C-Suite is All About Handling Complexity

A study a couple of years ago the Center for Creative Leadership asked 158 executives enrolled in their leadership development programs what are the three most critical challenges you currently face? Their responses clustered into 14 categories but the four most frequently mentioned were: Leading across multiple groups (building maintaining and leveraging relationships across all…

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4 Ways to Avoid Misunderstandings that Destroy Relationships

Assume the Next Message You Send Will Be Misunderstood In working with companies and organizations to assist them in improving customer and workplace relationships, I find that misunderstandings are one of the leading factors that cause people to lose respect, trust, cooperation and the derailing of relationships. The problem starts with the fact that there…

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Unlocking The Door

I remember a VP once told me not to get too close to my team. This way, it would be easier to discipline those who were not achieving. Just yesterday, my son asked me if I ever had to fire anyone. I told him I do not believe in firing people. As he persisted, I…

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Breaking Free From The Four Biggest Time Traps In Your Life

As an entrepreneur, author and professional speaker, time mangement is my most important practice. I’ve spent a great deal of effort acquiring tools that make my work faster without sacraficing quality. From software to little life hacks, I’ve found ways to harness faster-better-cheaper in my worklife. At some point, though, the only way to become…

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TED Talks Videos Worth the Manager’s Eyeballs

If you haven’t yet run across TED Talks, I heartily recommend you check them out. “TED” stands for technology, entertainment & design. The organization began way back in 1984 and calls itself “a nonprofit devoted to ideas worth spreading.” It holds two main conferences each spring, plus a global conference in the summer, and licenses…

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10 Ways to Deliver a Persuasive Presentation

In my workshops and coaching on presentation skills, one of the key areas we focus on is how to deliver a presentation to persuade, influence and motivate others. Based on my book, “Present with Power, Punch and Pizzazz” and over 20 years of working with companies on presentation skills and personal presence, I have put…

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The 3 R’s of Service-based Leadership

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service that you are now being paid for. – Napoleon Hill In his book, Waking the American Dream, Don McCullough relates a story about Winston Churchill during World War II. England decided to…

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Corrections To Love Is the Killer App

It’s been a dozen years since I wrote the first draft of my book, Love Is the Killer App: How To Win Business and Influence Friends.  Since then, the world has changed significantly, and so has my perspective. In the digital future, it will be easy to make corrections to a book, to keep it…

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It’s What They Don’t Do that Makes Them Bad

This post was triggered by a great post in the HBR Blog Network by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman. This essence of their article is that most of the behaviors of so called “bad bosses” are, in their words, sins of omission, not commission. In other words, it’s more what the boss fails to do…

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A Prescription for Effective Teamwork

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime. – Babe Ruth A recent Gallup report revealed what many have believed about teamwork for quite some time. The…

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Lead to Please?

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody – Bill Cosby Ask any Green Bay Packers fan and they will tell you without any hesitation that the infamous call at the end of the game against Seattle was blown and it cost them the game. Before…

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Employee Engagement & Brand Advocacy

First there was Maslow who created an avenue to employee benefits, then Employee Rewards, and more recently Employee Engagement. Today, Culture seems to be the buzz word. We are consistently evolving employee rights into human improvement strategy. The fluff is gone and even kindness has an ROI metric: ~ Does a rewards strategy cheapen the…

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