Analysis for Managers: The Most Important Measure
Analysis for Managers: The Most Important Measure Today’s post is to help you as a leader, manager, entrepreneur, family member and/or individual to perform perhaps the most important analysis of them all. And it begins with a question posed by management scholar and innovation strategist, Clayton Christensen: How will you measure your life? After all is said and done what is truly most important to you? What are your deepest goals and desires? When you look back, what will be your measure of personal success? No doubt, the vast majority would put family, relationships with spouses and...
Read MoreBecoming a Coach
Becoming a Coach Thinking back to the most impactful people in your lives, who have they been? For many, it’s family members, friends, bosses and undoubtedly–sports or other coaches. Coaches in particular tend to have a special place in peoples’ hearts as these coaches often expected the most of of them and gave them the most time and energy. Likewise, it could be said that any good teacher, mentor or influencer is a “coach.” Today, we’re going to discuss Joseph Weintraub and James Hunt’s four reasons managers should spend more time not only...
Read MoreLeadership Series: Your Legacy
Leadership Series: Your Legacy 18 articles later, we’ve reached the final post in the Leadership Series. We hope you feel empowered and inspired to build your legacy as a leader. In our first post of the Leadership Series we wrote the following: “What is the one skill that would dramatically change the quality of your life? It might be communication, empathy, diligence, financial acumen, or perhaps a technical skill like programming or product engineering. But what if we told you that there is one skill that is the sum of all other skills–the culmination of them all? Well, there...
Read MoreLeadership Series: Negotiating
Leadership Series: Negotiating “Negotiating? Well, that’s not for me. I’m not a salesman, lawyer or politician. Surely negotiating isn’t important in leadership.” The authors or “Getting to Yes” disagree. Their best seller starts: “Like it or not, you’re a negotiator. Negotiation is a fact of life. You discuss a raise with your boss. You try to agree with a stranger on a price for his house.” You negotiate with your co-workers on where capital investment should be allocated and what new products to deploy. Or, to provide two more examples from Getting to Yes, perhaps you’re...
Read MoreLeadership Series: Emotional Intelligence
Leadership series: Emotional Intelligence Today’s topic will be introduced by a thought provoking fact: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70% of the time (source). Wait, you got that backward, right? So, if it isn’t smarts that drives success, what is it? Research suggests that it’s emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically” (source). This is an indispensable capability of any true leader. Leaders inspire,...
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