While preparing to review a CEO, the chairman of a board I worked with said, “He doesn’t lead; he just presides!” It was a brilliant description of a CEO who was loved by his people but ineffective in his role. It’s about balance. Lest I get off on the wrong foot, I passionately believe that […]
I’ve coached folks who probably have an IQ that’s double mine. Some are linear thinkers who are process-oriented, and some are more entrepreneurial and rely heavily on intuition. Both can be great leaders. But process orientation and intuition can, as with most strengths, be disabling. Highly process-oriented leaders can create a bureaucratic mess by […]
We needed to remodel a bathroom and bedroom, and my son had friends from the Marines with a construction business. With his endorsement and their background as Marines, we hired them as soon as they gave us a proposal. We’re glad we did! One of them, Tom, is an avid fly-fisher as am I. (I […]
Many words can describe successful CEOs: smart, aggressive, resilient, etc. So why is “frustrated” one of a CEO’s normal states? First, it’s all those people around you! People come in many models with poorly written instruction manuals. Different things motivate them. They have different skills. And they must work together! This creates the wonderful puzzle […]
Recent news from Ukraine is that four top Russian generals were killed on the battlefield. The story goes on to identify this sad but unique fact because of the top-down leadership style that Russia still hews to. Only “the big guys” are smart enough to make the tough decisions so they must be on the […]
After returning from a recent trip, I called my wife from the airport to see if she wanted to get dinner. She’d already eaten and said the fridge was bare, so I decided to use my monthly “grease and salt” ration and stop at a drive-thru. I pulled into the burger joint drive-thru with three […]
As I write this, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics just finished, and I just watched arguably the most talented skier ever — Mikaela Shiffrin — make tragic mistakes in three events she had a high likelihood of winning. Shiffrin is on the podium so often that when she doesn’t do well, it’s shocking — though […]
I frequently interact with entrepreneurial types who find themselves running a growing organization and have little idea how to do so. They never worked in a larger organization, never had a mentor who was a talented leader, never went to school or training programs for management, never had a leadership coach, and never studied and […]
Man, what a year … again! If you’re a leader, you’ve probably had a challenging, fascinating, maddening, out-of-the-box, over-the-top year — probably two in a row. Pandemic or not, December is the right time to block out a day and look back to learn and forward to jump-start 2022. You can certainly do this alone, […]
I had a three-hour drive from a client meting to the airport recently through mountainous terrain. Luckily, my rental car had satellite radio. I was listening to the news on NPR when a feature piece on reducing traffic accidents came on. If the two-lane road were not full of curves (or if I were driving […]