How to Give Concise and Actionable Positive Feedback
There’s a significant amount of attention in leadership literature about how to provide tough feedback. That makes sense since conveying criticism hits several triggers for us, from fear of conflict to being disliked. However, positive feedback needs its own focus, since we’re not excelling there either. Just as we avoid providing critical feedback, we all…
The Conversation that Changes Everything
They are the rock your world, head-slapping conversations. Or the slow, burning a-ha talks. They occur with those we know well and with total strangers. They can take five minutes or five hours. But at the end, we are not the same. The conversation changes us. We are more and better because of them. I’ve…
If Ideas Are Cheap, Why Do We Care So Much About Getting Credit For Them?
When you’ve published a book, an interesting thing happens: people start using your ideas as if they were their own. There’s no ill intent here. Generally, there’s so much information available that people legitimately forget where one idea originated, including whether or not it started with them. I’ve given talks where the organizer directly quotes…
How to Create an Awesome Team from Average Workers
Some leaders are able to assemble teams with the absolute best talent in the market. They have large budgets, innovative brands, and the latitude to recruit whomever they wish for their organizations. They’re also rare. The vast majority of leaders are forced to make do with some combination of the talent they can attract and…
The Real Secret to Success is Not What You Think
Want to enjoy your job more? Innovate in your work? Inspire your team to greatness? Create a life that makes you feel alive? It’s entirely in your power, and may be rooted not in what you do, or even what you think, but in how you think. In the book, Mindset, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck…
Competition At Work: Positive or Positively Awful?
Recently, I was engaged in two separate discussions in which leaders touted the benefits of competition in the workplace. In one conversation, the leader expressed that he was hopeful that the natural competition between two senior members of his leadership team would provide a system of checks and balances in his company. In the second conversation, a team…
