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...
The Three-Sided Coin: A Three-Headed Monster of Leadership (Part 3 of 4)
If you've been reading my blog, you know that last week and the week before we've been discussing the controversy at Yahoo and what we can learn about personal leadership from that process. We found that some of Marissa Mayer's employee's may have felt abandoned. ...
Communication, Communication, Communication! (Part 2 of a 4-part series)
Last week we began a discussion on the leadership techniques of Yahoo's new CEO and the controversy that began with a new rule. When Marissa Mayer banned telecommuting for Yahoo employees, there were lots of ideas floating around about her reasoning. But in the...
Benefit of the Doubt: Part 1 of 4
In February, Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer made an announcement that I think we can safely call controversial, to say the least. Everyone from Richard Branson to the late night talk show hosts have weighed in. She decided that all employees who had any sort of...
Your Pain is Your Passion
That was the answer I received when I asked an experienced coach back in the beginning days of my coaching dream how I was to determine my “niche.” All I needed to do now was figure out what she meant! In true coaching form she resisted the urge to just...
Quit Asking for Permission!
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.” -Buckmister Fuller Did you know that Walt Whitman’s life masterpiece, the poetic epic Leaves of Grass, was self-published? Neither did I, but I recently learned that it was criticized in...
Leadership Just Got Personal
Adapted from Steven's new book "Leadership Just Got Personal" Things are not always what they seem. Man, if only I had a buck for every time that rang true in my life! That’s one of the big challenges we face when “leading in a world of service,” isn’t it? Things are...
