Seeing Ourselves Clearly: Overcoming Leadership Blind Spots
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I have always been fascinated by how unaware many people seem to be of how they come across or how their behavior impacts others.
I have always been fascinated by how unaware many people seem to be of how they come across or how their behavior impacts others.
One of the biggest challenges that any leader faces is to ensure that employees feel comfortable speaking up when they have difficult issues to discuss Although such topics that are difficult to talk about, they can have a significant impact on the workplace, such issues as harassment, discrimination, or concerns about the company's culture.
Last fall I had a person reach out to me who was in charge of a huge change initiative in his company. He asked if I would identify a number of behaviors that leaders should avoid at all costs.
Some of the best leaders that I ever had were not my direct managers. One such individual was an Executive VP and Chief Legal counsel at the first company I worked for. Because I was single at the time and didn’t really know anyone, I frequently stayed late in the evenings to catch up on my work.
70% of managers are afraid to talk to their employees. No wonder employees are disengaged or disconnected from their leadership! Employees and their managers are not talking to one another to make vital connections and increase the effectiveness of their work. Here are 10 questions that might help you assess how engaged you are with your people.
I have had the opportunity to coach a number of different leaders. Sometimes I am asked to observe how a leader interacts with their team members and then provide the leader with feedback about the impact of their behavior on the team. When I observe a lack of engagement in a leader’s meeting, I interview team members to discover the reasons for their lack of engagement in team meetings.
Whether you are a new leader or manager who is starting a new business, your mindset and those of your people are integral to the success of your endeavors. Why? Because your mindset influences your people’s performance.
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Recently I was sitting with a group of leaders who were discussing how difficult it can be to talk about what matters most, particularly when others don’t share your view.
Recently, I was asked to observe a Home Owners Association board meeting and to provide feedback about what the board members could do to have more effective meetings. From the outset, it was obvious that the entire group of individuals had never received any type of business communication training. More than anything, I was shocked
I recently had the opportunity to meet with a group of consultant friends. Our conversation turned into a debate about which essential roles leaders play.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to watch one of my favorite college basketball teams win their quarterfinal contest in the NIT. What was so memorable about this game was that one of the team’s long-time stars played even though he was very sick. He contracted the flu before the game and was not expected to play.
Recently one of my trainees went through her annual performance review. She received an unsatisfactory rating in one area because her manager told her that she was too argumentative. When she asked what that meant, she was told that she asked too many questions.
I recently had a VP tell me that she had assigned one of her directors the task of doing a comparability study of their company’s compensation and benefits vis-à-vis other companies in their industry. After the director had completed the study, the VP grilled the director on his findings. The director had a difficult time answering the questions that she asked and came across as lacking in confidence. The VP was then faced with a dilemma: should she make the presentation to the Board of Trustees herself or should she run the risk of allowing the director to make the...
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When I was in my first job in corporate America, I had a one-of-a-kind manager. The first thing he did when meeting with me was to ask me what I wanted to become and what my vision of my future career looked like. I really hadn’t given it much thought, and so I candidly told him so. Always abounding in patience, he began by asking me a series of well-thought out questions that made me think.
Recently I held a number of open office hours online to answer questions that people had about emotional intelligence. By far the most frequently asked question was, “Why do people become so defensive?” Perhaps the easiest way to understand defensiveness is to understand what makes each of us defensive.