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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

Great performers and performances depend on the near-perfect execution of a specific set of technical skills. These are the skills, actions, and routines that form the basis of consistency and high-level effectiveness. Mastering them is what great performance is all about.

People want to be validated and confirmed by those who lead them. Whereas validation recognizes the value of what people do, highlighting their contribution and quality, confirmation underlines the importance of what they say and think.  Leaders who are highly confirming of others build trust in a way validation by itself can’t. The critical practice of confirming begins by recognizing that what others say is vitally important to them. Statements like, “You seem fired up about this,” “I can tell you’ve thought a lot about

Setting ambitious goals for a team or organization motivates people to perform and serves as a guide for leaders to invest the time, resources, and energy necessary to achieve them.  Stretch goals, as they are often called, push team members to reach their highest potential. In many cases, even when the team doesn’t achieve what they set out to, results are amplified, and real progress is made.  As the old quote goes, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss,

One reason biographies of famous leaders are so popular among those who want to excel is that they rarely get the chance to see other leaders make decisions. As a result, their learning about decision-making is somewhat stunted.

Marathon runners normally run the 26th mile faster than most of the miles preceding it. Theoretically, they should have depleted their energy reserves and be at their slowest, yet they consistently run the last portion of the race at a faster speed. When runners can see or sense the finish line, they make a final push to reach it.   The closer we get to a goal, the more effort we make to realize our success. Our motivation to complete what

Leaders who entrust team members with significant new responsibilities, the authority to make decisions, and the autonomy to complete projects without seeking approval when those colleagues are not quite ready for the challenge can be said to have engaged in courageous delegation. Are You a Courageous Delegator?

Teaching team members to care isn’t about asking them to be more curious or to take a genuine interest in customers and clients. They think they already do that, even when they don’t. Instead, good leaders ask for proof. And the proof is in what they know about specific customers and clients, not in what they are instructed to do.