Coaching News
So, I Built it, They Came… Now They’re Leaving… What Gives??
We spend no small amount of money on employee retention. Do we spend the right money on retaining the right employees?? Hmmm, I wonder… Employee retention, the RIGHT employee retention, is a significant issue for businesses today. Retention is personal; there are some...
The Simplicity of Leadership –quit complicating the uncomplicated
Leadership is inherently simple. By that, I mean that leadership is not complex. Can it be difficult? Certainly. But we need to remember to keep things as simple as humanly possible. We read books, articles, white papers, etc.… All in search of a silver bullet, a...
Sexual Harassment: Whack the first one, word will spread
This is not rocket science. You really want harassment to stop? Take a note… Consequences. That’s how. Consequences, not “understanding,” especially for starter transgressions. Go ugly early. Consequences earlier mean fewer instances later. Human behavior 101. For...
Leadership & Control: Symbiotic, not mutually exclusive
When we use control and leadership in the same sentence, our brows start to furrow. We see controlling behavior as an anathema to empowerment–something to be summarily eradicated, not embraced. Well, yes, sort of. Controlling behavior in leadership–when used within...
The Trilogy: Responsibility, Accountability, and Leadership
I recently had a conversation with some really smart people around Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Read the book, it's a good one, discussing how intrinsic motivation trumps extrinsic almost all the time. If you were expecting me...
Leaders & Laggards – November 2017
Leadership Leader The announcement this month of Kendra Scott as the 2017 national winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year caused me to do two things: look into what this CEO and founder of Kendra Scott LLC was all about, and buy some jewelry while I...
Strategy is NOT a Four-Letter Word
… but it leaves the same taste in my mouth Why do we make so many things harder than they have to be? If you think about it more than a nanosecond, that question applies to more aspects of our lives than just work, but I’m a consultant, not a therapist....
Talent Management — Snakes!
There is an old joke/fable that most of you have probably heard… it goes something like this: One day a manager was scouring the countryside for a solid candidate, but striking out everywhere. Lions were too lazy, elephants ate too much, monkeys wouldn’t sit still....
Leaders & Laggards | October 2017
Leadership Leader Our leadership Leader for this month is Charles Butt, CEO of H-E-B groceries, headquartered in San Antonio Texas. Intensely private, alas, we have no photograph we could use. H-E-B is one of the largest privately held companies in the country, and...
Is your competition a terrorist?
No doubt many of you have been looking toward 2018 lately, adjusting your strategy and plans to make it a(nother) successful year. Whatever methodology you use, researching what the competition is doing is critical. What many organizations miss, however, is how the...
The Principle of Before
--Or, give before you get (Adapted from an earlier article) So, a physicist, a preacher and an Iman walk into this bar... Though that has all the makings of a great joke (appropriate apologies to those easily offended), I just wanted to highlight the diverse uses of...
Leadership has Rules
Leaders, new and old, sometimes lose sight of the most fundamental tenets of leadership. Here’s a reminder… I frequently tell executives that leadership – its concepts, theory, and core applications – haven’t changed in a millennium. Some our demographics may have...
Take us to your Leader… Beam me up, Scotty!
..and a hundred other pithy, nonsensical phrases and statements that clutter our day. None more ridiculous and colossally undefined, however, as my personal favorite, and one I hear frequently as a consultant to senior leadership: Take us to the next level. What??...
