When you hear the words Professional Development, what comes to mind? Many people immediately think about terms such as “succession planning,” or “career path.” While those things certainly require new skills and knowledge, focusing on training for the next job may cause as many problems as it solves. Someone once described the normal corporate career path as “getting … [Read more...]
Displaying Empathy While Maintaining Standards
A few weeks back, I was leading a class on How Leaders Create and Manage Remote and Hybrid Teams. Two of the participants got into a heated exchange that was very instructive. It raised a good question: When does empathy towards your team members get in the way of managing performance? One of the participants said how much he liked seeing people when they worked from home … [Read more...]
Five Ways to Manage and Lead Better in a Virtual World
by Angie Morgan You can lead without being a manager. You can manage without being a leader. Leadership is always a choice. Choose to lead. I’ve managed, I’ve led, and I’ve coached managers who’ve aspired to be stronger leaders. I can distill my experience and advice down to five simple things that I think every manager, at any stage of their career, can benefit from … [Read more...]
Do You Hold People Accountable or Help Them Be Accountable?
Accountability. We throw the word around quite a bit in leadership circles. We use phrases like ‘holding people accountable.” To many managers, it’s the stick we use when the carrot doesn’t work. In the words of that great philosopher Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Can we hold people … [Read more...]
You Need to Coach Your Stars, Too
One of the things many leaders feel we don’t do as well as we could is coach our people. Whether our team is co-located or scattered to the winds, it’s hard to find the time to coach effectively. When we do, it’s almost always focused on improving weak performance. That means we spend most of our limited time coaching the lowest-performers. But what about the rest of them? … [Read more...]