Management
How to develop a flexible leadership style
Feeling adrift in a business world where uncertainty is the norm? Where complex problems bubble up quickly and defy conventional leadership thinking? Where, as...
Management
Management
How to confront a performance problem
In all of the work I’ve done in management development over the last 20-plus years, if I had to pick the one thing that...
Management
Memo to the CEO: 5 myths that are killing your talent development
Talent development is a perennial issue for CEOs, but this year, it’s more prominent than ever. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2013 Global CEO Survey, the...
Management
The role of empathy in business success
Do you want to be able to influence others better? Want to make your sales quota? Want to motivate your team? Try practicing empathy....
Management
Building trust in your managers
Do you trust the people who report to you? That question is not just about right versus wrong. It’s also about competence versus incompetence....
Management
Look on the bright side of your people
Wise leaders look at what an employee can do rather than what he cannot do. The lesson for leaders who evaluate people — that...
Management
Do you have BBS (Bad Boss Syndrome)?
Do your employees stop talking and look uncomfortable when you walk into the coffee room? Does everyone but you go out for drinks after...
Management
Meetings as relationship-building opportunities
Meetings in many organizations have unhealthy hidden agendas, unhealthy conflict and competition, and a rush to action without appropriate dialog. It’s every person for...
Management
Tomorrow’s leaders embrace resistance
Succeeding in spite of resistance is a traditional problem of leadership. A leader ought to welcome resistance and work with it. A successful leader...
Management
Bad news? Deliver it with dignity
Have some tough news to deliver? Use a one-two approach: affirm their value, then critique their performance. Too often managers open with the tough...
Management
Quit trying to be the perfect boss
In the effort of achieving perfection, every leader faces a temptation to project a persona rather than be themselves. They think that in order...
Management
How to end the “blame game” — a dream for change
Have you ever been frustrated by name-calling, finger-pointing and the blame game? Or watched how harsh judgments can divide people, divide organizations and result...
Management
4 guidelines for influence-driven crisis management
It was every CEO’s worst nightmare. Seven customers died in 1982 after taking the company’s most popular and profitable product. Instead of getting relief...
Management
Simple steps to successful presentations
Picture this: You’re at a conference, waiting to hear a speaker whose talk you’ve been looking forward to for months. As you sit down,...
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10 ways to get honest feedback from your employees
The following responses are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invitation-only organization composed of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a...
Management
It’s the small things that make a leader great
How unfortunate that our popular ideas of what a good leader should be are so often grandiose. Through current media, television and movies, we...
Management
Lifting the veil: The power of 360-degree feedback
When I first heard about 360-degree feedback, it reminded me of those horrible slam books from middle school. The ones that kids taunt one...
Management
The reverse commencement speech to leaders
We are entering the time of commencement speeches. Some may go viral while others will evaporate as soon as the words are spoken. It...
Management
Newbie leadership mistakes and the important lessons learned
The following answers and images are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only organization composed of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC...
Management
Pickett’s Charge: A broken negotiation
Attribution: Map by Hal Jespersen, http://www.posix.com/CW (via Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license) One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, the Battle of...
Management
Can a manager be a coach?
Can a manager be an effective coach? Some (often, professional coaches) say that they can’t and shouldn’t, because they have too much of a...
Management
Employee-friendly cultures drive company success
The Denver Post recently announced the results of its second annual Top Workplaces program. The rankings are based on over 32,000 employee surveys from...
Management
Breaking the chains of command
Companies need control to make sure they are efficient, compliant and even predictable, but it’s easy to go too far. Coping with a tough...
Management
Get over being afraid to give feedback
“Tell me why you never talked to Josh about the problems with his job performance.” “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” This dialogue...
Management
Are you a leadership-talent hoarder?
Is your organization doing a good job of developing its leadership pipeline? Leadership-development opportunities start with entry-level supervision roles, and a recent study suggests...
Management
Learning from fiction: An insight into coaching
Techniques fiction writers employ to develop characters can provide insight into how managers develop their employees. Learn the secret that one novelist, Ellis Avery,...
Management
Managing a team that is not there
A friend said something to me at a recent conference that struck me. It came after a presentation on how a cloud-based tool enabled...
Management
Bootstrapping your startup: My lessons learned
As an entrepreneur who bootstrapped my company, ReTargeter, with less than $50,000 in funding, I wanted to share some of my tips and lessons...
Management
Will your customers stay or stray?
Selling to a new customer is difficult. Holding that customer can be even more difficult. It all comes down to what you provide in...
Management
Managers, meet with your employees to show you mean business
When you try to have meaningful conversations with your employees, the outcome can be hit-or-miss. Let’s say you are interested in what motivates them...
Management
Leaders, connect to your primary customers: your employees
Leaders, are you seen as “of the people” you have chosen to lead or as separate from them? I understand that leaders have unique...
Management
10 employee conversations that managers hate to have
Being a manager means never having to say you’re sorry. No wait, that’s some dumb line from a horrible 1970s movie. However, there may...
Management
Secrets to attracting the best sales representatives
Attracting the right kinds of workers can be difficult. In fact, a recent survey found that 35% of employers reported problems in finding staff...
Management
Leadership lessons from social media
Leadership lessons from the online world extend beyond the content. Learn as much from watching what bloggers do, as what they say. 1. Say...
Management
Behind closed doors: Avoiding the corporate “Snowden effect”
Edward Snowden’s revelations of what the National Security Agency knows about us have gotten us talking about the role of secrecy in a free...
Management
The damaging cult of the hero leader
Corporate training programs often ask people to define what they are looking for in a leader. Respondents tell us they want leaders who are...
Management
Telecommuting: No longer the enemy of innovation
Too often, I’ve seen telecommuting as the scapegoat for a lack of communication and creativity within remote teams. More recently, it’s a debate that...
Management
Why waiting is a new executive’s first task
A new vice president (“Hank”) was hired from outside the company to fix the organization’s broken supply chain. He was put on a short...
Management
How does a CEO or founder go about improving — and measuring — company culture?
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs.The YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a...
Management
Before you start making changes …
Change is part of organizational life — inevitable, unsettling and necessary. Too often when managers are pushed to improve, they make changes without taking...
Management
Leadership development “Moneyball”
“Moneyball” was a book and movie based on Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane and his use of statistics (sabermetrics, to be precise) to...
Management
What’s one thing you have purged from your life in order to be a more effective leader?
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently launched #StartupLab,...