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Personal Presence, Team Building

What Makes It So Hard to Let Go?

Earlier today I was presenting a Leading Next Level Teams workshop to about 70 senior leaders in a global financial services company. It was a fun session made even more so by the use of a cool interactive technology called SpotMe where everyone could use special iPads to answer a few questions I was interested in. One of the early questions was “Which is harder, picking up new skills and behaviors or letting go of old skills and behaviors that used to work for you but likely no longer do?”

Leadership, Team Building

Five Things to Do to Find a Great Mentor

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the good fortune to have a number of mentors who have helped shape my life and career. I wrote about one of them in a pre-Thanksgiving post I wrote last week. I don’t think I ever set out to recruit a particular person as a mentor. The relationships just sort of naturally evolved with the people who ended up being my mentors. At this point in my career, I’ve been both mentor and protégé (I can’t stand the word “mentee” – it sounds like a candy you’d eat after dinner.) Considering both of those perspectives, I’ve identified five things to do to find a great mentor. With the hope that they’re useful to you or someone you know, here they are:

Leadership, Organizational Development, Team Building

Three of the Most Common Delegation Ah-ha’s

One of the biggest shifts that most rising leaders have to make is the shift from being the go-to person to someone who builds teams of go-to people. As you take on more and more scope in your leadership role, you can’t continue to operate as the go-to person who acts as if you’re personally responsible for everything that happens. You need to be accountable and own the results but you can’t expect yourself to do everything that leads to the results.

Next Level Podcast, Team Building

How to Cure Your Toxic Team

If you’ve been in organizational life for any amount of time, you’ve probably been a member of a toxic team. Not to be a downer, but if you haven’t been you likely will be in the future.

The good news is there’s something you can do about it no matter what your role is on the team. Team dynamics expert Liane Davey shares practical steps on how to do that in her new book, You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along and Get Stuff Done.

In a recent conversation with Liane, she explained why it’s critical to take ownership of curing your toxic team. In the recording that accompanies this post, you’ll learn how to start taking action.

Current Affairs, Leadership Lessons, Personal Presence, Team Building

Five Reasons Why You Should Help Your Frenemies

So, back in 2009, I wrote a post about how I wasn’t going to blog anymore about Tiger Woods. This post isn’t really about Tiger but he’s involved in the story behind it.

Last week, Woods won the Cadillac Championship tournament at Doral. Good news for him but not the most interesting part of the story. The interesting part is that the pro Steve Stricker gave Woods a 45 minute putting lesson the night before the tournament started.

Improving Communications, Leadership, Personal Presence, Team Building

Seven First Year Mistakes Senior Executives Make

One of the comments I hear most often from rising, high potential leaders in our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program is “I’m so glad to know it’s not just me.” Being in the leadership crucible can be a lonely experience. The group coaching participants quickly learn and take comfort from the fact that they are not alone in the leadership challenges they face every day.

I thought about that when I received an email last week from a reader of this blog who was promoted about a year ago to the Senior Executive Service (SES) of the U.S. federal government. We had the opportunity to meet at a conference earlier this month and he told me had some leadership lessons learned from the past year that he wanted to share with me in writing.

When I read his email, I immediately wanted to share it with the leaders who read this blog if for no other reason than to let you know that you’re not alone. With my SES friend’s permission (while honoring his request to remain anonymous), I’m sharing seven mistakes he thinks he made in his first year as a senior executive.

In his own words, here they are:

Leadership, Personal Presence, Team Building

Three Ways to Increase Your Influence

One of my favorite lines is that it’s important to understand the difference between what should be and what is. Stop for a few moments and think about how often that line applies in real life. You’ll hear someone say something like, “They should be doing that because…” and what comes after because is something like “it’s the right thing to do,” or “the answer’s obvious,” or “I’m in charge.”

I hear a fair amount of “They should be doing’s” in my work as an executive coach. That’s because a big part of my job description is to give my clients a safe place to vent. It doesn’t take long before venting turns into a non-productive rant so before it goes too far I’ll usually ask a question about the difference between what should be and what is.

Leadership, Organizational Development, Team Building

How to Keep Your Competitive Drive From Making You Lose

Longer time readers of this blog may have noticed that I don’t use political stories as hooks as much as I used to. There are a couple of reasons for that. One, is that I’m usually discouraged by the level of polarization and discourse. The other is that I really don’t want to contribute to it. With that said, one of my rules for this blog is that if I find myself thinking about something for a couple of days, I should probably write about it because there’s usually a leadership lesson there. Which brings me to Jodi Kantor’s recent article in the New York Times about how big a competitive streak President Obama has. It’s a well reported article with plenty of examples of how driven the President is to win at everything from elections to games of pool. Like most people at high levels in his profession (or any other profession for that matter), the guy is a competitor. I’m not arguing against leaders having and showing competitive drive. It can be a huge motivator for yourself and your team. Like any other strength, though, it’s helpful to think of competitive drive like a dial on an amplifier. You can dial it down or dial it up depending on the situation and what you’re trying to accomplish. If you dial it all the way to the right and leave it at 11 (as the guys in Spinal Tap used to do), it can become way too much of a good thing. In short, it can set you up to lose.

Leadership, Personal Presence, Team Building

How to Get Over Not Letting Go

There’s a really interesting think piece in the New York Times this week by Carl Richards titled “You Probably Have Too Much Stuff.” In it, he tells the story of a guy named Andrew Hyde who, in preparing for a trip around the world two years ago, sold everything he owned except for 15 things. (Here’s his list.) Hyde’s list of things he owns is now up to 60 items and he doesn’t expect that it will grow much beyond that. Inspired by Hyde’s example, Richards writes of getting rid of some of his own stuff and what he’s learned by doing so:

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