Be an Inspirational Leader


Think about the inspirational leaders of Apple, Amazon and Southwest Airlines. You can probably name them: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Jeff Bezos, and Herb Kelleher.

Next, try to name the leaders of General Motors, TiVo and AOL during the same period. Some were good, but very few left a leadership legacy that was strong enough to ensure future success.

Read more

Leading Change, One Conversation at a Time


Business is fundamentally an extended conversation. Whether you’re speaking with your boss, team members, colleagues or direct reports, conversations shape what gets done.

As a leader, you must engineer conversations to foster clarity, cooperation, creativity and a connection to company values.

Read more

Leading from the Middle: Managing Up, Down and Sideways


There’s a lack of trust in senior management, according to a survey by the human-resource firm Watson Wyatt:

  • Only 49 percent of employees have trust and confidence in their senior managers.
  • Just 55 percent say senior leaders behave consistently with core values.
  • Only 53 percent believe senior management has made the right changes to stay competitive.

Clearly, much is going wrong in the workplace, which presents middle managers with unprecedented opportunities to step forward and offer course corrections.

Read more

Ethical Traps: The Irresistible Urge to Cheat


Not a month goes by without some highly publicized ethical scandal. Be it tax evasion, executive pay excesses, sexual dalliances and outright fraud, many individuals are simply unable to resist temptation.

Does this make the perpetrators corrupt sociopaths?

Read more