Integrity:
If doing the right thing was easy,
everyone would be doing it.
Many people are not prepared for leadership because their leader has not prepared them. Some leaders fail to develop the people around them because they don’t allow them to make decisions.
When a leader prevents people from making decisions at lower levels, the organization is creating an environment where low potential followers flourish and future leaders flee. Continue Reading…
They just stood there. It was funny. It was sad. It was telling. When the captains left the court, none of the other players stepped forward to lead. Communication broke down and chaos ensued.
I was watching a high school girls sporting event. Unfortunately, I have seen this in the business world too. When the leader is gone and nobody steps forward, a bump in the road can cause a relatively smooth running team to end up in a ditch. Continue Reading…
75% of a person’s waking hours are spent on work – Getting to and from work. Thinking about work. Actually working in their job.
I heard this statistic last week and started thinking about what an awesome responsibility we have as leaders.
My leadership at work has huge implications for the lives of my people. Not just their work lives, but also their home lives. Continue Reading…
I love my iPhone. I resisted it for a time. But now I know I can find just about anything I want at anytime of day, right on my phone. The iPhone and other smart phones feed right into my need for instant gratification.
Our world allows us to find just about everything with just a few touches of a hand held device. But, a smart phone cannot make us into leaders.
I cannot become a leader by downloading an app. That seems obvious as I read this. But, it is not obvious to many companies and individuals I have encountered. Continue Reading…
Self-awareness sounds like some new age, kumbaya, talk show topic. As an aspiring man’s man, my low sensitivity level has not always allowed me to consider things like self-awareness. But, obviously I have or I would not have been able to write that last sentence…
Self-awareness is a critical element for the success of a leader. As a leader, if I do not recognize who I am and how I affect other people, I will never reach my potential. Continue Reading…
A man came to my house the other day asking for work. I handed him a hammer and some nails and told him to build a tree house for my kids.
In fact, I gave him every tool he needed to complete the job. He should be able to build the tree house if I give him the right tools, shouldn’t he? Not necessarily… Continue Reading…
Do the people at the top of a company have an accurate assessment of the quality of that organization’s leadership? The Global Leadership Forecast’s answer is – No.
They surveyed over 1,800 HR professionals and 12,423 leaders from 2,600 organizations on the status of leadership in those organizations. The goal was to determine the effectiveness of the leadership and of leadership development efforts over a two year period.
One statistic that stuck out was that the closer to the frontlines the leader worked, the more negative they were about the company’s leadership quality. Continue Reading…
I officiated my first wedding last month. It was a great celebration. But, I did not make it to the dance floor at the reception. I saw a video of my dancing once. That new perspective is all it took to keep me from the dance floor at this recent wedding.
If you have ever seen yourself on video after a wedding reception, you know what I am talking about. None of us dance as well as we think. It is not often we get the opportunity to see ourselves from another perspective.
Organizations who make a commitment to leadership development need to consider using an outside consultant for the same reason- the view from the outside is different. Continue Reading…
When Human Resources took over leadership training, I didn’t immediately notice a change. In fact, I felt the leadership development department initially did a good job making the classes more specific to my job than the consultants they had hired in the past.
But over time, a shift occurred. Leadership development became more about how not to get the company in trouble and not about developing the leader. As a result, experienced leaders became ambivalent to training and younger leaders became HR processes experts. Continue Reading…
We do not lack smart people in business these days. Smart people are everywhere. We lack leaders.
The latest studies are proving leadership equates to profits. Developing good leaders does more to effect the bottom line of an organization than hiring yet another top graduate from a famous school.
Yet credentials and expertise are what most companies focus their recruiting and training efforts on. Leadership development tends to be an optional activity, while skill development is sacred. Continue Reading…
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