My Way or the Highway!

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...

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How High Are You Setting the Bar?

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...

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It’s Not MY Problem!

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...

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Do as I Say, Not as I Do...

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...

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Qualities of a Bad Leader

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...

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The New Sheriff in Town?

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...

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Leadership In Management

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...

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The Buck Stops Here!

I ended the last post by emphasizing how ineffective barking orders and cracking the whip is for a leader who needs to get long term engagement (and results) from their team, and I also referenced how that can often look like an easy approach to someone who hasn’t held leadership...

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Effective Communication Won’t Happen Without This

In order to become really effective with that idea of Alliance Feedback that I referenced as I closed the last post, and form authentic alliances (relationships) with the team members we’re responsible for leading, we need to develop another essential quality of leadership; we need to...

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The Single Most Important Ingredient

I truly believe that one of the most essential qualities of leadership is serving the team we’re leading. Unfortunately, the idea of serving those team members is often mistaken for catering to those team members, which doesn’t serve anyone!

As we worked through that quality of...

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Essential Qualities of Leadership

Not long after writing what I believe to be one of the most foundational leadership books of all time, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell put out a companion book to that called The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader. His thought process was that while there are indeed...

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