If you have worked in the professional world as a leader for any length of time you have undoubtedly found yourself managing a team member who was failing to live up to expectations. While it might be tempting to cut someone loose if their performance is sub-par, the turnover may cost more than you think.
Coaching is good for you.
Think back to the people in your life who you’ve advised, whose potential you’ve recognized, and whose talents you’ve used to help you discover and shape your own.
Didn’t that process feel good?
According to research, coaching others has positive psychophysiological effects that restore the body’s natural healing processes and improve stamina. “When we care enough to invest time in developing others, we become less preoccupied with ourselves, which balances the toxic effects of stress and burnout.”
Great leaders are part coach, part communicator, part motivator and always in service of the team they lead. It’s never about them, but rather about the people they serve. Read More…
The mountain of articles, posts and books written on leadership every year reflects two realities. First, people are very interested in how to be an effective leader. And second, leadership isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor. The lessons mined from one leader’s experience may not be applicable in a different context. More than offering leadership development, organizations can address this reality by creating a culture of leadership.
Creating a culture of leadership has four primary components: Self-mastery, Action, Relationship and Context.
The launch of a new strategic effort represents a key opportunity for senior leaders to set things off on the right foot. Unfortunately, many senior executives fail to grasp the importance that a well prepared and delivered executive kickoff can have on the success of a project team.
This may happen because some leaders don’t take the time to develop the skills necessary to ensure that their kickoffs meet the mark or because they don’t see the inherent importance that their presence, statements, and interactions with others can have on their staff. Whatever the reason, or reasons, taking the time and effort to adequately prepare for this leadership responsibility can certainly pay dividends. Read More…
The commercial aviation industry is a tough business. Really tough. Margins are often razor thin, factors like the weather can wreak havoc on your operation in the blink of an eye and customer expectations of the air travel experience tend to be extremely low. Aviation workers give it their all every day to deliver in, sometimes, unrelenting environments and they aren’t usually paid all that well for what they do.
We’ve all been there. Be it work, school or Thanksgiving dinner, we’ve all found ourselves in situations where we have been forced to interact with people we find to be “difficult”. For many of us, we’d rather eat glass than have to deal with challenging people like this but how we survive and, dare I say thrive, in these situations can separate us from the pack in both business and in life. Read More…
Entrepreneurs juggle a lot of balls, no doubt. The culmination of the many items that demand our attention on a day-to-day basis and the multitude of stressors that come along with the lifestyle we have chosen can make it seem impossible to focus our attention on any one thing for long.
Not only does this make our lives take on a frenetic tempo but it can also have other, long-lasting negative impacts on our organizations and ourselves. Let’s explore why trying to focus on multiple things at once doesn’t really work all that well considering what we’re trying to accomplish. Read More…
Businesses today are investing significantly in developing leadership and management talent, and leader coaching is increasingly becoming a core component of development programs. If you are making decisions about how to leverage coaching for leader development, there are lots of variables to consider. And there is a lot at stake – what leaders learn and achieve through a leader development program can impact hundreds, perhaps thousands of others in your organization.
Today, most leader coaching is targeted at developing the capabilities of high-potential performers. Having built leadership coaching programs in two organizations, and being a practicing executive coach, I want to share some observations and advice with those responsible for facilitating leader developing programs, specifically around selecting and using coaches.
As an Army officer, I technically out-ranked any enlisted man. That included the first sergeant, the ranking non-commissioned officer in any company.
Technicalities aside, my WWII veteran father had educated me early that the first sergeant was really the guy in charge. The opportunity, my Dad told me, was to learn from the first sergeant. I’m glad I did.
The cover of WIRED magazine this past month read “How to Survive the Great Tech Panic of 2017”, touching on topics like robot overlords, self-driving cars, cyber warfare, comment trolls, cyber attacks, privacy breaches, Ransomware, text neck, nuke hacks and artificial intelligence.
It’s no doubt that this disruptive digital era has created a more complex business environment for brands as customers today are more engaged and connected. A company’s ability to remain agile, open and responsive in order to develop deeper ties to clients is being tested in unprecedented ways, impacting all industries and disciplines. Fortunately, these technologies have the potential to be growth enablers for businesses and leadership teams, helping serve clients and better interpret their needs more effectively.
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