Where do I start—the best people or the best strategy?
What if I recruit the wrong person? How do I make sure I get a return on my investment and not lose this person to a competitor? Do we need to first make sure we have the strategy bedded down? These are some of the most frequently asked questions I get from leaders in relation to […]
Get me out of this meeting. I’m dying!
In 2004, I accepted a VP role for an organization that was expanding globally, and as a result, I was overwhelmed by the number of meetings I was expected to attend! Frustrated with endless meetings and the lack of decision-making and productivity, it became obvious to me that we didn’t always have the right people […]
The struggle of being ‘in-between’
As a child growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, ‘Gilligan’, ‘Skipper’, the ‘Howells’, ‘Ginger, the movie star’, ‘The Professor’ and ‘Mary Ann’ were familiar names as characters in CBS’ hit television series, Gilligan’s Island. For 98 episodes the characters looked for a way to get off the island where they had become shipwrecked and return […]
Transitions – Making sense of life’s changes
Making sense of life’s transitions is not always easy. We can often experience a range of emotions – hurt, anger, anxiety, fear and many more. Mix in a dose of confusion and disappointment while trying to discover that illusive ‘next step’ can be a little overwhelming. Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes is practical and […]
Responding to organizational decline from the inside
Feeling stuck in an organization that seems to be going downhill is not fun! Growing frustration with the lack of accountability and poor performance by leaders has led to a significant loss of talent for organizations, often causing staff to question their goals and approaches to achieving them. In Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to […]
What do narcissistic leaders and the bottom-line have in common?
In a series of studies on narcissism, Professor Alex Frino, Dean of the Macquarie School of Management, concluded that “there was a clear correlation between the level of CEO narcissism and the company’s use of ‘earnings management’ – a technique which takes advantage of the flexibility in accounting rules to inflate profit figures” (Frino, 2014). The more narcissistic […]
Ancient wisdom affirms the importance of character to leadership
All of us, at some point, have been frustrated at the ineptitude of some leaders, especially when their actions reveal an attitude of ‘what’s in it for me?’, or when self-preservation is clearly the goal no matter how it affects others. A discussion on character, or values, may not be as riveting as the latest sales techniques, marketing strategies, […]
Qualities of a good leadership coach
There are some excellent reasons why having an experienced leadership coach can be beneficial— They coach from areas of strength that may not be areas of strength for you They are an objective sounding board that brings significant experience They give you the opportunity to confide in a person with whom there is no conflict of […]
How the dance of chaos and order can unleash new ideas
In Leadership & the New Science, Wheatley explores a perspective on leadership rarely heard. Pushing us beyond Sir Isaac Newton’s mechanistic theories of why things work the way they do, Wheatley forces us to think more about the relationship of how things work together in a symbiotic and complementary manner where relationships are rarely static. […]
Overcoming the obstacles of interruption and speed
In 2006, Dr. André Martin conducted research on a sample of 800 leaders and identified four global trends (Martin, 2011). The first two were ‘The Ground Truth of Globalization’ and ‘The Rise of Complex Challenges’. This article addresses the next two. The third trend was The World of Interruption. Martin states that 11 minutes is the […]
