Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. That’s the one word that describes the life of every business leader I know. That’s the word that probably describes your life as well. It’s the reality of the 24/7/365 world in which we live. We can’t stop it, but we can control it. We can master it. In fact, […]
Read MoreAll coaching is not the same. I know this because I tried to make it all the same and fell flat on my face. When I first began working with executive leaders one-on-one, I had an assembly line approach to the process and found it to be extremely ineffective. Then I wised up. One of […]
Read MoreIn an act of unimaginable stupidity, I signed up to run the half-marathon last year on the first Sunday of October. For those of you who do not know me well, I took up the sport of long distance running at the ripe age of 53. Since that time, I’ve run in lots of 5K […]
Read MoreAt some point in your leadership life, if you haven’t already, you’ll be called on to make a big presentation. And that presentation will be critically important to your being perceived as a serious leader, your being promoted to a higher paying position, your closing a lucrative deal, or all of the above. How do […]
Read MoreAll leadership roles are not the same. And while we might agree with that statement on paper, in practice we violate it regularly. In practice we promote a high performing individual contributor—a leading salesperson or a leading researcher—to the role of frontline manager and are surprised when that person struggles to win the support of […]
Read MoreClimbing a mountain is hard work. Some mountains, however, are harder to climb than others. Compare climbing Mary’s Peak, a popular hike a few miles from my house that tops out at 4,000 feet above sea level, with climbing Mount Everest, which rises to 29,000 feet. You prepare very differently for a climb up Mary’s Peak […]
Read MoreEighteen hours is all you have. That is, if you’re climbing Mt. Everest. Climbers begin their ascent from basecamp, conveniently located at 26,000 feet above sea level, in the ungodly hour of 2:00 AM. They climb through the night and early morning, reaching the summit about mid-day. Then they scramble back down before sunset to the […]
Read MoreBusy, busy, busy, busy, busy. That’s the word that describes the life of every business leader I know. Busy. Crazy busy. That’s the word that probably describes your life as well. It’s the reality of the 24/7/365 world in which we live. We can’t stop it, but we can control it. We can master it. […]
Read MoreEveryone has had this happen to them. You’re taking a shower, driving the car, walking the dog and—wham—an idea pops into your head that’s a perfect solution to a pressing problem. A solution that comes to you in a flash: not by thinking about the problem, but by doing the exact opposite. What’s going on? It […]
Read MoreWe had come to the end of two very intense days. Whiteboards had been scribbled on, erased, and scribbled on again and again. Flip chart pages stuck to the wall like debris from a battlefield. The executives in the room sat bleary-eyed and exhausted. I had seen this before. I had caused this before. And […]
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