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that Haunts Virtually Every Business
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Leadership & Performance Articles
Never Too Old for a Personal Growth Spurt!
How long has it been since your last personal growth ‘spurt’? In this case, I’m not talking about your height (and we won’t even mention weight). I’m talking about your mental, not physical, growth; your professional development. By personal growth ‘spurt’, I mean an intense intentional acceleration of personal growth or professional development. One thing that differentiates successful people (those that live the life they truly desire) and those that aren’t (the...
Effective Definition and Use of High Potential Talent (HiPos)
‘High potential’ talent, HiPos for short, has been an area of interest in business talent management for quite a while. HiPos are valuable people to have in your organization, but how do you leverage them to best improve the performance of your business? Here’s what I’ve learned working with some of the best Fortune 500 organizations on improving their talent management approaches. The most important aspect is to think about, or define, potential from a business...
If I Had It to Do All Over Again, I’d Get Help!
The story* is told of a bricklayer who had tried to move about 500 pounds of bricks from the top of a four-story building to the sidewalk below. The problem was he tried to do it alone. In his own words (taken from his insurance claim form): “It would have taken too long to carry bricks down by hand, so I decided to put them in a barrel and lower them by a pulley which I had fastened to the top of the building. After tying the rope securely at the ground level, I...
But My Leadership Style ‘Works for Me’
Let’s be real. I hear this one a lot. Often at the beginning of my group leadership development programs. People, usually the older people or those higher up the organization (but don't tell them I shared that), say that their style of leadership works ‘just fine’ for them. What they are really saying is either they don’t want to change how they lead, or they fear being exposed as leader so they don’t want to participate in the program - because they've already...
Why Imagination is So Powerful in Professional Coaching
Right. Superheroes, superpowers and imaginary adventures…to help business professionals dramatically improve performance! Imagination? This is business. Who has time for imagination? But just wait a minute. Human imagination is the most powerful creative force on the planet. Without it mankind would still be living in caves. (Don’t get me wrong. I'm sure we'd still have cell phones. But think of how bad the coverage would be from inside a cave.) Every man-made thing...
The Lost Art of Positioning Your People
The head coach of an NFL football team understands how to get the most from the players on their team. (In other words, they understand talent management). They have an offensive team and defensive team, along with ‘special teams’, a ‘hands’ team, a nickel defense, a short yardage ‘package’, a goal line defense, a ‘prevent’ defense…and 2 different kickers that each play about 8 seconds a game. They understand the value of matching the talent of their players to the...
How I Blew My Latest Leadership Challenge
Yup, I completely blew it. And I 'teach this stuff'. I knew better. But it ended with a big ol’ slice of humble pie. Let me set the stage... I was partnering with another firm to provide some strategic talent management consulting to some their clients. I’ve done similar work for years and it is often accompanied by managing the project with the client to configure their software system to include the management principles we agree they should implement. Now,...
Ground Hog Day (The Movie) & Personal Growth
A question for us all right up front: How much better are we today at what we do for a living, than we were 12 months ago? Are we really any better at all? If so, are we significantly better, or just a little bit (unnoticeable to most) better? Have we even thought about it? Are we even really trying to get better? Remember the 1993 movie Ground Hog Day where Bill Murray plays an arrogant and egocentric Pittsburgh TV weatherman who, during an assignment covering the...
Auto Mechanics, People Leaders, and the Epicenter of Performance
The mind is the epicenter, the source if you will, of human performance. Because our thinking drives our behavior which determines our results. Why is this important to understand? Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you love high-performance sports cars. And you just picked up a new one right off the dealer's lot. You know that you can increase its performance even more than what the factory does. The question is, what do you do? To improve its performance would you...
How to Use Basic Time Travel to Improve Your Life
Those of you that know me, understand that I'm constantly on the lookout for creative ideas in how we can use our minds to improve our lives. And here's another one for you. Over the weekend I watched the movie "About Time" where the main character, Tim, learns he can travel back in time to relive certain times in his life. Of course, during most of the movie we watch as Tim first deals with this discovery then learns to harness it to help himself and those around...
