Leadership Articles

Executive Development Training works to develop the competencies and skills of those who will have or have executive positions within enterprise. Managers are designed to build competencies and skills using practical and current learning techniques while referencing and utilizing practice-based and extensive knowledge of the built organization environment. Delivering better assignment and project execution is the main efficiency most required. Executives typically create the

Experiencing Yanni live in concert is an incredible journey of musical magic through sound, showmanship and his dynamic persona. It is also a masterful journey of visibly obvious leadership. Yanni is not only a genius composer but is also an engaging, enabling and empowering leader. Usually leadership is recognized as a necessity in the corporate world and politics – not music. But Yanni not only brings the music he hears in his head to life but empowers each of the musician

Every day, there are stories in the media discussing the importance of succession planning, yet many of us business owners aren't paying heed. According to a global study released by Korn Ferry International, "40% or less of organizations today have a capable CEO-in-waiting." Also, according to ...

This question comes directly from a blog subscriber who has been reading my articles on teamwork the past couple of weeks. He thought the article last week (A Simple Step to Improve Teamwork at Your Workplace) offering one very specific tip to improve teamwork was a good one but was looking for more, so here are 5 more:

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) New Zealand mountaineer and explorer. If you are someone who is overworked, stressed out, burned out, under-paid, and underappreciated, then read on to see what successful people do to be winners in their lives. ...

If you’re like me and millions of people around the world who are using social media you probably discover that your world has just gotten much smaller. Just the other day I was writing an article on my favorite site jobing.com. The article that I wrote was titled “When You Fall off the Horse Don’t Lose Your Blackberry".

When I was as a child, I never thought that I would have the ability to lead a change effort, yet here I am imploring humanity to lead itself from the inside-out. Back then, I didn't believe that I had the power to shift people's thinking about poverty, crime, violence, and most of all, how ...

“There is only one way to solve a problem – the right way” – Chris Ruisi, The Coach and Business Motivational Speaker of Choice “Get the cows out of the creek” is an expressio I first learned about when I read an article about Meg Whitman, the then CEO of E-Bay (and now the new CEO of HP). She used the expression to describe her approach to problem solving. This approach is based on a 3 step process once you have learned that you have a problem that must be dealt with – i.e. the cows are stuck in the creek and cannot get out. Step 1 – first, get the cows out of the creek

To be effective, leaders must not only manage their team but they must develop an understanding of every individual on that team. Prioritizing acquainting yourself with each individual on your team includes knowing their dreams, their hopes, their thoughts, their opinions and their values.

Steve Jobs was one of those rare souls who will likely be as influential in death as he was in life, because he was a living legend who also left behind an enduring legacy. As Jobs’ successor at Apple, Tim Cook, explained “Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that – it is in our DNA.” Raised on Cultural and Technological Innovation

I would love to be able to tell you to "follow your bliss." I'd love to be able to tell you that if you don't love what you are doing, go do something you love. That's the easy answer and it's a good one. Unfortunately like a lot of good answers it's not always possible. n n We've all heard the ...

The San Francisco Giants won the World Series…again. That’s two of the last three seasons, a rare achievement. What discoveries are there for you in their success as you seek to increase sales with greater productivity so you can leave the office earlier to do what you love with those you love? Brian Sabean, GM, describes the key to their success when he says of the players: “They didn’t try to be the guy. They were just trying to be a guy. That’s the mantra of this organization—be a teammate.”

The link below is for an article from the National Council for Aging Care. The unfortunate fact is that many older citizens are abused and, are unable to defend themselves. Thought I'd share this article which the NCAC representative asked me to post. It's my pleasure to do so. Please cut and paste the link below and read the article. Share it with your social media sites as I have. Thanks. http://www.aginginplace.org/guide-to-recognizing-elder-abuse/

Much like the lighthouse that provides guidance and direction for sea-bearing vessels, leaders must become the beacon of light in their own lives before they can effectively lead others. nnAs we have come to learn, true leadership is not about a title or a position in an organization. Nor is it about a person’s genetic make-up, level of education or socio-economic status. Leadership is a way of being. Effective leaders are those who lead by a set of core values that reflect

In March of 2009, the unemployment rate rose by 694,000 to a total of 13.2 million people. We're at an average of 8.5% across the country. Clients of mine who are laying off people are wondering how to handle their own emotions as well as those around them. People who still have jobs wonder if they will continue to have their jobs. Read how one Sales VP managed her way...nnIn November of 2008, a VP of Sales for a major furniture company was facing a layoff of 25 sales staff.

Gov-Auction is a website which gives you detailed and updated listing of government car auctions. It deals with police car auction, repossessed car auctions, seized car auction and public online car auctions.

Currently there is a lot of controversy over the benefits that are received when using participative leadership. Both managers and leaders are skeptical about making that step forward and creating new strategies for approaching employees and changing traditional methods for decision making, setting goals, designing plans and so on. The bottom line is that if you want to get the best out of the people that are working for you, you need to treat them as if they are working with

According to Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, “Great leaders are great communicators. It’s not a matter of memorizing and repeating the right words, but of developing the ability to speak directly to other people’s spirits.” He believes that money does not go to businesses with the best products or services but rather it flows to ones with the best leaders. He went on to say, “When I find a business that is struggling financially, it is often because the leader

As economic conditions get tougher, everyone has had to do more with less. But when workplace demands for higher productivity mean that management workloads become unwieldy, whole organizations suffer unless leaders learn to manage their time by managing themselves. “Most of us respond to rising demands in the workplace by putting in longer hours,” say Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy (Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time, Harvard Business Review, Oct 1/07). Unfortunately, time is a finite resource—too many long days put leaders into stress overload, which can reduce productivity.r

“Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.” – Shakti Gawai Looking to develop your leadership skills minus a vision is choosing a difficult path. Maybe you want to make more money, so you look up job trends for ...

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god. It has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve." - Albert Einstein There's not a lot we can do about the processing power between our ears. For the most part, we're stuck with whatever intelligence quotient (IQ) we've got. The good news for many of us is that our IQ is dramatically less important to success and happiness than our emotional intelligence (EQ). What's even better

"Time is your most valuable resource!" says internationally known management expert Peter Drucker. Then he makes a very astute observation: "Unless time is managed, nothing else can be managed." In other words, if time gets away from us, every other part of our business will get away from us, ...

“Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.” --Mark Twain Many people are writing about branding these days – especially personal branding.

Life is too short to work at a job that brings daily dissatisfaction. It doesn’t matter if you are a manager or an hourly employee, these ideas will work for you. It doesn’t matter what type of work you do, you owe it to yourself to find satisfaction with your work. If you are unhappy on ...

Many of you know that I invoke sports figures, especially coaches, as examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly of leadership. Many examples of effective leadership come from that world. Pete Carroll in the NFL, Buck Showalter and Joe Girardi in professional baseball and Greg Popovich in the NBA are examples of guys who exemplify specific and identifiable elements of leadership effectiveness that are worth noting.rn rnMy new sports leadership man-crush is Steve Kerr, who is

Feedback is defined as the return of information about performance, a process or an activity. Whether we like to receive it or not, feedback is an essential part of career development. If you don't know how you've been doing, how will you know where you need to improve, grow and develop? Feedback is a look backward - it is the review of what has been done; yet, the most important factor in receiving this information is to determine what you will do with it moving forward.

Leadership is hard to define and consequently there are a thousand different interpretations of what it really means. I would suggest thinking about a person that you would want to follow, a person that you would listen to if you were in a large group, and then think about why you picked that person. At the most basic level, leadership is getting people to do something. rnIn my opinion, leadership is about influencing people to get a mission/ objective/ task completed to stan

I just facilitated a session for leaders at the University of MN on Employee Engagement. One of the challenges in today’s higher education system is the issue of funding. When many Universities and colleges rely on state funding, Higher Ed has seen it’s share of layoffs, cutbacks and furloughs. The outlook still looks bleak.

Using good leadership skills to draw the absolute best out a player just makes good sense! Most sports require an element of skill and the better a player is at that skill the better they are at the sport! However, there is no substitute for a very motivated player. A player so motivated that they stand out from all others. They actually play above their own set of skills! That is what good leadership skills can do for a coach!

It is alarming how much so many leaders have accepted worry as a natural consequence of running a business. We worry about our environment, our relationships, our finances, our firms, our governments, and our health. When we have a moment free of worry, we worry that we don’t have any worries and begin to frantically search our mind for our concerns. Why? So we can worry! And because we have accepted worry as natural, we fail to understand the insidious power that worry has

So who’s come into work bleary-eyed from the late-night Olympics? Here’s what I’m discovering from these athletes that is creating some gold for my businesses…and can for yours, also. Ignore Conventional Wisdom and Limitsr After he didn’t win gold in his first race, the pundits spu Michael Phelps as not ready for London. They placed limits on what he would accomplish based on one event. He now is the most decorated Olympian ever with 22 medals.

Organizations cannot optimize their business results unless their customers and their employees clearly recognize the significant value they provide. How can you discover whether these two important groups really see this value? Ask them. To discover whether your customers perceive the value your organization provides, have a third party call them and ask a few open-ended questions. For example (assuming your organization is called OUR Company): 1. What impact did OUR Company

Integrity in leadership is absolutely essential. If you had nothing else, having strict integrity alone makes you notches above everyone else. In today’s world, more and more companies are looking for individuals with integrity to head their organizations. I mean, look at the financial ...

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." - Robert F. Kennedy No matter where you are in your year, I would like you to think about where are you now from where you were six months ago? What were your New Year's Resolutions this year, if any? More and more I hear people ...

When it comes to leadership, there are a lot of books available that seem to all tout the same 7 skills in different defining points. Sifting through all the different points of view is difficult to say the least. The reason why everyone works with the seven basic skill sets is simply because they are the universal methods to making sure that effective leadership is not lost. The following are the 7 effective leadership skills that you will need to rise above others and make sure that you're moving forward. Consider them in your overall plan of action.

The snow finally melted to reveal a spring-like day. The calendar called my wife and I to activity—to act on our plans for the blueberry bushes to grow fruit. Positively successful people understand that it’s a process to grow personally and professionally. They Work Positive with themselves and their business to bear fruit. They do these five spring things to grow: Purpose For our blueberries, the purpose is for me to step outside around 6AM each day in July and August to pick for my breakfast. In the evenings, we purpose to pick and put in the freezer for after growing season.r

Culture and communication underlies everything. Culture consists of the habits, rituals, traditions, beliefs and behaviors of each person in your organization. Communication is a process of interacting and dialoguing with two or more persons, groups and organizations. Cultural competency means being in tune with a person's cultural background and using language and concepts that respects a person's culture when in conversation. Knowing the cultural beliefs and being sensitive

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being." — Goethe I enjoy perennial gardening in our yard. As I have tended our gardens over the years, I am continually struck by how some plants will do well in some locations and terribly elsewhere in the garden. Each spring and fall I move plants around to match their preferences for particular soil, wind, and sun conditions, as well as their proximity to other plants. A

With the potential for layoffs facing more and more companies, the realities of laying off great workers is confronting many business owners and managers: owners and managers who have never before faced this hard act. To help ease the pain for the employees being laid off, the owners and ...

Curiosity is what makes a leader…a leader. Most people don’t understand that this curiosity is what separates a leader from the rest of us. Immersion is the key – the more you learn, the more connections and insights you will have. Leaders are driven to accomplish the mission. The leader leverages information and knowledge as tools to improve the organization, to increase efficiency, and to create the next innovative idea.

From my own business experiences, I have learned that one of the most important tools a leader has at their disposal is trust. Without it, you’re not leading; you’re just going for a walk in the park. Think about it, if your team doesn’t trust you, why would they follow you or even listen to you? As a professional keynote speaker, I often explain that without their trust, a team will not respond to even the simplest request from their leader, let alone the hard ones. The fate of a business can be tied to the level of trust a team has in its leader.

10 Ways to Live Positive on a Dog’s Budgetr Dr. Joey Faucette, Author, Coach, & Speaker Gas prices are going up daily and food costs are at an all-time high. We have cut our “fun budgets” way down. So how will we enjoy spring in a fun, positive way? Positive Coach, speaker, & author of Listen to Life with Your Pet, Dr. Joey Faucette says, “Learn how to live positive in a negative world from your dog.”

Teambuilding can be an activity that employees dread because they don’t think that it will make a long term change in their co-workers attitudes or behaviors. This is a challenge that many Teambuilding Companies struggle with when they offer cookie-cutter programs. I can’t recall all of the times I have had to overcome this very real challenge before people would engage in the Teambuilding Activity.

If you are a businessman or a leader of an organization or a corporation or at least an executive, then the terms “balanced scorecards” as well as “strategic thinking” should not be new to you. But then, a lot of businessmen like you do not really have a good grasp of what they are and what they entail. What are they, really? What can they do for a business or an organization? Can they really be ideally implemented? Or are they just figments of the imagination? Most p

We have all heard Christian Stories of the Good Samaritan, which is found in Luke 10, versus 25 through 37. We use the term The Good Samaritan often in our everyday lives, but do we really understand the story completely, and what he risked? The story starts off with a lawyer asking Jesus a ...

I am always fascinated by examples of teamwork and leadership from which we can all learn. As such, during a (reluctant, at first) viewing of Michael Jackson’s This Is It movie I was rather intrigued by the way he went about working on what was intended to be his last concert tour. His funeral was broadcast live on CNN around the world and despite his eccentricities, there are several observations one can glean from his movie that are helpful practices for anyone who seeks

As body, mind and spirit, how we take care of our bodies is of no less importance than how we think and how we love. After all, we received only one ‘vehicle’ for our life journey here on earth and that is the body that we feel, and later see in the mirror, when we wake up in the morning. All our great mind and spiritual potential depends to some degree on the good condition of our health. We know it is true that good feelings about our bodies transfer to positive thinking and more healthy attitudes.

Western culture has reached a level of material wealth greater than at any time in history. We include in this material wealth, wealth of information as well. Currently, at the pinnacle of our ability to manipulate our environment and produce all the things we need, and many that we don't, it's ...

There's an old story about two shoe salesmen whose company sends them to a remote village in Africa. Upon arrival, one sends home a message saying, "No one here wears shoes; on my way home." The other salesman sends this message: "No one here wears shoes; send inventory!" Amazing how two different people see the same circumstance with a different perspective and how their outlook influences behavior. If you don't feel that you can change a situation, you act one way. But if you see the world as a series of opportunities, you act very different.