Leader's Beacon

Blind Spots. In cars, we have blind spots where we can’t see what is going on right around us.  The larger those blind spots are, the more dangerous we are. We can have blind spots in our life as well – things and behaviors that we do that we don’t understand or appreciate the impact [...]

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In a recent survey titled, why do people give up on your company? it was noted that 68% quit because of an attitude of indifference toward the client by the owner, manager or employee. This indifference comes about because we tend to forget that to stay employed and succeed in our business or organization we [...]

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If you are trying to gain cooperation from your staff, persuade or influence a client or co-worker, close a sale, make the right impression, ace an interview, or convince an audience, you must first connect with them. Below is a checklist of the active ingredients in creating lasting connections.  How many of these are you [...]

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The people’s capacity to achieve is determined by their leader’s ability to empower.-  John Maxwell Bart Starr, the former quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, was describing to a group of businessmen how his coach, Vince Lombardi, held absolute power. He stated that, as you entered Vince’s office, you noticed a huge mahogany desk with [...]

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When front line supervisors and managers are asked to share some of the characteristics of the best manager or supervisor they had ever worked for,  they will include “supportive” on that list. One participant was even more emphatic – his best boss was focused on “helping” not “harping”. A boss who is constantly critical and [...]

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Do you have a marginally performing employee?  Not sure exactly what to do?  Should you keep supporting them? When (in what circumstances) should you terminate their employment? A friend of mine, a certified executive coach, gave a great example of how to simplify decisions when dealing with low-performing staff:  Determine if your employee has the [...]

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How much information should a leader really share with employees? Some bosses are like Col. Jessup played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men in thinking their employees “can’t handle the truth.” Communication continues to be cited as a problem in nearly all organizations. Solving communication problems is kind of like finding a cure [...]

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Now here’s a problem most sales managers and HR professionals would kill for — two equally qualified sales candidates. Assuming that both candidates scored equally on our Sales Temperament Assessment and that they are pretty well matched against your mandatory and desirable criteria list, which one do you choose? You want to choose the person who [...]

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We’ve all lived this before. Sally, the manager, asks her employee Gary to prepare a market analysis report for next week. Gary moans and says he doesn’t think he can do it by then . . . too much work and, besides, why not give it to Sherry who has a marketing background. The manager [...]

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As I have traveled around the country speaking to people about the power of netWORTHing™ one thing has become clear; people are looking for a change! People have a lot of pain around traditional self-serving networking. Everyone has been burned by someone who in the name of networking, is only pursuing their own selfish agenda. [...]

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