Tough Talk, Tough Listen

  One of the toughest tasks of leadership is the difficult conversation.  That’s why we don’t have them.  When team members consistently underperform, we tend to compensate through doing their work for them, and consciously or unconsciously making the rest of the team take up the slack.  Either way, we set the conditions for poor … Read more

Leading Through “The Fear Factor”

I had an interesting conversation with a corporate executive earlier this week, where we were talking about what he kept referring to as “The Fear Factor.”  It seems throughout his career, he’s been exposed to otherwise outstanding colleagues and team members that lived every day in fear.  Fear of losing respect, fear of losing face, … Read more

Ending the Curse of Bad Meetings

How many of us have endured bad meetings?  How many still do?  The fact is, most of us fall into both categories.  We’ve grown up with bad meetings, and now we perpetuate them on others as sort of a leadership punishment mandate – whereby we feel a perverse obligation to make our team suffer as … Read more