It’s All in the Definition
In working with leaders, teams and cultures, we often find the need to define certain terms. This ensures that everyone is clear on what's being discussed or decided. This post discusses some of our primary definitions.
Communication and Clarity
Productive communication is critical in every organization. Some of the essential aspects of communication include: listening, building trust in relationships, being honest in every interaction, and dealing with conflict effectively. Great team communication must be engaging, motivating and authentic. It must help the team to see the path and the destination. The larger the organization, the geometrically more complex communication becomes. With one-on-one communication, we can watch body language, hear tone of voice and create an immediate feedback loop. With […]
Key Characteristics of Powerful Leaders
Top leaders need to be especially good at what they do. The power they have available to them accentuates both their strengths and their weaknesses. Leaders are also not subject to the ordinary checks and balances like other employees.  Additionally, people will magnify the characteristics of the top leader, both good and bad, by mimicking their behavior without even knowing it and use the leader’s behavior as the excuse/justification for what they do. While there are many characteristics of great […]
Relationship Coaching: Advice on How to Attain Your Goals
Executive coaching isn’t just for executives anymore.  Every day, we all engage with other people to accomplish things, whether at work or at home.  The principles that apply to business world coaching easily translate to other types of relationships. All relationships come down to a few basic factors, the biggest of which are trust, honesty and dependability.  In other words, each of the parties clearly states their needs and wants, knows the other person will work hard to help them […]
Effective Communication in the Workplace
  A clear, effective communication skill is one of the best attributes a person can develop. It equips you to be successful professionally and personally.  By communication, we mean stating your needs clearly and listening to others with the intention of fully understanding what they are trying to say. It is a “two-way” street. Can you identify with this example?  It is the job of leaders to go to the unknown and find out what’s there.  Asking employees for honest […]
Leadership Coaching for Change Management
What do college athletes, Olympic gold medalists and smart business leaders have in common?  They rely on coaches to help them reach their greatest potential and teach them to overcome challenges.  Yet a study by the Stanford Business School found that nearly two-thirds of CEO’s and nearly half of senior executives do not receive any executive coaching or leadership development.  Almost all of them (69%) said they would like coaching to enhance their development. Imagine your college coach working with […]
Effective Coaching in the Workplace
  As a leader of a group, a team or an organization you must remember to focus on the impact you have on the audience.  When you are coaching or evaluating your own interactions, do not focus on how you delivered the message (what you said or what you did), focus on the reaction you see.  That is the true test of a productive session. Regardless of the vehicle used to coach (a story, an assignment, a book to read), […]
Relying on a Personality Test in the Executive Hiring Process Is Like Following Your GPS Off a Bridge
I’ve been a customer of the same local farm and orchard for nearly 20 years. I go to Gatwood’s for the excellent produce, the great prices, and the incredible donuts. Those things never change. However, over the last ten years, Joe Gatwood, who took over the farm when his dad retired, has made some pretty big changes. An entrepreneur by nature, Joe has expanded the selection and opened orchard stores in several of the surrounding towns. He’s made deals with […]
Dean Smith Shows Why Inclusive Leadership of Diverse Teams Fosters Creativity and Flexibility
Dean Smith began his long and historic coaching career at the University of North Carolina in 1961, at the tender age of 30, but already with a long history of compassion and inclusion behind him. As a high schooler in rural Kansas in the late 1940s, he pushed his school to integrate the basketball program, which at the time had separate teams for black and white players. He kept that activism up at UNC, where he signed the first African-American […]