Please join me in welcoming two guest bloggers, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel. Kevin is a leading authority on leadership and has twice been named by Inc.com as one of the top 100 Leadership/Management Experts in the World. Wayne is the co-founder of the Remote Leadership Institute and author of several books that demystify communicating [...]
I recently listened to a Harvard Business Review podcast called “The Anxious Achievers.” (Wow, there’s a phrase I can relate to!) Besides loving the title of that program, I have been drawn to the idea that we need to change the way we think about managing our stress and anxiety. Steve Cuss, author of “Managing [...]
While speed and efficiency are necessary leadership traits in our always-on, do-more world, there’s also a point of diminishing returns. If we let agendas and clocks dictate all of our meetings, we could be undermining our own efforts to encourage meaningful collaboration and innovative thinking. Consider the unfortunate impact. Many people are reluctant to speak [...]
We leaders are, by definition, doers. We finish. We deliver. We get results. And we love the feeling of accomplishment that comes with crossing things off our “to-do” lists. The tougher the task, the better we like it. We revel in being the person others come to with impossible tasks, and we somehow make them [...]
Sometimes we get into the habit of doing the same things we’ve always done. Personal and even workplace habits that once served us, can become stale and even obsolete. I’ll use my own father as an example. Since I can remember, Dad has kept a handy little logbook in his glove compartment to document the [...]
Avid gardeners know from experience that accelerating the growth of a tree…requires pruning it. To make it grow bigger, you have to cut it back. That counterintuitive principle also applies to professionals. If we want remarkable business growth, we need the courage to prune things back, our schedules, our projects, and our commitments. We must [...]
We can make every effort to be objective, rational, and open-minded when making decisions or contemplating new ideas, but there are several roadblocks that may get in the way. The first one is cognitive bias. We simply can’t escape its effects. I’ll give you an example. You’re presented with a new business opportunity. Naturally, you’ll [...]
I've noticed something lately during my time on the yoga mat. My yoga practice isn’t just enhancing my mental and physical health; it’s also highlighted some interesting parallels that map to essential leadership concepts. I suppose that makes sense, considering yoga has been a path to self-realization and enlightenment for thousands of years. A yoga [...]
We can all look back on the choices we made as leaders and think of plenty of things we'd do differently. Hindsight is 20/20, right? That's especially true for me as a leadership speaker, reflecting on my time as an operations executive a decade ago. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm proud of what [...]
Today, technology has seeped into every crevice of our organizations, from manufacturing, operations, marketing, and beyond. That explains why technical professionals play such an essential role in their companies’ success. While some tech experts prefer to continue as strong individual contributors or follow the domain expertise path, others will be recognized for their outstanding value [...]