“I have an interview for a new position. I know they are going to ask me how I would view my role as a supervisor but I’ve never been a supervisor before. I don’t know what to tell them?” It’s all too common to move people into supervisory positions without… Read More »Wow Them With Your Leadership Philosophy
Have you noticed a member of your team who everyone seems to gravitate to. This is the man or woman who seems to be able to get others to do things and when there’s a big success, they are probably involved. This is your group’s informal leader. They don’t have… Read More »Your Ace in the Hole
What energizes you? When you’re having one of those days when things aren’t going right and the boss isn’t happy, what do you do? Hopefully, your answer is not to find someone to yell at. Leaders seldom make everyone happy and can count on having bad days. How you handle… Read More »Stress Relief for Leaders
Leaders often ask what sort of leadership style is appropriate. Authoritarian or relaxed? Different style for different people or always treat everyone the same? Years ago, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard published their Situational Leadership model, suggesting a leader should adopt a style that is appropriate to a follower’s ability… Read More »What’s the Best Leadership Style
Employee engagement is a concept that gets a lot of press these days. Leaders wring their hands about low levels of engagement and experts offer all kinds of actions and formulas that will fix the problem. All that angst isn’t really necessary, as engagement is a pretty simple concept. Few… Read More »I Want to be on That 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
The change of command was over and as the new commander I would soon be meeting my new staff. Truth was, I had been the operations officer, the second-in-command, and knew the staff fairly well. I also knew that I was inheriting what I was certain was the worst secretary… Read More »What does a leader do when stuck with a poor performer?
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?
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