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What Role Should a Leader Play in a Planning Meeting?
Have you ever seen leaders play one of these roles in a planning meeting? The Lecturer - In meeting 1, you’re locked in a planning session and the leader is controlling everything. She says too much and says it too strongly. The rest of the leadership team starts to...
How To Be an Ally Without Being a Chump
A while back, I wrote a piece arguing that we should act like Allies instead of Critics with our colleagues. I know you may have been thinking, “But you don’t work with this one scumbag at our company. There’s no way he’d be an Ally. And if I act like an Ally with...
Critics and Allies
If you’re a leader, you’re going to spend the vast majority of your days in meetings. Leaders spend most of their time with others wrestling with tough issues that couldn’t be solved elsewhere and creating a future that no one person could achieve alone. So, quick:...
Four Magic Words To Make Your Next Meeting Productive
You probably hate meetings. But if you’re a leader, the fact is that you spend most of your time in meetings. This isn’t going to end. Stop lamenting that you want to get “real work” done. Most of your real work happens in a meeting. Which means you need to become an...
I’m Sorry… But I’m Not Sure How to Say That
Elton John was right all those years ago: Sorry really is the hardest word. At least, it’s hard to say without coming off lame. Ask any number of public figures who have tried and failed recently. “I’m sorry if you were offended,” is probably the most commonly...
Are You Starring in Leader Theater or Are You Building a Team?
Karen sits in her office, slightly baffled. She’s in the middle of a major change initiative designed to dramatically improve her company’s cost structure. All along, she has been out in front of this initiative, explaining it, selling it, cheering for it. She made...
Don’t Start Strategy Until You Do These Two Things
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a leadership team with a shiny new strategy that’s never gotten off the whiteboard into real life, I could retire right now. They go through the pain of looking at their organization and its place in the world. They hash out...
When Getting Sh*t Done Doesn’t Get It Done
Matt is a high achieving, high potential leader at a fast growth company. His job requires him to pull together the efforts of multiple groups - marketing, sales, operations - to achieve the company’s quarterly goals. It’s a process that naturally creates friction as...
Is Your Team a Momentum-Maker or Momentum-Killer?
Ben has a problem. He just took over the leadership of a company that until recently had been on a bad losing streak. Two years ago, the board brought in a turnaround artist who used a combination of hard work and brute force to arrest the decline. As a result, a...
Where Passion Comes From
Why do you do what you do? I was with an executive team recently and found myself silently channeling Simon Sinek, asking myself that question about these people: Why do they do this job? Their company provides a service aimed at helping families who earn $50K or less...
Ted Does TEDx
What would you talk about if you were invited to speak for no more than 18 minutes to 100 bright university students? At 10AM on a Saturday morning? In December? In balmy Madison, Wisconsin? That was the challenge I faced after exchanging emails with a client’s...
How to Make Strategy Live When You’re Not in the Room
Quick. Tell me the strategy of your organization. For bonus points, tell me how your team and your role fits into that strategy. And how it affects your actions each day, especially in terms of what you choose NOT to do as a result of the strategy. If you’re like most...