Make Failure Your Friend

Relax; you will Fail Failure is inevitable. If you’re breathing, you will fail at things. It’s part of the human experience, yet most of us will do almost anything to avoid it. Why? What’s the problem with failing? The issue for most of us is that we fear it. We fear failure because we have […]

Mind the Gap Between What You Believe and How You Lead

I have a couple of questions for you. Can you, as a leader, articulate your core beliefs and values? And do you lead others in a way that aligns with them – your value code? If you lead people in any capacity, it’s important (and incredibly helpful) you know your value code and let it […]

Relevance

“In a world where we are drowning in information but starving for wisdom, relevance is not a matter of what we know; it is a matter of how what we know matters to someone else.”1 There are hundreds of books on leadership, and every once in a while a book comes along that provides a […]

Lessons from the Top

A leader’s journey is so much more than a collection of experiences or a series of events. It is part of a much larger story or narrative. Presented the right way, a leader’s story not only has the potential to inspire others; it has the ability to provide meaning and context to the present and […]

The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles That Fuel Success and Performance at Work

“We think: If I just get that raise, or hit that next sales target, I’ll be happy. If I can just get that next good grade, I’ll be happy. If I lose that five pounds, I’ll be happy. And so on. Success first, happiness second. The only problem is that this formula is broken.”1 “It […]

The Alliance – Managing Talent in the Networked Age

“A business without loyalty is a business without long-term thinking. A business without long-term thinking is a business that’s unable to invest in the future. And a business that isn’t investing in tomorrow’s opportunities and technologies—well, that’s a company already in the process of dying.”1 Leaders can’t afford not to be in the ‘talent’ business. […]

GROW – How ideals power growth and profit at the world’s 50 great companies

“The better you understand the people who are most important to your business’s future, the more you can stand for something fundamentally important in their eyes and the closer you can come to being an indispensable part of their lives.”1 GROW: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s 50 Greatest Companies is a […]

Are you a business staff are proud to work for?

It’s often only in hindsight that leaders recognize their organizational culture was a major contributing factor to serious failures. This was the case when international pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk risked violating US FDA regulations in the early 2010’s. Such was the seriousness of the case, its insulin was almost banned from the country1. In what […]

Two things natural leaders do differently

For some leaders there is a natural flow to relationship building that has little to do with their technical skill or level of charisma. It is demonstrated in the way they carry themselves, how they relate to others and their ability to speak their mind with both confidence and humility. It’s the result of being […]

Humility goes a long way for leaders, but it is not enough to get results

“Egos drive people in every occupation” (Heenan, 2012, pp. 19). Unfortunately, when humility is absent, leaders lose the ability to listen and focus on what is important. Jim Collins describes the resulting behaviors as “arrogant neglect”, and that when this happens, organizations enter the first stage of organizational decline (Collins, 2009, pp. 29). What can prevent this […]