Posts with the ‘Leadership’ tag
I couldn’t wait to be promoted. I knew all the things I wanted to accomplish. I was also looking forward to the perks of leadership. In the Army we used to say, “Rank Has It’s Privileges (RHIP).” But, years later, I realized that these sentiments were naive. They seem real to someone who has not […]
The Dad’s Against Not Keeping Score Society of Iowa Board of Directors met monthly. Since the local chapter of the DANKS started, little progress had been made. There had been a lot of meetings held but not a lot of decisions made. The Chairman of the Board was Dan Slakovski. He ran one of the […]
The meeting ground to a halt as soon as Sean spoke. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” This all too familiar phrase had killed many great ideas within Sean’s team. But, Sean’s people had hope. A recent restructuring placed a new leader between the team and Sean. Maybe the new guy could get things done.
The Oxymoronic Leader is not one person. He is all of us. I have been him and so have you. Merriam-Webster defines an oxymoron as: “a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (as cruel kindness); broadly : something (as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements” Am I leading if the […]
The tragedy of what happened at Penn State has been well covered in the news. There are so many lessons that can be derived from what we know about that situation. But, perhaps the biggest lesson we can all learn is how character trumps competence. No level of past or present competence will make up […]
When I use the phrase Low Maintenance Team, the most common response is, “I wish I had one of those.” The more I hear that phrase the more I realize Low Maintenance Teams (LMTs) are not common. There is a path I developed that allowed me to build my Low Maintenance Teams. I know I […]
I have a 15 year-old pet peeve. I hate when leaders use voicemail messages to promote themselves. This pet peeve should be older. Unfortunately it is a habit I had to break myself before it became a pet peeve. At some point I realized I was sending messages to my team that included information that […]
Character is now a buzzword. I use the term buzzword here to describe words that we hear frequently yet are rarely defined by the speakers. The Presidential campaign is full of buzzwords. I hear athletes described on Sportcenter using some of the same buzzwords as the politicians use. The problem is, if you dig into […]
Organizational or personal values describe HOW we operate. Many organizations claim to follow certain values because they list them on their websites, or they are on a poster in their offices. However, many employees will say their organization has values published, but admit those companies do not live by them. Why? I believe there are two reasons: […]
When I relocated to Texas after 5 years managing in Buffalo, NY, I took over a team where one of the representatives had gone through initial training with me. Lori and I had known each other for 10 years. Two months into being her boss, Lori asked me point blank, “What is your problem? This […]
