No leader ever sets out to deliberately do a bad job. But sometimes a leader is given the task of having to fix someone else’s bad job. This can be a daunting task especially if the damage and toxicity caused by the previous leadership has become a core element in the team’s culture. That said, [...]
It seems that empathic leadership is increasingly being devalued in organizations. While the great minds of leadership extol the virtues of engaged, supportive “show me that you care” approaches, it appears that many organizations want to embrace a much different set of values. Psychopathic leadership seems to be the new shiny thing that is taking [...]
Nobody said that leadership was simple. It can, in fact, be an extremely complex and challenging pursuit. Some people are naturally drawn to leadership while others grow into the roles. Some believe that there are born leaders while others suggest that leadership is a choice and that we are all capable of leadership. Leaders are [...]
What kind of leader are you: iPhone or Blackberry? It’s the kind of question that reminds me of when I was a kid hanging with my pals and arguing over what was better: Ford or Chevy. My employer provides me with a Blackberry but I also have an iPhone4 for personal use. Work is on [...]
A lot of leaders don’t actually lead because they’re too busy attending meetings! Many leaders I know have calendars that are chock-a-block with meetings. Meetings are set up (or accepted) out of habit, sometimes because of the fear of being “out of the loop”, the need to micromanage or the curse of being labelled “not [...]
Why is it that, all things being equal, you can have two different experiences at the same place or with the same person? I recently had a delicious meal at a restaurant at Vancouver airport. So good that, on my next layover I went there again. Ordered the same thing. It was good but not [...]
Is a good leader the one that says “No” all the time? There are some leaders who believe that the first response should always be a “No” in order to make colleagues or staff work harder to get a “Yes”. There is a tragic flaw with this notion: colleagues and staff are (generally) not morons. [...]
The perils of micro-management are many. In a previous blog I explored how micro-management is tied to trust. Or, more accurately, a lack of trust. Leaders who cannot delegate, and must control every aspect of their team or organization, do so because they have trouble with trust. The learned behaviour of distrust then flows naturally [...]
The Dave Matthews Band has a song called “Too Much” which tells us to “Suck it up, suck it up, suck it up”. How many times have you heard or been told to “suck it up” when you’ve brought an issue forward at work, to a committee or team? How did it feel? And, more [...]
One of the biggest challenges for effective leaders is having to deal with a micro-manager. I would bet that most of us have experience dealing with micro-managers. They exhibit a lot of the qualities of information hoarders which we talked about in a previous blog. I suspect that most micro-managers are driven by a desire [...]