Leaders Make It Better: How to Develop More Impactful Leaders

The role of a leader is complex and sometimes ambiguous. Leaders shape the culture and the outcomes of a business. Leaders can make the difference or make no difference at all.  Leadership is one of the least taught subjects but perhaps one of the most puzzling and arguably one that needs significantly more attention in today’s organizations.

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From Critic to Champion: 3 Soft Skills Modern Leaders Need and How to Develop Them

What is leadership all about? Leadership is about being purposeful, executing a strategy and evaluating results. It’s easy to be a leadership critic. We all fall into the trap of identifying what is wrong, what we think can be done and what failure looks like. That’s not leadership. Good leaders are in the game: They succeed, and they fail, but they keep getting up to bat. Leadership is hard, accepting feedback is hard and being vulnerable and admitting when you’re wrong is hard. But leaders must be humble enough to be wrong and brave enough to try to be right.

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Leadership Is: Developing a Blueprint for

Leadership Development

Over the last several years, through workshops and leadership development events, I have asked attendees to complete this simple sentence: Leadership is __________. The original concept came about after years of teaching an organizational behavior class and reviewing leadership research. But there is no universally accepted definition of leadership. But like identifying talent, we know it’s important. We know when we see it in action, but it’s much more ambiguous when we try to define it. That led to my journey to ask leaders among different walks of life, industries and experiences to share their definition. Here’s what I have learned so far.

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Leading in 2021: Lessons From 2020

In the U.S., it can seem difficult these days to engage in a conversation that doesn’t bleed into a “left versus right,” “liberal versus conservative,” “red versus blue” debate. Social media, for all its ability to help us share the joy of weddings, births, birthdays, photos and funny memes, also provides a continuous feed of slanted stories and opinions based on our personal likes and habits. The great fear of the internet is that we will lose our ability to think on our own, to critically evaluate information rather than simply accepting opinions we hope to be true. We seem to be letting go of our personal accountability.

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When We Are Challenged, Leadership Matters

No one planned for such an enormous change in the way we interact, the way we work and the way we live. While we often reviewed scenarios around natural disasters, fires and computer attacks, we never fathomed that a pandemic would close down our offices, our restaurants and our stores and have such a profound impact on the way we live and interact.

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4 Strategies for Optimizing Employee Engagement

When employees are engaged, absenteeism is 41% lower, productivity is 17% higher, sales increase 20% and profitability increases 21%. Who would not agree that improving employee engagement is worth the effort? Creating a culture of engagement is not insurmountable, but it needs to be focused and purposeful. Follow these four tips to begin the process of shaping your culture.

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Talk to Me: The Importance of Face-to-face

Communication in Management

My apologies to millennials and all the futurists who crave the solidarity of a text message, but I prefer a conversation. Texting is great when you need to convey information, confirm a plan, check in on a status or send a warm reminder photo of home. But supervision by text, email or smoke signal doesn’t cut it.