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Everything You Own Owns a Piece of You, Too.
This is true for taking on a new leadership role, as well. When we agree to the responsibilities and commitments required in an elevated position, we invariably “own” the role as if it were a tangible thing.

Owning a role is quite common for those who aspire to create excellence, and it comes with the same consequences as owning a house or a boat. It takes an enormous amount of time, energy, and creativity to excel at leading others.

The fact that what we own also owns us is not a reason to jettison our investments or decline an important purchase. But knowing this reality before we make a significant purchase or commitment is a smart call. Ask yourself if the time, energy, and resources required to give the purchase or commitment the attention it deserves makes sense. Or will you feel trapped by those things you own, beholden in a way that redirects your life in a negative way.

Delay During Performance Allows Negative Pressure to Build.
So, the next time you experience a delay that interrupts performance, consider the power of distraction to avoid the negative effects of pressure. As pressure builds during a delay, finding a release through distraction is a much better strategy than overthinking what is to come. Thinking about execution is a great way to sabotage execution.

Sometimes, bad advice won’t die.

Take the case of the Sandwich Technique of giving feedback. It is an ineffective method that has traveled around the world. Seemingly every leader knows it.

We can summarize the Sandwich Method like this: When giving feedback, leaders start by saying something positive. Then, they give the receiver the real meat of criticism or negative feedback. Finally, they conclude by saying something positive or affirming.

The logic is that the bookends of positive statements buffer any negative reaction to the criticism. Leaders erroneously believe it makes the criticism more palatable and easier to swallow.

But people aren’t nearly as gullible as some leaders hope them to be. In many organizations, the technique is known as a Crap Sandwich because everyone knows that the center of the sandwich tastes like rubbish.

Expertly Introducing a Speaker
Good introducers don’t get cute, tell embarrassing stories about the presenter, or do anything that will detract from the presentation. Instead, they ask themselves what information they might share that will make the speaker more believable and their remarks more valuable.

Priming an audience to learn and appreciate what a speaker can offer begins with the introduction. It is often taken for granted or overlooked, creating a context that encourages full participation.

Introductions matter. Treat them as stage-setting devices that allow presentations to sing. Everyone benefits when you do.

Take a hard look at the top handful of vendors, suppliers, and partners who are heavily relied upon in your organization. Do they smartly reflect your organization’s values? Are they best of class regarding quality and performance? Don’t leave such an assessment to others. They have been rewarded to negotiate the best price for far too long, and often miss the forest for the trees. Take on this assignment personally and see what you learn. Remember this: the cost of success is far cheaper than the price of misalignment and failure.

Solving for low performance is an ongoing challenge every leader faces.

Team members with weak performance often prevent the team from reaching its desired goals and achieving what it is capable of. Good leaders keep a sharp eye on performance metrics, team conversations, and third-party feedback to ascertain if a problem exists.

Getting ahead of subpar performance and addressing it before it spirals into a consistent negative pattern is a critical slice of effective leadership. The best leaders craft a plan to address poor performance as soon as it rears its head. They guard against allowing poor performance to gain any foothold that might undermine long-term success.

The culture of an organization or team is shaped by the values that leaders hold and the everyday practices that represent those values. From those values, good leaders are able to establish standards of quality, expectations for performance, and competencies that support personal and professional growth.   As organizations bring on new team members, leaders face the challenge of aligning everyone to the values and inculcating the culture they are trying to build. People are busy, and lofty ideas about

You can’t accept who you are right now and grow at the same time. Or, as former IBM Ceo Ginni Rometty liked to say, “Growth and comfort never coexist.”

In order to grow and develop as a person and leader, stepping outside of what is most comfortable is a requirement. To develop and grow, leaders must seek out challenges, reject the familiar, and accept new experiences and the uncertainty they carry.

Be Sure to Water the Roots of Your Original Passions.
Leaders start out doing the work they love. But as they rise through the ranks and attain more responsibility, they get further away from the activities they were most passionate about. Writers become editors, salespeople become sales managers, surgeons become division chiefs, teachers become administrators, investment analysts become portfolio managers, and so forth.

Leaders often have to ask outsiders to invest their time, energy, or financial resources to promote the good work they are doing. These requests range from fundraising to capital investment, and from investing time to serving as advisors to a new project or enterprise.  Asking those on the outside for money or time is one of the hardest tasks to achieve. Most leaders and fundraisers dread it, even when they know that without support their project won’t get off the

Recruiters who scout talent for an organization are sometimes swayed by a particular skill, attribute, or trait that they believe is a difference-maker. If they allow this quality to overwhelm their attraction and assessment, thereby ignoring other data and important success factors, they invariably make a bad call. Even talent scouts as professional and accomplished as those in the National Football League can fall sway to overweighting a preferred skill.

Being culturally intelligent doesn’t mean you can speak multiple languages or that you have spent a lot of time visiting other countries and cultures.  But it does mean you have an open mind and appreciate that different cultures have distinctive norms, values, and practices. The goal of a culturally intelligent leader is to navigate cross-cultural situations with sensitivity through respectful behavior.  Interacting with the people and customs from different cultures requires a deep understanding of what counts as respect and trust in