A Leadership Lesson 17 Years in the Making

Cicadas are about to make their presence known across large portions of the United States including Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. This batch has been dormant underground for 17 years, but now they are starting to emerge as part of their standard lifecycle. Along with their emergence comes the accompanying noise visual display. As the…

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4 Trust Building Choices that Smart Leaders Make in Uncertain Times

Leaders everywhere continue to weave their way through the dynamically changing COVID-19 situation. Perhaps you’ve experienced one of these scenarios: You email your team members the latest policy on how your organization is dealing with the coronavirus. As soon as you hit send, a message arrives from your boss adding a new requirement to the…

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Check-in Checklist

I recently started asking guests on the Leadership Lab podcast about what leaders can do to best support their people during uncertain times. The overwhelming response: “check-in regularly with your people.”  Below is a free PDF tool to help you conduct great one-on-ones.  You can read more about the concept here. [restrict] [/restrict] Patrick LeddinPatrick…

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Great Leaders Create a Culture of Quitters

You are likely familiar with the concept that employees don’t quit companies, they quit bad leaders. It is with this in mind that many organizations invest time, energy, and resources developing leaders who foster employee engagement. Yes, employees might quit an organization because of a bad leader; however, these same employees may quit their own bad behaviors…

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Why You Should Revisit Your Thinking

I recently talked to Prakash Raman about how our thinking shapes us. Prakash is a leadership coach who is listed on the MG100 and recognized as a global thought leader. It was a very interesting conversation that focused on the concept of attachment and how our attachments can shape our mindset, behaviors, and results. Prakash shared…

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Find Your Path

The vast majority of my career has been spent being developed to lead others, leading others, or developing others to lead. Throughout much of that time, we would be led down a fairly prescriptive path. To be a leader, you’d have to have this experience, go to this course, take this job, etc. There was…

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Are Great Leaders Born or Made?

If you want to be a doctor, it takes over a decade. You can’t wake up one morning and decide to do surgery. You can’t do an “accelerated track” for “high potential medical students” and get up to speed in a couple years. You need four years of undergrad, four years of medical school, and…

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How Culture Can Devour a Leader

Perhaps you are familiar with this well-known Peter Drucker quote about the power of culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. My experience suggests that culture has a fairly robust appetite. Not only does it have the ability to eat strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, sometimes, it can devour a leader as well. When this…

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Tool: 3 Leadership Behaviors that Work

I’m excited to share our latest free leadership tool. Do you want to be a more effective leader? I’d recommend that you embrace three leadership behaviors that work: Recognize people as individuals Invite people to participate in something bigger than themselves Create positive memorable experiences Here’s a PDF of 3 Leadership Behaviors that Work for…

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