Have you noticed a lack of social civility these days? Everywhere I look it seems people have self-selected into various camps and are not interested in what anyone else has to say. It seems impossible to have a civilized discussion on anything beyond the weather. This situation is affecting young… Read More »Five Ways to Encourage Conflict on Your Team
We want and appreciate comments to this blog. We really do want to know what you’re thinking. But, there are those who see an invite to comment as an opportunity to advertise their products and services. Most annoying are those who want us to use their content generation services. They… Read More »Three Steps to Ease Your Transition to Your New Team
My wife gave me a DNA kit for Christmas. It’s pretty simple. You spit into a tube and mail it in. In a few weeks your results come back telling you where your ancestral roots most likely trace. I found that my roots are solidly in the British Isles with… Read More »Know Thy Team: Why Leaders Should Learn Who Their Team Members Really Are
January 13, 1982 was a cold day in Washington DC. The temperature hovered at 24 degrees and heavy snow was falling. At 4:00 PM, after waiting 1 hour and 45 minutes for Washington National Airport to reopen, Air Florida Flight 90 took off bound for Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Boeing… Read More »How to Prevent a Team Disaster
Hope is not a strategy. You’ve probably heard that before and it’s certainly true. We can’t hope success into existence. Hoping will not accomplish goals. Hoping bills get paid doesn’t pay the bills. Those accomplishments require positive action. To be successful, we must actually do something. Hope is not a… Read More »Hope is Not a Strategy: But it is Important
How to Avoid Those Pesky Resolutions Every year I advise against New Year’s resolutions. They usually don’t work and just cause stress. You know the cycle: make a resolution, diligently strive to achieve the resolution, start to stress because you’re not achieving the resolution, forget about the resolution and return… Read More »How to Avoid Those Pesky Resolutions
In a recent interview on CNBC, Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo talked about a meeting with Steve Jobs where Jobs told her “If you really feel strongly about something — if you don’t like something people are doing — throw a temper tantrum. Throw things around, because people have got… Read More »How to be an Assertive Leader
One of the most common sources of information on how to be a leader comes from observation of previous leaders. For many this is often the only source and it is very natural to emulate what we see. An exercise we use in our leadership development workshops is creating a… Read More »Are You Doing to Your Team What Drives You Crazy?
Over the last few weeks you have probably become tired of watching politicians stumping for a job. Well, it’s over now and we’ll have a short, merciful reprieve before it all starts again. Even though the incessant political posturing wears us out, there is something to learn from it. Whether… Read More »Five Ways to Project Confidence When You Speak
You’ve probably heard the question before; is the glass half empty or half full? It’s the wrong question. It’s better to ask, what the glass is full of. Unless it’s in a vacuum, the glass, or any container, is always full of something. Even the glass that is filled halfway with liquid is still full. The rest of the volume is taken up with air, dust, and other things you can’t see and probably don’t want to think about. People are like that too.Read More »The Glass is Always Full