Ambiguity in Leadership is a Certainty

Anyone who has ever been in a leadership role for longer than, oh, five minutes, knows that leadership is not a prescriptive thing.  As simple as we try to make it with lists of the ten top things to do here or the best five things to do there, it remains complex and full of [...]

Leading By Example & Mistaken Beliefs

According to Albert Schweitzer, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing”.
If Albert is right about that, then leading by example, although a simple enough concept carries with it a pretty big impact.
On the face of it, to get it right, leaders must exhibit the behaviour they would like [...]

Employee Engagement & the Magic of Remembering

In a number of my previous blog posts, I made reference to the importance of listening and how this enhances the efficacy of communication.  A lot of other people talk about it too.  And that’s a good thing.
But I’m wondering how much of the information we get from listening do we actually remember when we’d [...]

Secrets and Blind Spots

This past week, I played golf with a woman I didn’t know very well.  We were polite to each other, exchanging the usual pleasantries, but initially, there lacked a certain camaraderie that makes playing alongside someone else all the more pleasant.
As we worked our way through the course, I learned more about my playing partner [...]

Know Thyself Part III – Personality Type

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, more affectionately known as MBTI ®, is based on the psychology of Carl Jung and was developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katherine Cook Briggs.  These women, after fifty years of research and development produced a tool that has proven invaluable to people in all walks of life.
Basically the [...]

Know Thyself Part II – Smart Emotions

So! Emotional Intelligence!   If you are unfamiliar with it, I strongly advise that you explore it because Emotional Intelligence is a critical component of good leadership.
Very basically, The Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EI) allows you to identify, understand and manage your emotions and use them to create rich relationships in your organization and, of course, [...]

Know Thyself – Part I

This week, I’m going to play with the notion of Self-knowledge as a critical component of good leadership.  Some might call this navel-gazing.  Some might be of the opinion that they know themselves well enough, having lived in their own skins for however long.  But to me, you can’t hope to be a good leader [...]