Management, as a Position, is Obsolete
"Everyone has received the gift of leadership, unfortunately, not everyone has opened the package - yet." Management vs Leadership: Ask anyone the difference between the two and the answer nearly always puts management in a negative light and leadership in a positive...
The Calendar of Your Life
Today I want to encourage you to see where you stand in the calendar of your life. In the appendix of my book, Leadership Just Got Personal, I include a timeline exercise. In this exercise you make a list of all the significant events in your life, good, bad or...
Leading Up: 3 Ways to Handle a Boss Who's a Poor Leader
Have you ever faced the "Peter Principle" in real life? That principle states that "in any hierarchy, a person rises to their own level of incompetence." Perhaps you've faced this yourself, or perhaps you are currently experiencing this with a superior, where they...
Authority, Responsibility & Leadership–Oh My!
Traditionally, I've found people associate the word authority with a title, with the "influence" and power necessary to make things happen. Responsibility, on the other hand, is something entirely different. Many people have responsibility without having authority,...
Communication and Lack Thereof
To answer another question I've received from the blog community: A woman is upset at the dwindling communications skills in our society. When she is faced with rudeness, she tries to combat it by respectfully asking them to use a different tone of voice. Recently,...
The Misalignment: When You and Those You Lead Want Different Things
We were talking last week about leading and parenting and how to empower those that we lead, but what happens when there's no alignment between your story and theirs? What do you do? In a professional setting, ask yourself this: Are you interested in helping them...
Giving or Growing: How to Empower Those We Lead
A common mistake many leaders and parents make is the belief that giving empowerment to their employees or children is enough. If I "empower" them they will rise up, and while it's true that you may have the authority to give certain responsibility, you don't have...
A Fork In The Road
A blog community member recently asked me a truly quintessential question: When you come to a fork in the road, how do you know which path to take? Well, my first response is, congratulations! You have a choice, and that beats no choice any day of the week. So how do...
Battling Dragons
If you had the chance to positively change someone's life forever, would you do it? Would you at least consider it? What would cause you to say no? What would cause you to say yes? ...
The Leader's Most Powerful Question: Part 4 of 4 on Marissa Mayer and Yahoo
One of the most powerful and important questions a leader can ever ask is this: What story does your leadership allow those you lead to tell with their life? You see, not everyone has the courage to step into the high positions of leadership such as CEO, President or...
