Guest post from Gerry Czarnecki:  Those who have read my books know that I believe the greatest injustice we can perpetrate on our staff is to like them. Yes, I truly believe that liking our staff creates the probability that we will be biased in our views when we are trying to successfully manage a team. As I say in my book, Take Two and Call Me in the Morning: Prescriptions for a Leadership Headache, I believe that liking people can also be a major impediment to being an effective leader. Allow me to explain. Take two staff members. The first, A, is somebody I truly like, while the second, B, is somebody I dislike. Let’s think about how I behave when I like or dislike someone. The fact is, when we like somebody, we have a natural inclination to like everything about them. Indeed, we may have even overlooked their little weaknesses or failures because we choose to see the best in them. This is quite natural. On the other hand, when we dislike somebody, we have a tendency to notice and remember essentially all the weaknesses or failures. That too is natural. So, let’s go back to those two staff members. When A does ...
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Guest post by Great Leadership monthly contributor Beth Armknecht Miller:  I recently had the opportunity to have a conversation with the president of a privately held company as part of research for a book I am writing on talent management and development within small to mid-size companies. During our conversation he shared an event he had early on in his career that intrigued me. He was clearly a high potential early on and was tapped by his CFO to create and lead the new internal audit group for a public company. One day the CFO asked him to attend a board meeting so that he could answer any questions that might arise regarding the internal audit group. His directive: answer those questions asked of him only. Otherwise he was to remain silent and observe. He dutifully sat quietly and after about 90 minutes realized that the people in the room had no earthly idea what was actually going on at this company. There were so many layers of management that what was going on down at “ground force” was not visible. And if these executives didn’t have all the information, how could they be making sound decisions for the company? So when he ...
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 Interested in a career in leadership development? There are a lot of ways you can make a decent living and have some fun developing leaders. Here are 25 that come to mind, in no particular order: 1. Mid-level or Senior Manager: managers developing the managers below them. 2. Leadership Trainer or Training Manager: conducting or managing leadership and management training programs. 3. Executive coach: helping to unlock the potential within managers through assessment, feedback, questions, etc… 4. Leadership Author: writing books about leadership. 5. Leadership Blogger: writing online posts about leadership. 6. Leadership Development Consultant: helping companies design leadership development systems, processes, programs, etc… 7. College Professor or Adjunct Instructor: teaching leadership and management courses in degree or executive development programs. 8. Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychologist: these are the PhDs that are often involved in leadership assessments and assessment centers. 9. HR Generalist: coaching, succession planning, and training are often part of the generalist role. 10. Pastor, ...
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Guest post from Phil Buckley:  Most leaders will lead their organizations through multiple big change projects. Constant change is a business reality and organizations must continually adapt to their environments to stay competitive or risk losing relevance and becoming obsolete. For each change, leaders must define it, create a vision of the post-change world, and mobilize their teams to make it. Often, leaders become paralyzed by the magnitude of the change. Transforming an organization while keeping day-to-day operations running is like fixing a car as it is being driven; it’s complicated, risky, and it’s not clear whether the team can pull it off. Since most changes are in response to performance gaps, speed to completion is a default success factor. Many leaders immediately jump into action mode without taking stock of the environment in which the change is being made and their abilities to lead it. The first thing leaders need to ask themselves is, “What do I bring to the project?” They need to think of what they can draw upon to help the organization make the change; what past experiences, knowledge, skills and relationships are ...
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I was at a conference recently and the session topic was leadership development and succession planning. One of the participants, an HR manager, raised her hand and asked: “We’ve recently implemented a talent review process, so we’ve done a decent job assessing our leaders, but now we’re struggling with what to do next. Do you have any suggestions?” The presenter did his best to provide a few tips, but in fairness, that’s a tough question to answer within the time allowed in a 60 minute conference session. It’s especially hard to provide a succinct answer when you’re been doing it for so long - it’s easy to go off on a tangent with so many aspects of leadership development. Believe me; I’ve made a few eyes glaze over myself. Thankfully I have this blog as an outlet. (-: The “what do we do next” question is a common one that leadership teams will ask, and most busy executives, especially those in smaller, fast-paced companies don’t have a lot of patience for long lectures and complicated theory. What they want is a checklist – or a menu - something they can get their heads around, start implementing immediately, measure, and start seeing results. ...
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 Never in our time has there been a greater need for outstanding leaders. Regulatory changes and changes to the international economic landscape have made it challenging for today’s leaders to achieve the results they need to survive, never mind the results they need to thrive. There is, however, much that can be done to confront these challenges head-on. What’s needed to overcome what I call the “leadership crisis,” is not new technology or massive staffing changes. What’s needed is a shift in focus towards recognizing, supporting and developing leaders who possess both a strong “inner-core” of character and conviction and “outer-core” of leadership capability. These leaders, old guard and new, must be able to think creatively and critically at the same time. They must strategize effectively and respond with speed and competence to high-pressure situations. Succession planning programs are meant to address the need for strong leaders, however the gap between those currently in leadership positions and the next wave of leaders is growing by the day, and these programs have not been designed to keep up with the accelerated pace dictated by this ...
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When it comes to understanding how to balance the need to keep a sharp eye on the bottom line and keep a workforce fully satisfied and productive, some managers and companies seem to get it while others don’t have a clue. There’s a ton of research and surveys that prove the following: Satisfied employees = satisfied customers = profitable companies While I may not be a researcher, I have no shortage of stories from readers, friends, family, and acquaintances that bring this simple formula to life. Here are two real recent examples. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Company #1: 20 Cents an hour “Marty” is a department manager at a regional grocery chain. Marty consistently hits his numbers – in fact, he often the #1 performing department of the entire chain for stores. How does he do it? Well, he works hard, keeps waste to a minimum, is good with the customers, and takes care of his employees. He recently did a performance evaluation for one of his assistant managers, “Bob”. Bob is a 17 year employee, hard worker, never calls in sick, and over the last year has consistently gone above and beyond to ...
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The May 2013 Leadership Development Carnival is hosted this month by Karin Hurt, from her Let's Grow Leaders blog. You can find here right here. Hope you enjoy it!
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Guest post by Jimmy Brown, Ph.D.  Business leaders have a lot on their plate. There are administrative chores like budgeting and logistics. There are people development tasks like encouraging, coaching, and what we’ll politely call correcting. Then there are the big picture and forward thinking undertakings that help set the vision and define the mission for the organization. The exact nomenclature for this last set of responsibilities can vary from organization to organization, but what we are talking about is finding the right strategy. Finding the right strategy can be the difference between a leader’s success and failure. Just look at Léo Apotheker’s brief tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. He made several strategic missteps that not only led to his quick dismissal, but also drove value erosion and a loss of market position that the company is still trying to recover from. While the Apotheker example is one of the more recent, public, and dramatic, it is far from the only one. You can’t open up the business pages of any newspaper without reading about the negative impact of a leader’s poor strategic decision making. So why is this ...
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If you’re in a senior leadership role in a large organization, there’s a good chance there is a succession plan for your position in case you get promoted, win the lottery, get hit by a bus, leave to take a position at another company, or need to be replaced for poor performance. In smart companies, an orderly replacement of high level, critical positions is considered to be strategically important to the continued success of the company. A failure to proactively plan for succession is the same as failing to safeguard the financial assets of an organization. Other than this handful of critical executive positions, succession planning for the rest of the organizations is usually managed by identifying “pools” of candidates that are considered to have potential to move into any number of senior leadership roles. In other words, the typical mid-senior level leadership position isn’t considered important enough to worry about if the incumbent leaves. When it happens, the organization reaches into the pool for a replacement, hires externally, or re-shapes the position in a way so that it doesn’t look anything like it used to. Some companies would rather ...
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