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Get Better at Backcasting
After a poor decision, wise leaders gather the team and engage in a “postmortem,” a process of dissecting what went wrong. Specifically, what decisions contributed most to creating a bad result. This is a useful exercise that allows the leader and team to learn from their mistakes and correct them going forward. Airlines routinely do…
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Seek to Deserve Success
Results-driven leaders are often consumed with achieving lasting personal success. The ultimate prize is to reach the lofty goal of financial independence and the ability to make an impact through meaningful work. However, the fixation on the outcome and not the process can prevent leaders from reaching their highest potential. They end up making choices…
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Who Does Your Team Need You to Be?
Great team leadership is less about what you need the team to be and more about what the team needs you to be. Team leaders naturally want their teams to do what they need to in order to get things done; however, it’s what teams need from leaders that most affects team success. Team leaders who…
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Jump the Leadership Learning Curve
The best leaders evolve to recognize a simple but important truth: We have influence with others proportional to the influence they have with us. When others feel they can influence you, they become much more open to your influence. When a leader finally understands this working principle, how they interact and engage with others begins…
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Saying ‘No’ Requires a Strong ‘Yes’
Of the many abilities required to excel at leadership, perhaps none is more important than the ability to say, “No.” Our human desire to be liked and accepted often stunts our learning about this essential skill. Saying “no” requires us to become focused on what really matters. We should refuse to accept tasks from others…
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Building Emotional Strength
Building strength in any area works in the same way. Consider muscular strength. Ask a bodybuilder and they will tell you it is after the exercise routine that they build new muscle. New muscle is created when the muscle fiber ruptures and the nerve fibers begin to register pain. Pushing yourself at that precise point…
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The Problem of Solomon’s Paradox
King Solomon, as the story goes, offered wisdom and counsel so highly valued that leaders across the world would travel for days to hear his advice. His sage judgment was both profound and clairvoyant. However, as wise as he was with other people’s problems, he was equally unwise with his own. His personal life was…
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Remember ‘Rule Number 6’
Famed conductor Benjamin Zander likes to tell audiences this story: Two prime ministers are discussing the affairs of state when, suddenly, a man bursts into the room, huffing, and shouting. The hosting prime minister says to the man, “Peter, kindly remember Rule Number 6.” Peter immediately becomes calm, apologizes, and exits the room. About 15…
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Defeated By a Winning Strategy
When conditions change, the smart ones among us adjust their strategies to compensate. Not doing so would obviously be foolish. Yet, we too often fall in love with our strategies. We presume what has worked so marvelously in the recent past won’t let us down regardless of external changes. So, we stay with our winning…
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Wise Exercise of Decision Rights
By the simple virtue of occupying a leadership role, leaders have decision rights. That is to say, at the end of the day, the leader can make the call without consulting others and without agreement by anyone not in the mirror. But the best leaders know that exercising decision rights is a surefire way of…