CEO Sounding Board: Accessing Your Moral Compass
What a bizarre time for new business development in SO many industries. Is it appropriate to share opportunities to do business with your organization at a time when you know so many of your potential customers are struggling? This question has plagued me since March 13th. My empathy score on Emotional Intelligence assessments is frankly…
Pandemic: The Exec Team Members are Parents Too!
Remember the early weeks after March 13th, 2020? Your executive team moved promptly into emergency planning mode. You were so proud of how they hunkered down, learning everything they could about pandemic planning and safety protocol. Together, you made arrangements for everyone that could, to work safely from home. New technology was implemented at lightning…
What to Ask When Choosing a Team Coach
My last blog post described the difference between Team Building and Team Coaching. So, now that you’ve decided that Team Coaching is right approach for you and your team, how do you go about choosing a great coach to partner with you? A frankly unnerving task and the risk is high! Here are some recommended…
Distinguishing Team Coaching from Team Building
OK…so this image is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for what team building sessions can become. No disrespect intended. I have led many a Team Building experience, which resulted in exactly what the client hoped to achieve. Team Building often involves a one-off shared experience away from the regular work environment. The goal? Typically…
Changing Jobs During a Pandemic: Listen, Observe & Ask Questions
Overwhelmingly, senior executives, human resources professionals and recruiters alike point to “listening, observing & asking questions” as the number one skill to focus on in the first 90-days in a new job, in any environment. How does this emphasis shift when trying to successfully navigate into a new leadership role during the current pandemic? I…
Changing Jobs During a Pandemic
As if life wasn’t stressful enough these days. Leading up to March, 2020, you were anxious about your job not being an ideal long-term fit. Then the pandemic hit and you’ve been worried about how to keep your kids learning and actively engaged while schools have been closed. There are concerns for you and your…
How Might You do LESS and Have MORE Impact?
How often have you heard yourself say, “I’ve got so many balls in the air I don’t know how I can possibly keep track of them all?!” We may be managing to keep the balls in motion, but how good is our juggling performance really? Are our movements controlled and rhythmic? Or are we merely…
Getting The Issue Out In Front
What’s a relationship without an issue?! Relationships within our work teams; relationships with our customers and suppliers; relationships with our managers; and of course, our relationships in our personal lives all encounter issues. When we boil it down, we often end up pointing to a “lack of communication” as the source of the problem. And…
Listening to be Heard
I am fascinated by ironies. In my work with executive coaching clients, I find that they frequently discover that their long-held beliefs about leadership directly contradict their actual experiences. Frankly, they would do better to flip many of these beliefs on their heads. And so it is with being heard. It seems that it’s not…
In A Great Team, Everybody Leads
We often think of “leadership” in the sense of “managing, directing or making approval decisions.” But think of the times when you’ve been part of a team and a break-through idea came from an individual with a curious twist on how to solve the problem. This fresh perspective can spark an idea that others then…