Category Archive

Your team member just celebrated their one-year anniversary with the company. High-fives and congrats all round. And then the next day, or maybe a week later, you discover they’ve made an absolutely elementary mistake. Confronted with the situation, they just look blank. “I didn’t know that!” is their best explanation. Why didn’t they KNOW THIS ALREADY? It’s such a basic, …

There’s a growing trend on social media and in leadership blogs and podcasts – especially those intended for a primarily female audience – of rejecting the concept of “empowerment.” The argument is that people, especially women, don’t need to “be empowered,” which implies they need to be “given” power.  Instead, they need to, or should, claim and step into their …

How good are you at enabling your team, colleagues, and, yes, even your boss, to do what they need to do? Because it’s not enough to just delegate work to your team. Nor is it enough to just accept tasks from your boss. You need to be an enabler. Enabling your team When you delegate work to the individuals on your …

Does your imagination present you with all the reasons why something will go wrong? That’s a great skill, and I mean that sincerely. Being able to see potential pitfalls and problems is part of risk management, and leaders need to be good at managing risk if they want to succeed. But this ability to see all the ways something won’t …

Last night, my husband fed the dog. I usually do this, but I was busy, so I delegated. With a certain amount of anxiety. Because, as all of us who delegate know, there are many potential pitfalls. After all, we’re the ones who know how to do the task correctly – right? And sure enough, there were plenty of missteps. He didn’t …

“Leadership is a tool, not a value, and effective leaders can be abhorrent forces in the world. I try to remind myself never to say admiringly that someone is a great leader. Instead I try to be more specific. Not all great leaders are leaders for good.” ~ Ryan Derousseau This is one of my favorite quotes because it makes …

Much to my regret, as a trailing-edge Baby Boomer I was too young for most of the activity in the 1960s. The protests, the love-ins, the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll … in hindsight, I suspect I might have been lucky to be too young, but at the time, I bitterly resented not being a few years older. This past Saturday, …

I read an article recently – and I’m kicking myself for not making a note of where it was and who wrote it – in which the author, a consultant, commented on an executive meeting he was attending at a client site. The meeting included people of different ethnicity, religion, color, and gender. Partway through the meeting, the consultant looked …

I know someone who equates leadership with power-over, and vehemently rebels at any sign that his business partner wants to encroach on his territory or take an active leadership role in their business. (I’ll call him James.) I once worked with someone who didn’t have and didn’t want an official leadership title, but who by the simple force of her personality, intelligence, and insight was a powerful thought leader …

At a planning and strategy meeting the other day, a client gloomily confessed that she’s going to have to do something about one of her employees. “She’s always very busy, but she’s not getting anywhere,” she said. “She’s great at writing reports …” “That say nothing,” I finished for her when she trailed off. We’ve all been there: the challenge …