Upsize Your Leadership

Implications of Viewing Leadership as Art Last week we began parsing the definition of leadership which I developed 20 years ago: Leadership is the art of rallying people around a shared purpose, then motivating them and mobilizing them to achieve it.. In that episode, we examined the import of the terms "people" and "shared purpose." This week we take up a third term: "art." Last week we examined...

Leadership: Anchored in People and Purpose Any quick search on the internet will uncover dozens of definitions of leadership. Some are more appropriate to leadership at very high levels than they are to leadership in day-to-day life. About 20 years ago, I developed a definition intended to capture the essence of leadership wherever its found: Leadership is the art of rallying people around a share...

Minimize the Adverse Impact of Unintended Consequences on Otherwise Good Decisions In every arena of life, what once seemed like great decisions turned out, in hindsight, to have brought about unintended consequences. Often these consequences imperil the benefits which the decision was to provide. As managers and leaders, finding solutions to problems is our daily task. But when a solution leads t...

Don't Let Disruptive Interruptions Poison Your Attitude In my management trainings, I often ask people to identify the things which have surprised them most about being a manager. Toward the top of their list is often the problem of disruptions. They came into management unprepared for how many times a day their work on critical projects would be disrupted. At times they feel that they don't get o...

our Mistakes Companies Make in Defining and Casting Vision Have you ever read a book on management or vision which did not include a section on the importance of vision? It's hard to think of one. Vision-casting is a standard topic anytime management and leadership skills are discussed. As a C-Suite leadership coach and a business consultant, I've coached scores of clients through the process of a...

It's that time of year again. Time to set goals for the year ahead. Soon everyone will be putting together their New Year's resolutions. But by this time in 2024, how many of those resolutions will have become reality? Odds are, most of them will not. Many factors contribute to the failure. One of the most common, however, is inadequate focus on the goal itself. Many factors contribute to this los...

Planning from a Different Viewpoint Texts and courses on planning abound. And they all call for starting with a clear definition of the desired outcome. Once that eventual outcome is defined, they tend to use a methodology which calls for starting at the present and building systematically toward that goal. In this episode I propose an alternate approach, one I've used for decades to great effect....

Surprised by the Loneliness of Leadership No One Warned Me About It The old adage "lonely at the top" has more substance to it than most people imagine. Although many leaders never combat pronounced bouts of loneliness, many do. I have been one of them. And when I began talking about my loneliness with other leaders, I was amazed at how many of them wrestled with it, too. Yet, having discussed the...

Collaborative Decision-Making: The Positives and Pitfalls For thousands of years, hierarchical management styles reigned unchallenged. Then, early in the 20th century, a literate and often highly-educated workforce emerged. They were no longer content with the top-down management of traditional organizational structures. They wanted a voice in decisions. This led to the first experiments with coll...

Innovation Starts with the Right Culture Genuine innovation unfolds through a process of trial and error. It takes time. It takes tireless effort. It takes money. In a word, it entails a lot of hard work. The hard work begins, however, long before the trial-and-error process is underway. The initial hard work is creating a culture which is primed for innovation. Not all are. Innovation always invo...

Innovation Has No Shortage of Imposters We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages proclaiming some new product or service labeled as innovative. Being innovative has broad appeal. Indeed, when companies outline their core values, innovation appears on the list more often than any other quality. It even outranks integrity and respect. Yet, when we delve into what companies are calling inn...

What Constitutes True Integrity? I have a friend who has been known to say, "If you can fake integrity, you can fake anything." Whenever he throws out that line, it gets a laugh. There's something comically nonsensical about combining the words "fake" and "integrity." Integrity is the bedrock on which healthy societies are built. Yet, we seldom delve deeply into what the word means. We generally d...

Leadership Rises and Falls on Credibility Both managers and leaders are charged with getting things done. How they get things done is one of the key contrasts between managing and leading. Managers always occupy some slot in the organizational chart. As a result, they have what I call positional authority that allows them to compel compliance with what they want done. Leaders, however, do not alwa...

In this week's podcast, I interview Jeremy Ryan Slate about his recent book From Unremarkable to Extraordinary. One of the nation's preeminent podcast hosts, Jeremy has interviewed hundreds of highly successful men and women, many of them internationally renowned for their influence and accomplishments. From these 1200 or so interviews, he has gleaned a dozen traits which all of these successful p...

Values, Beliefs, Principles How They Interact to Shape Your Life Even though I've taught principles of values-centered leadership for decades, I was well into that process before I recognized the complex conceptual framework within which values function. And each of our values has its own unique framework. For reasons which I outline in this podcast, I began referring to this framework 20 years ag...

Life-Shaping Advice from Two Major Mentors What My Two Most Important Mentors Taught Me Over the course of my life, I've had a variety of mentors in a number of different ventures. Two stand out as having had a particularly telling impact on my career and on me as a person. In this episode I relate two maxims which they instilled in me and describe how these maxims have shaped my life immensely. O...

The Most Neglected Aspect of Change Management We've all heard the adage, "People don't like change." What I've found is that people don't dislike change so much as they dislike the way it is often implemented. It's easy to confuse their discontent with the implementation process as resistance to change itself. No one can survive in today's world without accommodating change. But accommodating it...

What Makes Freedom Vulnerable Historically, mankind has been more inclined toward political leaders who are autocratic than those who protect liberty and freedom for their people. The fact that America has kept the idea of personal freedom alive for 12 generations is an unprecedented human event. Yet freedom always hangs by a precarious thread, even after enduring for nearly two-and-a-half centuri...

Capture the Full Potential of Delegation The Secret Is in the Preparation Done properly, delegation is one of the most powerful weapons in the manager's arsenal. Done poorly, it results in untold problems later on and no small amount of lost productivity, momentum, and effectiveness. When delegation is unsuccessful, it's usually before insufficient care was given to the preparation phase of delega...

Bring Out the Best Thinking in Problem-Solving Wherever you exercise your leadership, one of the highest expectations of you is that you will be an effective problem-solver. As leaders, much of our problem solving is in group-settings, where controlling the process can be a challenge. Strong personalities and opinionated voices frequently exert themselves so forcibly that they take over the discus...

Use the Problem Solving Technique of a Creative Genius No one questions the creative genius of Walt Disney. What most people don't know, however, is that he developed a three-phase process to maximize the creativity which he brought to decision-making. It was the process his studios used for decades to make some of the greatest innovative breakthroughs in the early history of the film industry. In...

Leadership Succeeds by Getting These V's Right As a youngster, I stared many a time at flocks of geese flying high overhead during migration season. Every goose was committed for the long haul. Later in life, I came to see leadership -- particularly strategic leadership -- as a long-haul enterprise. That reminded me of those geese and their characteristic V-formation. As I toyed with the idea of f...

Why Praising Character Is as Crucial as Praising Achievement Bringing Balance to Personnel Reviews The path to the top, in the opinion of most, is to be an achiever, a top performer. That view is drummed into us from childhood. In elementary school, recognition and honors go to those whose achievement is superior. There are few awards, if any, for stellar character. The closest to it are good cond...

A Strategy for Rebuilding Accountability This is the fifth and final episode in a series of programs on growing concerns about an emerging accountability crisis in America. In this episode, I offer my thoughts on how leaders can strengthen accountability in their organization. The strategy aims at countering a situation which is increasingly common: workers who are capable and talented, but whose...

A Counteroffensive against Declining Accountability Mark Twain is remembered for saying, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." For three episodes I have been talking about the erosion of personal accountability in our nation. With this fourth episode in the series, we start doing something about it. I invite leaders to join a counteroffensive aimed at regaining th...