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Win With Your Strengths
Years ago, I attended a week-long leadership program at The Gallup Leadership Institute at their HQ in Nebraska. At the time, I was fortunate to get the chance to hear the late Don Clifton speak. Clifton was the chairman of Gallup Inc. and an accomplished psychologist, educator, author and researcher.…Three Responses to Leadership
Early in my career I read an article published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) that made an impression on me. I took notes from the article and referred back to it at various points in my career. The article was titled The Three Responses to Leadership. Imagine you have just…Abilene Paradox
Coined by management expert Jerry Harvey in 1974, Abilene Paradox lends ample value toward our own growth and development as leaders. As the story goes, a family in Coleman, Texas is comfortably playing dominos on their porch one summer afternoon when the father-in-law suggests they take a ride to Abilene…Wisdom of Crowds
It was 1906. A statistician named Francis Galton conducted a mathematical experiment in Plymouth England while attending what we would call a ‘county fair’. There was a dead ox that was dressed up for the event. A crowd of close to 800 had gathered. The crowd was asked to guess…The Shorter the Sermon the Fuller the Pews.
When I was a kid growing up in Upstate New York there was a priest who I remember for a specific reason. His name was Father Hillary. In the summertime he was especially liked by the parishioners. He instituted what he called ‘The 5-minute sermon’. His pledge to the parishioners was that from…The Bike Shed Effect
When speaking to groups on the topic of leadership I like to get into a segment I call ‘Barriers to High Performance.” One of the things I cover is The Bike Shed Effect. Maybe you’ve heard of it. The tendency of teams to give a disproportionate amount of attention to…Head Coach Compared to CEO
As Super Bowl LX approaches let’s connect football to leadership. Here’s the setup. As we know, football teams have an offensive and defensive coordinator that serve under the head coach. These coordinators are subject matter experts. Their experience goes deep and they are laser focused on what takes place on…Owning Mistakes
No doubt we all heard about the tragedy that happened over New Year’s Eve in Switzerland. Around 1:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day a fire ripped through Le Bar Constellation in the Alpine Ski Resort Town of Crans-Montana killing 40 persons and injuring more than 100. A tragedy to be sure.…Until They’re Out, They’re In
It happens. We have an employee that’s not cutting it. You know the steps to follow. First, we have a sit-down with them and lay it out. We tell them that they are coming up short, we offer specifics, we tell them what’s expected moving forward, we offer assistance, and…Not Inviting Pushback Can Have Consequences
It was 47 years ago this week that one of the more high-profile plane crashes in U.S. history took place. It was United Airlines flight 173. The route was JFK to Denver to Portland. In all, 10 died on that day . The plane crash-landed in a Portland suburb after…