Three Intriguing Thoughts from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

February 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Jeff-Bezos

A recent HBR blog podcast interviewed the CEO of Amazon who, in a major study reported in the Harvard Business Review's Jan/Feb issue, was ranked #2 of global CEO's. The late Steve Jobs was #1. Jeff Bezos is an intriguing guy. He permits interviews sparingly and is somewhat of a contrarian around some commonly held business beliefs. In the short audio, Bezos makes three points that I think are worth CEO's and managers hearing about. He sees the DNA of Amazon as that of an explorer, vs. a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Change Management, Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Another Slice on the Best CEO’s

January 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Adam Bryant

Adam Bryant writes a column in the New York Times called The Corner Office. He has selected 70 of the over 200 interviews he has done with CEO's for his column and put some core insights from these into a book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEO's and How to Lead and Succeed. You can hear a short interview of Bryant in a recent issue of Knowledge@Wharton. In addition to sharing the CEOs' lessons and tips around both managing and leading, the author … [Read more...]

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Great Example of Leadership in Action

January 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment
robert_griffin_III

Living in the Washington DC area, you can't escape the excitement of Washington Redskins fans as their team–finally, after four losing seasons–contends for a playoff spot. At the center of their big turnaround from 3 wins & 6 loses to ending up at the top of their division is their rookie quarterback, Robert Griffin, aka RG III. The Washington Post had an extensive piece recently on this phenomenal leader. What the article revealed was a classic case of some core leadership traits and … [Read more...]

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Build Relationships with Your Staff, for the Brain’s Sake

November 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Brain-4

I can't stand it when a manager, hearing me broach the importance of building trusting relationships with their employees, blurts out the tired old term, touchy-feely. To dismiss the complex role of relationships in fostering sustained high performance is to just not get it as a leader in the 21st century. In a recent posting on the Harvard Business Review Blog, Naomi Eisenberter and George Kohlrieser raise three important points about this from their studies in neuroleadership. "…most … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Employee Motivation, Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Is There More Stress at the Top or the Middle?

October 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A Vice President I worked for years ago, reflecting on her rise to the C Suite, stated that she thought it was more stressful to be a middle manager than an executive. The difference, she said, is the senior leader has more autonomy over things than do managers further down in the hierarchy. We know that a perceived lack of control over your situation–over your life, for that matter–is a major stressor. So my VP's opinion has always made sense to me. The noted expert on neuroscience … [Read more...]

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C-Suite is All About Handling Complexity

September 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
tlc-logo-150

A study a couple of years ago the Center for Creative Leadership asked 158 executives enrolled in their leadership development programs what are the three most critical challenges you currently face? Their responses clustered into 14 categories but the four most frequently mentioned were: Leading across multiple groups (building maintaining and leveraging relationships across all kinds of boundaries) Strategic issues (vision, goals, strategies) Talent management (acquiring, … [Read more...]

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It’s What They Don’t Do that Makes Them Bad

September 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Radar Screen

This post was triggered by a great post in the HBR Blog Network by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman. This essence of their article is that most of the behaviors of so called "bad bosses" are, in their words, sins of omission, not commission. In other words, it's more what the boss fails to do that makes him or her a poor manager. Of ten "fatal flaws" their extensive research uncovered, only two (Inept Interpersonal Skills and Bad Judgement) were of the commission type. The authors go on to say … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership, Performance Coaching Tagged With: , ,

Reactive vs. Creative Mind-sets…and Results

February 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

At the core of The Leadership Circle (360 degree assessment) model are the Reactive tendencies and Creative competencies. If you look at the circle itself, you will see Reactive structure of mind represented by the lower half of the circle and Creative structure by the upper half. When leaders operate from the Reactive mind-set they are, of course, able to achieve at least some level of results through their people. The problem is that, as research shows, at some point they hit a ceiling. … [Read more...]

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Talent Magnets

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Character w:Magnet (iS)

In my leadership workshops and keynote speeches I sometimes ask the group/audience to think of the best boss and worse boss they've ever had, what each did, and what effect it had on you. People come up with all kinds of descriptors and behaviors of both bosses. But one thing emerges about the best boss ever (BBE). He or she is someone you want to work for…and keep working for. Furthermore, a BBE is almost always someone that others in the organization would like to work for too. When an … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Employee Engagement, Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

What Women Bring to Leadership

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Yin-Yang

The BBC's Katty Kay and ABC's Claire Shipman co-authored a book a couple of years back called Womenomics. In it they cite, among other things, a number of companies where the presence of women in among top leadership had a positive effect on the firm's financial success. For example: Accounting firm Ernst & Young's research found that companies with more women in senior management make more money. McKinsey & Co. found that greater gender diversity in management of European firms … [Read more...]

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