Do You Over-plan or Act Too Quickly?
How is an effective leader like a skilled movie director? Often, we think of the director as the one who yells, “Action!” . . . that word on a movie set (when everything is ready to go) that launches the actors and crew into creating and capturing the scene. But it takes more than just a command from the director for a scene to play out well. If no preparation has been done, there won't be anything worthwhile to film. And yet, if the director never issues that command, the fi
How to Know if They're Truly Committed
Do some people tend to let you down? If you’re like most of us, the answer is, “Yes!” So, how do you know if someone is truly committed? How can you tell if they will actually do what they said they will do? Whether it be in our relationships with friends, family, or those in our work environment, commitment is often a tricky subject because it is tied so directly to responsibility and accountability. And because we too often connect responsibility and accountability to blame
Is Empowerment Merely a Myth?
“You do realize that the popular concept of empowerment is a myth, right?” That’s not what a person usually says to their manager, but the frustrated shift supervisor said it anyway. And her manager was stumped. How should he respond? And what exactly did she mean? So how about you? What’s your understanding of empowerment? Is it a myth or some mystical power effective leaders are able to bestow upon those they lead? Of course not, you may say. So, what is it then? Why do we
How Work Can Fulfill Our Deeper Longings
How often do you get up in the morning and decide how you’d like your day to go? If you’ve made a habit of being that intentional about your day, your next meeting, or the task you’re about to engage in—high-five yourself—because it’s all too rare. For many of us, we easily fall into the habit of entering life like the ball in a pinball game. The momentum of the day casts us about, bouncing us off from the metaphorical bumpers we encounter along the way. When we decide to ste
How to Tell If You’re Truly Committed
Imagine for a moment that you’re trying to decide if you can count on a person or not? One quality you’ve likely tried to assess is their level of commitment. Will they stick with it when the going gets tough? Will they find solutions and not get mired down amidst the inevitable problems that will arise? Commitment is absolutely a key attribute to assess during any hiring, promotion, or talent assessment process (or when stepping into any serious relationship). Management exp
Are You Sure You Chose the Right Person for the Job?
Is the person you’re about to select for an important team or project truly ready? Are they fully capable? Have you thoroughly assessed their capability accurately? Are you sure? When asked for their take on assessing capability, Stuart Spencer, a long-standing consulting firm for boards and CEOs, had this to say: “Sometimes the differences between today’s and tomorrow’s leaders lie not in the capabilities themselves, but the level of sophistication of the same capabilities
Why the Blame Game is Always a Lose-Lose Proposition
When things go wrong, whose fault it? Who’s to blame? And how do you decide? In our role as executive coaches and consultants, we are often called in to help sift through the wreckage of a failed project or other challenging situation that is careening off course. Time after time we discover that a fundamental source of the problem comes back to people’s basic lack of understanding regarding responsibility and accountability. For example, when we begin sorting through a scena
How What You Don’t Know Could Hurt You
What is it you don’t know that you don’t know that could be hurting you, right this very moment? Is it possible something is at play . . . something you’re utterly unaware of that could be sabotaging your progress or interfering with your ability to be at your best? The very nature of such questions can be troubling if we really explore them and yet, if we stop for a moment, it’s easy to recognize that knowledge falls into three basic categories: Things we know we know; Thing
The Power of Asking for Help in a Self-Help Society
Have you found ever yourself stuck and yet hesitant to ask for help? If so, you’re not alone. Many people go to great lengths to avoid reaching out to someone in their real world. Instead, they may thoroughly research the Internet hoping they can sort through the mountains of available information and readily understand it within its proper context. The challenge is, that while we may discover what we think is the correct answer, we may also fall prey to the phenomenon known
How Denial Can Quietly Ruin You
Everywhere we turn these days, we hear people decrying the evils of “fake news.” But what about the fake news we create for ourselves; the subtle denial processes we go through to avoid looking at uncomfortable truths? In our consulting and coaching practice, we often deal with clients who have successfully evaded the truth about their own circumstances until the inevitable day when they can no longer avoid confronting reality. By then, the situation has often become so exace
