5 Ways to Tell if a Leader is Ready for the C Suite

For a person to successfully take on a management or leadership role, certain skills and accomplishments must be evident. But to move on to a C-level executive position, “ordinary” leadership qualities – valuable as they are – are no longer sufficient.

The highest leadership levels require more than ordinary leadership skills.

Being, for example, head of the engineering department requires a different set of skills and experiences than does being the Chief Technology Officer. To make it to the executive suite, a person must go above and beyond demonstrating leadership. How… Read the full article >

What Facebook Leaders Do in June with Their Teams That You Probably Don’t but Should

All executives start off their year with the best intentions. “This year will be better.” “Our results will be higher.” They set annual goals. They coach their people periodically. They may even have an annual retreat to kick off the year. Yet they don’t leverage one key thing that Facebook does to ensure that their team turns their January dreams into a reality.

Most goals are set once at the beginning of the year. My experience with these annual goals at work is that they are… Read the full article >

Why True Team Building Requires Rock-Solid Trust

You can group co-workers together without much forethought, but don’t expect that group to magically turn into a team. Strong teams are built on a foundation of trust. In baseball, clear communication between pitcher and catcher is indispensable to dealing effectively with batters. Hand signals given by the catcher indicate whether the pitcher should deliver a fastball, curveball, slider, or changeup pitch. A substantial amount of trust must underlie this relationship.

Teams function at their best when communication and trust are strong.

In the workplace, lack of trust among team members… Read the full article >

Why Google, Apple, and Facebook Hire Dumb Leaders, and You Should Too

Usually, companies hire or promote people into leadership roles because they think they are smart. They have demonstrated through previous jobs that they know how to deploy their smarts to solve business problems, and then they are given a leadership job. This is not true at Google, Apple, or Facebook. They appoint leaders who are in fact the dumbest people on the team.

This is not a political strategy so that they can let others make decisions and then… Read the full article >

How to Rally Your Team Using the Natural Workings of the Human Mind

Mediocre leaders focus on having their teams perform carefully proscribed functions for pay. But those companies that excel, those that create extraordinary results in the challenging world of business, are those whose leaders raise the bar to exceptional heights with aspirational ambitions. Aspirational ambitions are established by smart leaders who understand the nature of people. They know that creating something beyond the ordinary requires focusing people on the extraordinary.

The Nature of People’s Mind

According to Harvard… Read the full article >

9 Ways You Are Destroying Your Team

In a program we ran with top executives of a multi-billion dollar company, the CEO asked us – “Why don’t we have this much fun at work?” So we asked back “What are you doing at work that is destroying teamwork?” This is what he and his team said:

1.Create unreasonable time constraints. Be sure to overwhelm team members with impossible deadlines so the reality of their already heavy, burdensome workloads doesn’t allow them to be creative and passionate on anything… Read the full article >

Does Your Team Need an Intervention?

Sometimes a team forms and then goes off track. Why does this happen, and what can you do about it? How can purpose and goals be reconstructed? And how can each team member understand their role in contributing to team success? Here are some thoughts.

Why Do Teams Go Off Course?

Perhaps the main reason that teams drift off of the path to success is insufficient trust. Trust may have existed at one time, but was destroyed by some event. Or maybe… Read the full article >

What Executive Coaches Never Talk About Winning

Donald Trump, in his interview with Megyn Kelly last night, opened a window to a critical leadership trait. This trait is so central to any leader’s success that if you don’t have it, you will never make it in the business world. It is a trait Mark Zuckerberg and Indra Nooyi have. It is a trait Jack Welch wrote a whole book on. It is key to what enabled Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to succeed. And even unfortunately Mao, Hitler, and Stalin had it. Yet interestingly this trait is rarely, dare I say never, a topic of… Read the full article >

Why Even the Most Successful Executives Need Coaching

Executives are under considerably more pressure than executives of 10 or 20 years ago. Markets change with remarkable rapidity, as do technologies. There is increased regulatory pressure and a workforce that in many ways is different from that of yesterday. At the same time, CEO tenures are a couple of years shorter than they were 20 years ago. In other words, CEOs are expected to produce results and do so quickly.

Pressure on CEOs to perform from day one is higher than it’s ever been.

On top of this, trust… Read the full article >

Why Leaders Everywhere Should Thank Kelly Ripa for Teaching Them How to Be Better

Leaders – you should call, email, tweet, and instant message Kelly Ripa to thank her for what she did for you this week. If you listen closely to what she said, you will learn what most employees think and feel, but will never, ever tell you.

For those of you who didn’t follow the details of her story, she went live, on TV, and blasted her leadership for the lack of consideration. Then why am I telling you to thank… Read the full article >