Swift is smart enough to realize how much of her success — and her fans’ experience — is dependent upon these people. Recognizing and rewarding them is one way that she can express her gratitude and ensure a future as bright as the past two years have been.
On Taylor Swift and $197 Million in Gratitude Read More »
Balancing leadership and team autonomy is a complex challenge that requires a keen understanding of personal preferences, the team’s working style, and the demands of the task. By cultivating a team that genuinely cares about quality, leaders can avoid policing and instead focus on their broader responsibilities, ensuring that accountability is shared respectfully across the team.
The Lure and Pitfalls of Perfectionism Read More »
No individual leader has all the answers. Here are five strategies for a new leader to cultivate a community of leaders.
Is a New CEO the Answer for Starbucks? Read More »
Leading requires courage and discipline as well as aptitude. It is something at which no one ever achieves perfection. The journey toward mastery offers continual opportunities to learn and abundant rewards for the effort. Precise language is important if we are to mitigate the damage of people who claim to lead, but don’t. Leadership is a noun. Leading is a verb. It is only by doing the hard work of leading that your followers will see you as a leader.
The Language of Leading Read More »
My recommendations for improving organizations by championing the human spirit, fostering trust and transparency, and eliminating low-value processes. When you start by creating the conditions for workers and customers to succeed, you achieve true organizational success (and make shareholders happy, too).
Leading with the Human Spirit Read More »
An environment that promotes good leadership will have zero tolerance for toxic behavior. Such an environment will use honest mistakes as learning experiences. It will be one that develops everyone’s ability to think and act like leaders. The list could go on. The examples in each of these books show that there are performance benefits beyond the intangible rewards of simply being decent.
Banishing Bad Leaders Read More »
Organizations are in a constant state of change, sometimes minor and sometimes major. This is why it is important to understand the benefits of both convergence and divergence.
Balancing Convergence and Divergence Read More »
My latest for Medium looks the limits of power in getting people to return to the office. The alternative: a focus on making the best, highest use of everyone’s time–and that includes when and where they are together. “Forcing employees back to the office is likely to depress engagement. For some, it decreases productivity. It
Usefulness is the Key to Where Work Happens Read More »
BOOM! It’s the moment when everything goes sideways. The crash. The shot. The lawsuit. The technical meltdown. In that instant, time blurs. Pressure spikes. Vision narrows. The crisis is real. Based on my years of researching and working with crisis leaders, here are three underappreciated things that the best get right and the worst, well,
Three Essential (and Overlooked) Skills for Crisis Leaders Read More »
For as long as I can remember, organizational change has been cast as something that cascades from the visionary CEO to the reluctant frontline. Many of the big changes we’ve seen in recent years, however, have surged up from below. From #metoo to the “great reassessment” to the demands for DEI, the energy fueling change
The Courage for Bottom-up Change Read More »
If you want people to follow you, this three step recipe will get you started: show up, step up, and shut up. Your presence is essential. So is your courage in difficult situations. Finally, listening is an underrated leader superpower. Read more on Medium.
Time for Leaders to STFU Read More »
As organizations and communities face ever-more complex challenges, how we think about leading needs to change as well.
Building Communities of Leading Read More »
