Lessons About Credibility

We seem to be going through one of those cycles when everyday we are reminded of people or organizations falling off the credibility wagon.  You likely recall the example of the local news station in San Francisco, who apparently got duped and reported joke-like names, when attempting to identify the pilots of the Asiana airliner [Read More]

Reflections From The Leadership Challenge Forum 2013

The Leadership Challenge Forum 2013, the annual conference for students, practitioners and others excited about  this proven methodology, was held during the last week of July.  The Forum theme was Inspire A Shared Vision, based on one of the Five Practices, described in The Leadership Challenge.  Here are some reflections about the conference which I [Read More]

Transferring Practice to Game Day

Many years ago I played on a soccer team. And, I clearly remember practicing everything – passing, shooting, trapping, head balls, defending, you name it. In fact we would spend quite a bit of time at practice working on skills and hopefully building muscle memory. I also remember something else – that has stayed with [Read More]

Innovations in Leadership

The insightful comments below are from noted author, Ron Crossland (The Leader’s Voice, Voice Lessons). Enjoy. I recently read Michael Schrage’s, author of Serious Play (a seriously good book), recent article in Harvard Business Review about the role of surprise as applied to innovation. He asks, “Is it better to be predictably surprising or surprisingly [Read More]

What Can You Believe?

A key lesson in The Leadership Challenge is the subject of credibility. At its core, credibility means to be believable. Our friends Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner (authors of The Leadership Challenge), capture its importance with their statement: “if we don’t believe in the messenger, we will not believe the message. That is one of [Read More]

True Servant Leaders

There is that expression, “like tennis, nothing happens in life, until someone steps up to serve.” Earlier this month, I was privileged to offer The Leadership Challenge Workshop to a number of leaders from various non-profit organizations in the greater Cincinnati area. It was a wonderful experience for all of us. They enjoyed and benefited [Read More]

Strengthening Confidence

I have begun to detect a dip in the level of self-confidence people have. Two merging observations which have led me to this. First, I less frequently hear people describing their work as a slam dunk or similar term, indicating they will have no trouble with it. Work these days is a struggle, with plenty [Read More]

Another Reason for Caring

A recent conversation with a friend and colleague led to an interesting convergence of thoughts. The first item we discussed related to a recurring and rather distressing item. Today, it is easy to find examples of people or companies engaged in deceit or fraud. Whether it is Lance Armstrong finally fessing up, investment companies using [Read More]

A Must for Successful Change

Frequently I get the opportunity to work with people going through enormous changes in their workplaces. Sometimes, the change is strategy or technology related. Other times it can be a major restructuring or even the process of marrying two merged, but quite different organizations. Regardless of the change which is occurring, I often see people [Read More]

The Wall

I recently heard a Chief Medical Officer describe the deep hurt that is felt after an unsuccessful pediatric code, when a baby loses its fight for life in the emergency room. He made the comment that the attending doctor must be a wall – who must wall off grief, sadness anger or any other emotion. [Read More]