Are Most Continuous Performance Management Systems Just a Cover-up for Poor Leadership?
Despite extensive attempts to redesign performance systems to ensure they are ongoing, are driven by the employees, foster conversations between managers and employees, too many have become a cover-up for poor leadership.
Building OKR Compatible Performance Management Systems
OKRs are a powerful goal-setting and leadership tool for communicating strategic priorities and the milestones you’ll need accomplish. When smartly paired with performance management systems, this can be a powerful alignment tool. Yet there are some critical mistakes that are too often ignored.
3 Essential Questions for Leaders in New Roles
How often have you struggled or watched someone struggle while transitioning into a new leadership role? Top performance in one role does not inherently mean excellent performance in a future role with greater responsibility and scope. Success as an individual contributor, manager, functional leader or executive, does not imply success at leading individuals in those…
5 Ways To Change Behavior Through High Impact Learning
Learning and development is a booming industry with $83 billion spent annually in the US and nearly $360 billion globally. Yet these efforts are not consistent with performance. A recent study shows both the need for learning and development as well as the failure of current efforts: 70% of employees claim they don’t have mastery…
This, Not That: Team Effectiveness and the Myth of Accountability
Not long ago, I was working with the leader of a team at a mid-size company, coaching him and his two direct reports. They were plagued by performance issues like missed deadlines, inaccurate reporting, and complex interpersonal challenges. They desperately needed to establish some common building blocks for success—quickly. As I interviewed the team—which included…
Do you want to spend your time doing $10,000 an hour thinking or $10 an hour tasks?
Last week my teenage son was at a ski competition at Taos Ski Valley and he brought home a ski hat with “Janitor” across the front. While the hat was nice, I was really curious about why it said “Janitor.” My son shared that the founder of Taos Ski Valley, Ernie Blake, used to wear…
End of Year Questions and Intentions
3 Critical Leadership Questions… and some other reflections As the new year comes along, most of our budgets for the next year have been finalized and approved, and we begin (if we haven’t started already) to plan out how we will achieve these goals. For most, this focus is on tangible milestones—projects, tasks and initiatives…
Crafting Your Leadership Story: A How-to Guide
This is an interesting article developed by some of my colleagues at Linkage: Crafting Your Leadership Story: A How-to Guide This is some really excellent work around developing and crafting your leadership story. The link to a PDF features a 3-part exercise that encourages self-reflection and storytelling to create a compelling leadership vision. Let me…
Your Leadership Role as a Coach
I’m a big fan of the leadership definition: “While the job of a manager is to get work done through people, the job of a leader is to develop people through work.” What this means is that as a leader, one of the most critical roles you have is to coach and develop your talent.…
If you come to me with a problem, make sure you’ve thought of a solution!
Leaders often struggle with feeling of being overwhelmed by day-to-day issues and “getting stuck in the weeds.” In particular, front-line supervisors or managers often find themselves spending more time than they’d like solving problems that they believe others should be able to solve. The problem is that this dynamic takes time away from planning, being…
Why Purpose Matters!
How often do you think about purpose, I mean really think about your purpose? There has been some amazing research on purpose recently that shows statistical links between people who know and live their purpose and longevity (7.6 years longer in those who have a clear purpose), the rate of deterioration of Alzheimer patients that…
People Don’t Leave Bad Companies, They Leave Bad Bosses. Are You a Bad Boss?
We all know the phrase: people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses, but how do you know if you are a bad boss? In your next engagement survey, ask these two simple questions: Do you have a emotional connection to your manager? Do you trust your manager? Keep it simple. These simple questions…
Is Your Organization Great? Really?
I had the privilege of listening to @Jim Collins today at an amazing learning institute #LinkageGILD. Collins had a great comment about the question, ‘How great is your organization’? Collins goes on to say that, “If your organization (team) cannot be great without you, it is not yet great.” Wonderful perspective. I’ve often asked people, “If your…
What’s your “Man on the moon”?
I’ve spent the last few weeks working with an Accounting Team at an energy company. We’ve spent some time discussing vision and purpose. During our conversations, I was reminded of the old story of the journalist who visited NASA in the 60’s, who was writing about the space program and the growing organization. As the…
What the Holacracy?
A couple of weeks ago, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, sent the following memo to all of his employees. In this lengthy email, Hseih outlined his strategy for growing the business through Holocracy, an approach to organizational governance where decision-making, authority, and structure are distributed throughout the organization instead of being housed or owned by…
Leadership and the Seahawks
People seem to either love or hate the Seahawks. Regardless of your thoughts about the team, their coach Peter Carroll’s approach to leadership is unique in the NFL. I just read a really insightful article about the Carroll’s leadership style: Pete Carroll’s road to redemption leads Seahawks back to SuperBowl, shot at history. A couple…
Why Brainstorming Makes Us Dumber
“Let’s start by brainstorming.” “First we are going to brainstorm to get all the ideas out on the table.” “In brainstorming, there are no bad ideas–we are just going to get the ideas out there without comment, discussion or judgement.” Brainstorming–a long used tool, to generate new ideas without critique, judgement or filtering, has been…
FOMO and emails
How soon do you expect others (or yourself) to respond to email? Social media, email, texting, IM, and all the other tools that are relatively new forms of communication (most, within the last 10-15 years) promote this deep seated fear of missing out (FOMO), which drives us to not only check all our sources of…
Are You Doing $25/hr Tasks, When you Should Be Doing $25,000/hr Thinking?
In the last month I’ve worked with about a dozen coaching clients–most of whom struggle with some similar challenges as they move into more significant leadership roles. Many leaders in first- or second-line management roles find themselves pulled between three poles: leadership, management, and production. Across every industry I have worked with, people in the…
Disrupting Purpose to Become a Better Leader
I am fascinated by the blending of purpose of the bike described in the recent Fast Company post–This Ingenious Bike Doubles as its own Lock. The article points out that any bike lock is breakable with the right tools and amount of time, so the designers have developed a bike that partially comes apart to…
No, your dog is not nice!!
This morning I went for a run and witnessed and interesting encounter between two dog owners that got me thinking about personal responsibility and accountability. On my run I watched two dog owners—one walking and one jogging approach each other. As the jogger and her dog got close to the walker, the walker’s dog (no…
Do you really know what you really want?
Earlier today I finished up a communication workshop with a great client, @AgStar, and was struck by one key point of the workshop that received a lot of attention. The first thing you must do, when engaging in a critical, crucial, difficult, significant…conversation is clarify what you really want. Not what you are acting like…
The Art & Science of Leadership Transition–Part 2
Thinking Strategically to Fuel Smart Decision Thinking strategically is consistently identified as an essential skill for managers and leaders in business today, yet it is also recognized as a skill that is lacking in most. One reason for this lack is that strategic thinking isn’t broadly understood. Thinking strategically is not the same thing as…
Leadership Crash Course
Historically, people spent many years in an organization (or at least an industry) rising through the ranks–honing and adjusting their skill set as the rose. With Boomer retirements, a relatively small GenX talent pool to replace retiring senior leaders, increasingly organizations are facing the reality of having to promote leaders in their late 20s and…
Are you Fueling or Steering Your Employees?
Earlier this week I was listening to a webinar on parenting adolescence and the speaker suggested and interesting concept that for parenting tweens and teens that I believe has great application to working with employees. When parenting and leading people at work, it is critical to manage the balance between steering and fueling. By using…
How Emotionally Intelligent are You?
I was recently sent this article, 9 Things Emotionally Intelligent People Won’t Do (thanks Janet Bartel) about emotional intelligence, and thought that it was worthy of sharing. The author does a nice job of bypassing the theory and focusing on the 9 critical behaviors (or what they won’t do) of emotionally intelligent people. #emotionalintelligence #leadership …
The Art & Science of Leadership Transition
Part 1 of 5 In a recent analysis of 360-assessments data (focused financial institutions) that we gathered from our Leadership Development Program and our Leadership Coaching Practice, we discovered some interesting trends in leadership strengths and opportunities for development. Not surprisingly, behaviors and competencies that are strengths or need developing in individual contributors, also show…
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS ABOUT STRATEGY
This is a great article (_20 Essential Questions) about strategy, specifically, what directors are looking for and the questions they need to have answered by management teams. We recently used this article with a group of agricultural cooperative executives, who found it very valuable. I particular like the emphasis on the interrelatedness between management and…
Inciting Leaders 