I’m not one to quote Ronald Reagan often, but I love this visceral metaphor: “I know it's hard when you're up to your armpits in alligators to remember you came here to drain the swamp.” And I sure have been up to my… (something!) in alligators lately. The past year or two have brought us [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Leadership'
Up to your armpits in alligators?
Nice Guys Who Finish First
(Quick note: this entire conversation refers to women as well as men. Sad truth is, however, that when we’re talking about executives, most of them are still men.) I coach a lot of “nice guys” and some who wonder why people don’t realize how nice they are “on the inside.” And here’s the sad part: [...]
Average Joe
Would it be okay if you were just average? Well, of course it wouldn’t, in terms of results! You’re ambitious, and in truth, being at the median means getting passed over for promotions or bonuses, it means being surpassed by competitors. So no, none of us are aiming for average outcomes. But here’s the surprising [...]
Boss = Host
You’re the boss? That means you’re the host of any meeting where you’re present. Why? Because your senior position endows you with a gravity that nothing else can completely overcome. Of course, it’s likely that someone else will often be running the meeting, driving the agenda, or presenting information. But when it comes to the [...]
Time Will Prove You Wrong
From the introduction to Peter Senge’s new book, The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World: “One thing we have learned from working on organizational and systemic change is that the leaders are hard to identify in advance. Sometimes they are CEOs or presidents, but often they do [...]
Switch off the struggle
The Pareto Principle states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort – and there are dozens of different ways to play with the 80/20 rule: 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your clients; 20% of your employees generate 80% of your injuries or errors; 20% of the time you [...]
What do you really wish you could say?
Often when I’m coaching someone on a communication challenge, the question that breaks open the situation is: “What do you REALLY wish you could say?” So often, we don’t give ourselves permission to say what we truly mean. The reasons we give for holding back what we truly mean are many and varied. And not [...]
How to Name an Elephant – Part 1
We’ve got a reputation, Sara and I, for being the people to bring in when there’s an elephant in the room that’s holding your business back. We get people talking, and when the dynamic is too subtle or too big for the team to name themselves, we go ahead and call it out for them. [...]
Receiving 101
Clients and workshop participants often balk, initially, at our invitation to open to their power of Receiving. It sounds like it's for weenies. It's confrontive to their sense of being a can-do person. We know we're competent by the things we make happen, not by the ways we ask for help or feel our deep [...]
What other people really think of you… and why
From the latest draft of the introduction to our new book, "The Elements of Executive Presence: "Our experience with over 2000 executives and leaders tells us that while most people who hold or aspire to leadership positions want to have a deeper, wider, more compelling impact, most think that’s a technical challenge and few know [...]