We all know people who are so high maintenance that we want to run the other way when they approach. It seems that no issue is too small to complain about as they walk the halls or use digital space to vent. Less recognized are people at the opposite end of the spectrum who shun…
A recent HBR blog piece — Do Customers Even Care about Your Core Competence? — sets the stage for bringing customer experience to the fore in designing talent management initiatives. The focus of the blog piece is that companies all too often think internally when identifying core competence rather than focusing on how core competence…
Let’s be truthful. A significant number of senior leaders lead by intimidation. One of the reasons why Donald Trump’s iconic “you’re fired” became so popular is because it’s exactly what can happen. Once, when I was conducting 360 assessments, a senior leader’s peers and subordinates complained to me that the leader responded to threats from…
When it comes to appointing leaders, we just can’t seem to help ourselves from naming the wrong person for the job. And this is as true for internal appointments as it is for outside hires. There are several reasons for this mistake: 1.Appointing Individual Contributors to Leadership Roles. This is a common occurrence. It happens…
We all know that conflict can be uncomfortable. And we all know people who stir up conflict for the sake of conflict. We do our best to avoid these people. But we need to learn to recognize the difference between good conflict related to ideas and bad conflict related only to personalities. There are four…
Innovation is the life blood of survival in today’s business world. Apple innovated, Blackberry didn’t; Google innovated, AOL didn’t, to give two examples. The question is how to foster innovation, particularly in a public company where existing products can easily trump future ideas, given the constant pressure to meet quarterly earnings expectations. A recent HBR…
A recent HBR blog post, Meet the New Face of Diversity:The “Slacker Millennial Guy, delivers a message of hope that Millennial males, rather than formal diversity initiatives will finally break the glass ceiling for aspiring female executives. The blog post gives examples of male surgical residents insisting on more reasonable work hours and male lawyers…
Good communication is critical to all relationships, business and personal. Sometimes though there are people with whom we just can’t connect, and it drives us crazy. You know that feeling. You want to hang up the phone or run for the door. When this happens, is there much hope for fixing the problem? Often not.…
We look at leadership effectiveness as encompassing three components: personal effectiveness, relational effectiveness and assertiveness. Each of these components, in turn, has five attributes, all or which require well honed and tested skills relating to thought, communication, action, emotional intelligence and energy. In light of our work in this area, it was refreshing to read…
Great leaders are decisive. So why isn’t decisiveness a key criterion in leadership selection? Whenever we conduct focus groups of employees, a major frustration that emerges is leaders, including managers, who just don’t make timely decisions. How did these people get into leadership roles — especially since decision-making style is one of the easiest things…