I closed last time with a less than stellar example of how influence, good or bad, can impact the overall direction of a team. And in that particular scenario I detailed, the person who had the influence and did more than his share of steering the ship carried no positional authority at all. If anyt...

I remember a Friday evening phone call a few years back with a friend who was serving as CEO for a locally owned company that was experiencing almost unbelievable growth. He had been very tuned into the topline and bottomline revenue the entire time I knew him. I had also seen firsthand how effectiv...

Last time, I shared an example that I hoped would help make the case for the clear difference between managing and leading an organization. One is just as important as the other and neither can be overlooked, but we cannot mistakenly consider those two very different actions to be one in the same! T...

As we’ve discussed leading up to this point, becoming an effective servant leader certainly involves exemplifying several specific characteristics but even those can be interpreted quite differently depending on the behavioral and communication style of the individual we’re attempting to serve! And ...

We started down this path by looking at some Essential Qualities of Leadership, then we looked at just how critical Leadership in Management really is, and we’ve worked through several Qualities of a Bad Leader - which I believe provide us with great insight on what NOT to do! Let’s look at one fina...

Any time Cindy and I provide teams with tools to build more effective communication into their organizational culture, I emphasize how the most Outgoing and Task-Oriented folks often come across as being very DEMANDING but they almost always expect far more from themselves than they expect of anyone...

I’m probably having more fun than I should be as I pick the images I use when posting these. Still thinking of Shrek and the Lord Farquaad character, I used a donkey for the last one; partly because I liked the movie that much and partly because someone acting like that in a leadership role is typic...

As I uploaded the last post, I had to force myself not to use a fairly recent mugshot of one of the folks I referenced. I opted for an image that reminded me a bit of the Lord Farquaad character in Shrek… With the picture of that vertically challenged villain now in your head, let’s move on to anoth...

We started down this path by looking at some of the Essential Qualities of Leadership then we took a hard look at the importance of Leadership in Management. Since we have the foundation in mind, let’s dig into a few of the qualities of a bad leader so we have just as clear a picture of what we don’...

Last time we looked at some of the challenges we may face when we move into a new position of authority, and leadership responsibility, for a team of folks who had previously been our peers. But what if that’s not the situation we’re in? What if our first day with the organization is also the day we...

I closed last time by promising to share some things that just about anyone can apply to earn genuine influence and lead the team they supervise or manage more effectively. While that may seem like a pretty lofty promise, I really believe it’s much simpler than it’s usually made out to be…

Just to ...

As we looked at some of the most Essential Qualities of Leadership recently, I made a few references to things we’ve likely all seen folks with authority do that pushes a team away from them rather than earning the kind of influence necessary to truly lead. While I believe possessing leadership qual...