Coaching News
A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing… there’s no bite in a leader’s evaluation
By Kevin D. Ross I’ve never seen an annual performance evaluation that was worth half the time it took to fill it out. That’s especially true when it comes to evaluating the leaders in our organizations. Have you ever wondered why we even do them? When we don’t assess...
Leadership and Healthy Conflict
Leadership and Healthy Conflict Healthy conflict: Good. Unhealthy conflict: Bad. There endeth the first lesson… The key, of course, is knowing the difference between the two. I frequently say that when reasonably intelligent, well-intentioned people disagree, the...
Evaluating Leaders
I’ve never seen an annual performance evaluation that was worth half the time it took to fill it out. This is especially true when it comes to evaluating leaders in our organizations. Have you ever wondered why we even do them? When we aren't evaluating leaders...
The Emperor Has No Clothes! …except for his socks
Disclaimer: The identities of the characters in the story below have been changed to protect the innocent from possible repercussions by her moronic boss(es). The military has an acronym for almost everything… and for the rest, it has initialisms. Today’s acronym is...
So, What’s Next? — Navigating the NOW normal
Being normal is an overrated concept. No one actually fits the definition, since we all have our own, so no one is really normal. We’re all just somewhere on the continuum of abnormality. Some of you are much higher on the spectrum than others (you know who you are),...
Bad News Bearers
…do we kill the messenger? We’ve all heard – and probably used – the idiom no news is good news, meaning that if we haven’t been told something bad has happened, then nothing bad has happened… and that’s good news. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never worked in an...
You Don’t Have to be a Jerk; Really, You Don’t
-- Grace and accountability can coexist Lots of you have asked why I say “Grace and accountability can coexist” so frequently, particularly since (a) I tend to be exceedingly direct in my approach, (b) I have a blog named “The Brazen Leader,” and (c) I coach and...
Don’t Be a Leadership Dummy
--stop making this so hard I wanted to call this Leadership for Dummies, but that title was already taken. Looking through some of the other leadership improvement offerings, it boggles the mind how we’ve managed to take a subject whose basics haven’t changed in a few...
Faker! – Leadership & The Imposter Syndrome
You still wrestling with the memory of that bully giving you a wedgie on the crowded playground at recess in the 4th grade*? I’m probably not your guy. I’m not a psychologist, I didn’t play one on TV, and I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. And though...
Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?
-- It’s faster to just stop doing stupid shit The title above is from a book of the same name by Henry Alford, who tries to showcase the purpose and principles of this modern guide to manners — and what's happened to them in our crazy-fast, interconnected culture. A...
Accepted Doesn’t Mean Acceptable
… even if we’ve always done it that way We Texans were a little bit whiney last month during SNOWVID-21, but most of us are better now that we’re back to the old normal of the global pandemic. There are still some recovery efforts and healing going on that are...
When Crisis Turns to Chaos
-- it separates leaders from managers This is definitely not one of those academic treatises about the difference between leadership and management. I outright despise those. Nor is it a “thought piece” similar to those written in the last year about leading and...
That’s a Honkin’ Big Tail!
-- Be careful how you swing it… A couple of years or so ago, I wrote an article about what you lose when you ascend into senior leadership (especially CXO-level). You may gain a lot – dinero, status, authority, new biz cards, etc. – but you also lose a few things....
