Leadership Derailers
Three keep leaders up at night.
Beyond the Idea
How to execute innovation
Negative Feedback
Don’t sugarcoat it when giving it.
Home-Grown Leaders
They build sustainable companies
Leadership Derailers
Three keep leaders up at night.
Beyond the Idea
How to execute innovation
Negative Feedback
Don’t sugarcoat it when giving it.
Home-Grown Leaders
They build sustainable companies
Ethics and values are eroding worldwide. Bribes, cheating, criminal behavior, sexual abuse and harassment are becoming common. One survey on workplace ethics opened with this startling statement, “We expect workplace ethics to decline.”
We all have moments when we slip from good leader status to bad leader status. I had my own fall from grace. I hired an office manager, Hope, to help run my psychology group practice so I could focus on leadership development. Hope’s job was to handle client referrals, medical billing, accounts payable and receivable and other office duties. Although she had no prior experience, I felt she could learn these skills easily.
Innovation is a two part challenge: 1) ideas and 2) execution. To win, you have to succeed at both. Many companies, however, expend most of their energies on part one. They tend to produce many ideas on paper that never become anything more than … ideas on paper.
The old rap against coaches and consultants: they borrow your watch to tell you the time. And yet I’d bet that 90% of the coaches hung out their shingles with an eye toward helping executives grow and overcome impediments to success. So why do they bear the stigma of being a cajoling cheerleader rather than a conscientious change agent?
In an era of dramatic change, we’re hit from all sides with lopsided perspectives that urge us to hold nothing sacred, to dynamite everything, to fight chaos with chaos, to battle a crazy world with unfettered craziness.
The highly visible leadership failures of recent years have deeply shaken public confidence. Often these leaders placed self-interest ahead of the well-being of their stakeholders. And when their self-interest damaged their organizations, these leaders refused to take responsibility.
Great innovators share a common quality—the innovation mindset—a robust framework that can be applied at micro (individual) and macro (organizational) levels: they see and act on opportunities, use and-thinking to resolve tough dilemmas and break through compromises, and employ their resourcefulness to power through obstacles.
We have all been there; the workshop was spectacular, the personal learning was deep and profound, the connections with others were life-long, the in-class exercises were amazingly insightful, your leadership development plans were ambitious and sincere.
Leaders today face unprecedented winds of change—a gale force of challenges and turmoil that many can’t handle. From the dizzying pace of technological innovation to global interconnectedness, leaders must navigate in volatile and uncharted terrain.
There are two birds, two dear friends, who live in the same tree. The one lives in sorrow and anxiety and the other looks on in compassionate silence. But when the one sees the other in its power and glory, it is freed from its fears and pain. These two birds are symbolically perched at two different levels in the tree.