Leadership Talk
5 Principles for Communicating Your Way to Team Excellence
My thesis is that over 90% of business issues have poor communication as a root cause. It follows that even small improvements in communication effectiveness drive outsized team results. Sometimes we choose to say nothing out of fear, shame, or concern about hurt...
Conquering the Fear of Rapid Decision Making
Leaders are required to make decisions and deliver results. When we face a problem, we make decisions, we act, and we succeed, fail, and sometimes learn. As we reflect on a decision, we often find that the determination and subsequent actions were available to us...
A Quick Guide to Why Coaching Does Not Work
I’ve coached leaders from both sides now, from give and take, and still somehow, I really don’t know clouds at all…wait, lost my way for a moment. I’ve worked with leaders as an internal and external coach for over 20 years. I’m here to tell you that coaching doesn’t...
You want to go where everybody knows your name
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. It's not just a lyric from the television show, “Cheers,” it’s a sound starting place for creating trust as you build a high-performing team. Dale Carnegie once said, “A person’s name is to him or her the...
Control is never perfect and it is never free
Our need to control things reflects our need for certainty. It has notable downsides like added workload, reduced capacity, less trusting relationships, and solving problems when others only wish to be heard. When we control, we adopt other peoples’ monkeys. We decide...
How to use core values as a tool for better decisions
The path from defining a problem to implementing a solution is rarely linear. Despite applying the knowledge and skills of our best people, there are moments of uncertainty that precede critical decisions. We create doubt with a list of intended and unintended...
Navigating the potholes of effective communication
The saying that we judge others by their behaviors and ourselves by our intentions is a coachable point I’ve made countless times. By itself, it distinguishes between observable behaviors and initial insight into how we and others define what things mean. However, it...
Eleven ways we make sure executive coaching delivers value
Executive coaches work with their coachees to move them from where they are now to where they want to be in the future. Coaching focuses on the behaviors necessary to forward action. While there is some time spent looking backward for understanding, the majority of...
Becoming the five people we hang around with most
If we become the average of the five people we hang around with most, it serves us to ask and answer questions along the way.