Type leadership into Amazon’s search bar and you’ll be offered a list of more than 60,000 books on the topic. Books about what leadership is, what leadership isn’t, books about how to do leadership, books about great leaders (surprisingly very few books about poor leaders, which could probably double the… Read More »Common Sense Leadership
What can a collegiate-level cyber defense competition teach us about leadership? The answer, it seems, is “quite a bit.” A recent article (In Cyber Defense, Sometimes Communication Is Overrated, Defense Systems, Susan Miller Apr 27, 2018) described lessons-learned from the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. As the article’s title suggests,… Read More »Can your team have too much communication?
Coach. Say the word and different pictures come to mind. Some might think of a favorite sports coach while others conjure images (good or bad) of their drill instructor, or perhaps a favorite teacher. Regardless of the situation, we find that coaches are individuals who provide assistance to someone to… Read More »9 Ways to Create the Perfect Coaching Relationship
One thing is almost universally true about this time of year, people are busy. One student lamented to me last year that she had a long list of leadership priorities for her team but that she didn’t have the time to do any of it because her boss had come… Read More »Three Things Great Leaders Do When They Are “Too Busy to Lead”
A prerequisite for effective and high-performing teams is trust among its members. According to Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, trust is foundational to team effectiveness. Improving an absence of trust due to unfamiliarity, personality and cultural differences, or ambiguous roles and responsibilities is “relatively” straight forward… Read More »Toxic Behavior Destroys Team Trust
“I’m not sure about that new guy. He doesn’t seem to be fitting in and doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. Why’d you hire him?” Ever have someone walk into your office and say something like this? Ever find yourself wondering why a new person on the team isn’t… Read More »Five Steps to Helping the New Hire Fit In
“Sure, I know where we’re going, follow me.” As you set off for the restaurant with friends in tow, you are filled with confidence. But after a couple of wrong turns things aren’t looking familiar and it occurs to you that you really don’t know where you are going. Embarrassing?… Read More »“Follow me!” Are you ready to say this?
“Sam is a great leader.” “Why do you say that?” “Well, because…” What follows is usually a rather subjective description of certain characteristics that generally follow a pattern of traits we’ve found common to good leaders. As many times as I’ve done the good boss/bad boss exercise with leadership students… Read More »Are you an effective leader? Five ways to know.
Have you ever had one of those sleep-deprived nights where you hear Drip…Drip…….Drip? I have. You would think this would have been annoying enough to get me to prioritize fixing that leaky faucet the next day. You would be wrong. It seems that during the day when I’m not reminded by… Read More »Leaky Faucets and Leadership
Having recently been promoted, one person told me about over-hearing someone mention getting an email from “the boss”, only to come to the frightening realization that she was the one being referred to! Taking charge of a team of individuals is no trivial task. After all, not only are you… Read More »You’re the new leader, now what?