivational speakers used to turn me off. As a facilitator of leadership and team development processes, I viewed these gigs mostly as 'edu-tainment:' sentimental yarns or heroic exploits that...

How leaders write blank checks

I love the irony: Sometimes it's the leaders who complain the loudest about frivolous spending who unknowingly add the most cost to the bottom line. Years ago I learned of a great example at a...