In the past few weeks, several clients shared stories about presentations that didn’t go as planned. The situations were different: one was giving a speech, another was presenting to a board, and the third was meeting with a prospective client.
All were experienced professionals. All knew their material well.
Many high-achieving leaders are disciplined about setting goals. Whether the process is formal or informal, the objective is the same: achieving meaningful results.
Most people focus primarily on the tasks and activities required to reach those goals. That approach makes sense and is often effective.
Leadership behaviors spread quickly through organizations — sometimes in productive ways, and sometimes in destructive ones.
When people think about improving at work, they usually focus on acquiring new skills. Far less attention is given to the behaviors, habits, or attitudes that should be eliminated.
Team members rely on each other. When everyone follows through on their commitments, the results can be exceptional. But when one person fails to hold up his or her end of the bargain, the domino effect can be swift and damaging.
If your organization is team-based, it’s your responsibility as a leader to ensure those teams function effectively. There’s little room for prima donnas, lone rangers, or chronic slackers. No matter how talented they may be, they weaken the team when they operate in isolation or refuse to support others.
It doesn’t take long before direct reports of my clients ask me how to deal with a moody or unresponsive leader. It’s an interesting request, because the leaders they’re referring to are often either indifferent to—or in denial about—their impact.
Some leaders believe it’s their right to be moody. As a result, they reject the idea that they should be more receptive to what their people say or ask.
Yesterday, April 22, would have been my mother, Agatha’s 99th birthday. I’ve been thinking about her a lot this week, especially some notable, early achievements that happened before I was born.
She broke through a lot of barriers as a young adult. Although she majored in sociology in college, she also completed the requirements of a biology major, a field her Catholic college didn’t consider “appropriate” for young women.
One of my clients has an employee who consistently blames others for anything that goes wrong in his department. And, if he is criticized by his manager, he has an artful way of ignoring the message and pointing the finger elsewhere.
A culture of accountability offsets an environment of blame. This employee (we’ll call him Samuel) has unique technical expertise. Certainly, this talent is recognized and appreciated, but by not paying attention to the team leader’s guidance, Samuel has created more problems with clients than he has actually solved.
I recently led a workshop on leadership skills, during which several participants asked questions about managing people. A common theme underpinning these questions was their timidity as managers.
Several examples were related to employee entitlement and how these managers could more effectively deal with employees’ self-declared privileges.
Spring arrived a couple of weeks ago as a reminder that change is natural and timely. I think of it as an opportunity to reset. As flowers bud and days lengthen, we can translate that seasonal renewal into concrete leadership practices: reflection, realignment, and reinvigoration.
Holidays like Easter, Passover, and Ramadan deepen those themes: rebirth, liberation, and gratitude offer familiar prompts to reexamine purpose and priorities.
One of my clients suffers from executive delegation syndrome. This occurs when successful leaders can’t get out of their own way by not delegating sufficiently.
As leaders advance professionally, often into executive level functions, they can’t keep doing everything they were doing up until this point. You may have been an account executive, for example, and now you lead a department of 14 accounts executives.