It’s Time To Turn The Page On How We Lead & Manage People
When the COVID pandemic suddenly appeared two years ago, our human tendency was to assume it would be a short-lived bump in the road. At the time, most of us quickly redeployed to our homes to work – and we treated it as a brief, albeit disruptive, adventure. Fully expecting we would inevitably return to our normal work lives, month after month,...
When It Comes To Work, Home Isn’t Where Our Heart Is
It’s astonishing to think that just three months ago, the business world was highly reluctant to allow most employees to work from home. Perhaps because not being present in the office every day was seen as undermining to longstanding tradition – or because leaders feared productivity would cave – US companies allowed just 12% of Americans to...
4 Simple And Powerful Ways To Build Your Team’s Confidence And Rule The World
“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” ~ Mahatma...
How We Gain Power And Influence: Science’s Surprising Answer
In the late 19th Century, British historian, Lord Acton, famously asserted that “power corrupts.” And we surely needn’t look too deeply within business, politics and every day life to find examples that validate this timeless truth. But new research from U.C. Berkeley social scientist, Dacher Keltner, confirms something few of us may ever have...
What The World Needs Now Is Leadership Courage
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” Philosopher Thomas Paine wrote those immortal words during the American Revolution – and they strike me as being fitting to the moment we’re all living in today. Seeking to inspire American colonists to overcome their profound fears about the imminent war with the British, Paine put truth right out in...
10 Of The World’s Great Sages Share Their Most Important Leadership Advice
Over the past year, I've had the wonderful honor of interviewing thirty of the world’s most remarkable leadership authors, researchers, and professors – and have published these discussions on my “Lead From The Heart” podcast. And for this post, I wanted to share what I personally believe are the ten most cutting-edge insights these noteworthy...
A Quote From Maya Angelou Predicted The Future Of Workplace Leadership
Late poet, Maya Angelou famously observed that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Her great kernel of truth here is that human beings are far more influenced by feelings than by rational thinking – not at all what most of us have ever believed. When it comes to...
Here’s Why Bill Gates Calls Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” The Greatest Book He’s Ever Read
As I started reading Steven Pinker’s new bestseller, Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism And Progress, I must admit I was curious to learn why Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, called it the greatest book he’s ever read. And after making it through only a few pages of the preface, I thought I had my answer. Harvard psychology...
Ancient Chinese Philosophers Teach Harvard Students A Modern Way To Think
One of the most popular classes at Harvard University today is a deep dive into the wisdom of the great Chinese philosophers, scholars who lived over 2,000 years ago. We all know their names – Confucius, Mencius, Zhangzi and Lao Tzu – Eastern sages who devoted their lives to exploring what it takes to flourish in life, and who often landed on...
Leadership’s 4 Year Failure To Engage
If American companies were given a report card today for their progress in improving employee engagement over the past four years, most would receive a failing grade. Surely, many leaders will scowl at the notion that they could be seen as failing at a time when elevating engagement scores has been one of their organization’s highest expressed...
Tethered To Our Devices, We Never Get The Break We Need
It wasn’t until late September that I was able to take any vacation this year, and going that long without a break had left me feeling exhausted – and needing real time away from all my day-to-day activities including all email, texts and social media. But who can do that today? Most of us routinely respond to email during vacation. Some of us go...
Five Magnificent Ways You Can Lead Like Google Without Spending A Dime On Perks
As research for an article I later wrote for Fast Company Magazine, I traveled to Google’s Mountain View, California campus, and spent the day meeting with several of their talent management executives. Within just my first hour at Google, I saw firsthand all the reasons why so many people in business consider the tech giant to be an incomparable...
Science Agrees With Obi Wan: Trust Your Feelings
Imagine you’re giving a presentation tomorrow to a group of your organization’s top decision makers. Your job will be to persuade them to approve, and invest in, a new initiative you’ve worked over a year to develop. Heading into the meeting, you’re convinced you have a fantastic business case. You’ve studied the competition, run several lengthy...
Five Things Leaders Should Do In December To Ensure Success In The New Year
“Fortune favors the bold.” Virgil (70-19 BC) There’s a great tendency in the month of December to wind things down. With the holiday season upon us, and the least amount of sunlight of the year around to energize us, we're influenced to work in slow motion. We feel like resting, and to acting upon a conscious or unconscious mindset that tells us...
What My Near-Death Experience Taught Me About Life And Leadership
Early one morning just a few weeks ago, I woke up with the intention of starting my day at the gym. But before I ever made it out of the house, I completely blacked out, fell on a cold travertine floor and broke my ribs. The pain from that fall was excruciating; and it immediately restored me to consciousness. But the sheer terror of the moment...
Gallup’s Profound Discovery: Engagement Is Driven By Good Managers With Rare Talents
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” – Schopenhauer It’s been nearly three years since Gallup announced its stunning finding that engagement in the American workplace had fallen to crisis levels. In what became the shot heard ‘round the world in business, the research firm revealed that 70% of the...
These 5 Books Predict The Future Of Workplace Leadership
"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed." – William Gibson A close friend and former colleague of mine recently advised me to “go easy” on my use of the expression “lead from the heart.” Fully aware that I’d written a book with that title, he nevertheless sought to warn me that many people in business continue to believe...
Why Your Personal Influence Is Far Greater Than You Ever Knew
“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.“ ~ Albert Schweitzer Introduction: Through a series of fascinating studies, Harvard-trained social scientists, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, have shown that human beings are profoundly influenced by the behavior of the people closest to them in their...
Three Stunning Leadership Trends That Should Give Hope To Workers Everywhere
“The future ain't what it used to be." – Yogi Berra Directly or indirectly, the common theme expressed in everything I write is that our traditional ways of leading people in the workplace are failing. We’ve seen employee engagement fall precipitously over a generation, and now have irrefutable evidence that it cannot and will not recover until...
The Single Greatest Reason The World’s Workforce Is Disengaged
“No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.” –J. P. Morgan In the early part of this past summer, Gallup released its “State of the American Workforce” report – a massive research undertaking that identified how...
A Balance Between Masculine And Feminine Traits: The Requirements For Success As A 21st Century Leader
“I think we need the feminine qualities of leadership, which include attention to aesthetics and the environment, nurturing, affection, intuition and the qualities that make people feel safe and cared for.” – Deepak Chopra Just before my book, Lead From The Heart, was published, a public relations executive told me...
The Profound Lesson Plants Teach Us About Leading People
I’ve come to trust that books show up in my life for a reason. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been in a bookstore when some internal radar system seemed to guide me down the aisles until a knowing voice insisted that I “buy that one.” The great mystery of this process is that the books I’ve ended up with have always proved to be...
Uniting Spirituality And Leadership For The Sake Of Employee Engagement
“The word spiritual, not the word religious, is the key.” Clarence Clemons One of my son’s closest friends started following me on Twitter recently, and after reading my tweets for a couple of weeks, sent along an e-mail summarizing his initial observations: “Your dad is like a Twitter God. ...
How Developing Self-Awareness Will Make You A Fabulous Leader
“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Carl Jung I recently learned that the leadership-training curriculum at Google places a heavy emphasis on self-awareness building. The thinking, of course, is that managers can...
The Unintended Consequences Of A Leader’s Lack Of Trust
"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." Peter Drucker As many of you know, I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Jim Goodnight, CEO of the analytics software giant, SAS Institute. I spent a day at the company’s North Carolina...
The Profound Lesson Cows Can Teach Us About Leading People
After working out this morning at my gym, I walked into the locker room and overheard one of my friends, Joe, tell another exerciser that he’d grown up on a dairy farm. Instinctively recalling a New York Times article that reported, “Cows, when given names, produce six percent more milk,” I inserted myself into the conversation and asked Joe if...
Ken Blanchard: A Premier Leadership Mind Turns To The Heart
On a crisp and sunny afternoon at his cabin on Skaneateles Lake in upstate New York, internationally-renown business leadership expert, Ken Blanchard, surprises me by taking frequent and sudden breaks in the midst of the interview we’ve just begun. He affectionately acknowledges his grandkids who randomly pop their heads into the room, patiently...
Giving Real Meaning To Your Thanksgiving
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” Thornton Wilder A Note To Readers: When you reach the end of this blog, I will have an assignment for you. Now, while I believe the task I’ll be doling out will give you indescribable joy and satisfaction that may last...
Five Powerful And Purposeful Questions To Ask In Every Job Interview
“Everyone has been made for some particular work and the desire for that work has been put in every heart." Rumi, 13th Century When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every...
Great Leaders Decide With Their Guts, Not Just Their Brains
"Dig up all the information you can, then go with your instincts. We all have a certain intuition, and the older we get, the more we trust it… I use my intellect to inform my instinct. Then I use my instinct to test all this data. ‘Hey, instinct, does this sound right? Does it smell right, feel right, fit right? ...
Seize Opportunities To Demonstrate You Care
A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. While all on it’s own the experience was the most terrifying of my life, the people who were supposed to care about me really didn’t. Doctors, no less, made the circumstances far worse than they needed to be, and ignored how their indifference could have a rippling and discomforting effect on...
The Greatest Obstacle To Leadership Greatness
“It is the nature of the ego to take, and the nature of the spirit to share.” Proverbs What's the biggest obstacle that gets in the way of people and prevents them from becoming truly effective leaders? Ken Blanchard, leadership guru and prolific author, is certain the answer is "ego." ...
Are You Prepared To Lead When Disaster Comes?
“It’s not how well you perform in your summers that will define your success in life, it’s how well you do in your winters.” Jim Roan Around 9:00 P.M. on Labor Day night, I headed back to my bedroom with a plan of doing a little reading before going to bed. As I walked down the long hall, I...
Be Direct In Your Communications And Excel As A Leader
"There is no wisdom like frankness." Benjamin Disraeli As an English literature major in college, my professors routinely asked me to write several-pages-long analyses of books they earlier had assigned me to read. The goal of these assignments, of course, was to discover whether I fully understood the material and could...
Four Great Examples Of How Starbuck’s Howard Schultz Leads From The Heart
“Some people say, ‘Come on, markets are not about morals, they’re about profits.” I say that is old thinking. That’s a false choice. The great companies will be the ones that find a way to have and hold on to their values while chasing profits, and brand value will converge to create a new business model that unites commerce and compassion. ...
Help Another To The Top Of The Mountain And You Arrive There Too.
"When you have a wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs." Criss Jami Very recently, I learned that content from my book had been plagiarized. In a blog ironically titled, Lead From The Heart, a well-known leadership consultant in the Twittersphere – someone with a very...
The Surprising Secret To Making Successful Organizational Change
Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have. Margaret Mead “The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.” Blaise Paschal The clock already has begun...
When Stephen Covey Made Me Really Mad: My Posthumous Apology
Stephen Covey made me really mad twenty years ago and it’s only recently that I’ve come to realize that he was right, I was wrong, and I owe him an apology. Covey, of course, passed away a few days ago, and so I clearly missed the opportunity to express my mea culpas while he still was alive. The good news is he never knew I was upset; I never...
Drill Sergeants With Heart? How The Military Is Reinventing Its Leadership For The 21st Century
If I asked you to conjure up an image of an Army (or Navy, Marine Corp, etc.) Drill Sergeant, I’m almost certain what you conceived would match up pretty closely to the photograph on the right. For generations, Drill Sergeants have been characterized by the intensity of their yelling, screaming, and fear inducing barking of orders. Quick to both...
The Wonderous Effects Of Encouragement And Five Great Ways To Give It
“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” Ralph Waldo Emerson Can you remember the last time a friend, colleague or a boss gave you an encouraging word – some intentionally thoughtful expression that directly conveyed another person sincerely believed in you...
How 100 Super-Creative People Are About To Change Life As We Know It
“Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” William James Fast Company Magazine recently published its annual list of the “100 Most Creative People In Business,” an assemblage of truly remarkable and inspiring human beings. Honestly, it took me several hours to read...
The Great Rewards From Being An Empathetic Leader
"If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird Empathy, the capacity to recognize feelings being experienced...
3 Reasons Why We Care So Much About A Bullied Bus Monitor And Why It Matters To Leaders Everywhere
Note: This blog also was published by FastCompany.com on June 26, 2012. http://bit.ly/MQkfrS “Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.” Fyodor Dostoevsky Karen Klein, a 68-year-old school bus monitor, was verbally abused and bullied by a group of seventh-grade...
Why Caring Leaders Will Be Talent Magnets In A Revived Economy
Some day people will ask me what is the key to my success...and I will simply say, “good karma." K. Krumley Just as I was about to get into my car this morning, and to head out to an important meeting, I noticed a big blister bubble on the outside of my front tire. Without needing a...
Have Workers Become Bored, Or Disheartened?
"The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom." Arthur Schopenhauer Last week, Forbes Magazine published an article titled, “Bored In The Office: Is It The New Productivity Killer?” Honestly, when I first saw this headline I thought to myself, “Man, we really do have big problems in leadership if we’re now...
How To Win Your Boss’s Admiration, Right After A Blown Assignment
There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart. Saint Augustine A good friend of mine, Colin, recently participated in a workshop facilitated by an outside consultant. The impromptu session was scheduled with great urgency. Colin’s firm suddenly lost several big accounts and was concerned...
I’ll Be Loyal Boss, But You Go First
“Employee relationships with organizations are getting weaker which is why some people believe that company loyalty is dead." Matthew Bidwell Wharton Management Professor I believe we’ve reached a clear inflection point in American business. Recent research from various sources puts us on warning that organizations have lost the strong bonds...
Why We Lie On Our Résumés
"Yahoo hired him for what he’s done in the past five, ten years. It doesn’t really matter for someone at this point in his career what he did at twenty-two. He may have felt at some point in his career that he needed an extra something — and then he couldn’t get rid of it." ~John Challenger CEO, Challenger, Gray And Christmas Just a few days...
A Leadership Lesson From Howard Stern. Yes, that Howard Stern
“Not every contestant can be wonderful.” “You’ve got to be up front with people.” Howard Stern Until now, I’d never imagined writing a blog about radio’s shock jock, Howard Stern; nor did I ever expect we all might learn an important leadership lesson from him. But Stern’s recent behavior while...
7 Books That Will Change Your Life And Leadership
Since the publication of my book, Lead From The Heart, last fall, I have written 49 blog posts. This therefore, is number 50. Since that number represents something special to me, I’ve been noodling over what would be a compelling topic for this milestone. In the spirit of wanting to help you become even more exceptional as leaders, I’ve...
The Sharp Drop-Off In Worker Happiness — And What Your Company Can Do About It
Note: This article was first published by Fast Company Magazine on April 30th, 2012. It was the most read story on their website for the next entire week. http://bit.ly/I8j98C A friend of mine resigned his long-time bank management job this week to take early retirement. I learned about it on Facebook. As I began reading his announcement, I...
Four Magnificent Leadership Practices Of The Dalai Lama
His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, spoke at my alma mater, the University of California, San Diego last week, and it was an honor and great privilege for me to attend. Noting that the Dalai Lama is one of our world’s most influential leaders (albeit spiritual and not in business), I paid particular attention to his word choice, the beliefs he...
We Scale Mountains For Generous Leaders
“For it is in giving that we receive." St. Francis of Assisi Since my book was published last fall, a lot of people have done some incredibly kind and thoughtful things to help me. What’s intriguing about this support is that it hasn’t only come from my friends and former colleagues. Via Twitter, people...
21st Century Leadership Advice From The Amish
“Better to be pruned to grow then cut up to burn." John Trapp Following their harvest of apples and pears every year, Amish farmers take on the chore of pruning all the orchards. The Amish long ago discovered that trimming limbs, and removing the dead wood, has a powerful and...
Your Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what's is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery Many years ago, I spent the day with the CEO of the bank where I worked, and asked him to give me his best piece of leadership advice. His response came quickly. “When it...
Act Swiftly On Performance Problems
Procrastination is the enemy of the leader.... When I was ten-years-old, I became a paperboy. Six days a week – all year long – my responsibility was to get people their papers at the same general time each day and, once a week, to knock on doors and collect my pay. Here’s a quick story of one experience I had along my route that taught me an...
These Days, We’re All Disgruntled Workers
The average Goldman Sachs employee earns in excess of $350,000 per year, and we're assured Greg Smith, who most visibly quit his job there last week, was paid substantially more. And, in leaving his long-time employer, Smith didn’t abandon just a fat salary. To regain his career freedom, he knowingly forfeited a considerable sum in deferred...
Why Leaders Owe Greg Smith A Debt Of Gratitude
There is something in the pang of change. More than the heart can bear, Unhappiness remembering happiness. Euripides Just one day after Goldman Sachs’ employee, Greg Smith, quit his job last week, more than three million people had read his über-public resignation letter published as an editorial in the New York Times. In light of the financial...
Digital Pats On The Back Can’t Replace Authentic Recognition
A recent CNN Money article titled, “A digital pat on the back from the boss: What’s it worth? “ is a great reminder that organizations across America continue to lead from their heads without fully consulting their hearts. Let’s start with the problem business is trying to solve: A year-end 2011 study conducted by employment agency, Randstad...
Employees Know Your Leadership Shortcomings
Whenever I’m speaking to a large business group, I ask everyone to play a made-up game we call, “We Know That Boss!” In my most exaggerated game-show announcer voice, (think Family Feud) I call out a few characteristics of a particularly onerous manager, and then quiz the audience to see if they ‘ve ever worked for someone like that (and,...
Aim High!
“High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.” American inventor, Charles F. Kettering Occasionally when I’m writing my blog posts, I feel compelled to re-state what may not always be obvious: the idea of Leading From The Heart is anything but a touchy-feely leadership approach. Instead, the premise is this: If...
To Give Is To Get
A leadership development consultant my company hired several years back had an interesting theory. It was her contention that people who hold similar or identical positions tend to be the best judges of our strengths and weaknesses. She explained that as humans, we’re naturally inclined to attune our behavior with those whom we observe to be more...
The Greatest Recognition I’ve Ever Received
Early in my career, I was asked to conduct a pilot. A consultant recommended that my bank experiment with outbound telemarketing and I was selected to lead the effort. Neither the bank nor I had any experience in selling bank products by phone and management was skeptical that we could make a venture like this profitable. Consequently, I was...
Effectively Responding To Problems Strengthens You As A Leader
My father set an insane example for how to effectively respond to problems in life. For starters, he had no scale. Every setback, minor or major, instantly upended him. He became visibly and vocally upset whenever he hit a bad golf shot, needed a pair of pliers and couldn’t find them, or when I came home with less than stellar grades. The...
The Incredible Effects Of Your Handshake
"Touch seems to be as essential as sunshine." Author, Diane Ackerman If I died tomorrow and could leave society my most valuable insight into 21st Century leadership effectiveness it would have to be this: Always remember the people you manage are first and foremost human beings. The big winners in this new era will be leaders who create a...
Right Before You Act, Ask Your Heart
Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, is a genius in our midst. At seventy-eight-years-old, Kahneman has spent the majority of his life studying how the human mind makes decisions, especially their most important ones. Leveraging a life’s work of research, in his new book, Thinking Fast And Slow, Kahneman concludes that, all...
Thoughtfulness Is Long Remembered
On the day I finished writing my book, Lead From The Heart, I excitedly told some friends that my two-year project was complete. The first few people I informed were wildly jubilant and reinforced my own belief that I could now enjoy a few victory laps while I waited for the book to be published. But a person in the know – someone who’d already...
The Right Mindset For Leadership Excellence
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”. Albert Einstein “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” Albert Einstein Have you ever...
Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies To Work For: It’s Not About The Perks!
Here’s the scenario: You’ve just picked up the latest Fortune Magazine – the one which features it’s annual listing of America’s “100 Best Company’s To Work For.” As you review the list, you’re not too terribly surprised to see that Google now ranks number one and that firms heralded in past years (e.g. SAS, Wegman’s Foods and Boston Consulting)...
What The Golden Globes Teaches Us About Employee Recognition
After watching the Golden Globes on TV last Sunday, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. Apparently, my subconscious believed the show should be the subject of a blog post and found a way of jostling me into alertness. Always one to listen to my inner voice, I came to realize in the daylight that the Hollywood Foreign Press...
What Makes Every Human Happiest
For an entire year, Gretchen Rubin devoted her life to the study of personal happiness. She picked twelve important areas of human existence (such as marriage, work, parenting) and, one-month-at-a-time, committed herself to increasing her happiness in each of them. Throughout the process, Rubin spent time “test driving” all of the world’s wisdom...
Give Your People A Little Love
Here’s a quick story my son, Ryan, once told me about how our words and gestures can have a really destructive or constructive effect on the people we lead. As a young manager of a high-end art gallery following college, Ryan found himself way behind schedule in getting all the pieces of a new exhibit hung. He was just a few days away from an...
Be Transparent On What Performance You’ll Recognize
I may have been one of the last leaders in America to have this particular insight, but it finally dawned on me that a lot of the people on my team were working extremely hard – and achieving remarkable things – all in expectation of later receiving recognition. My epiphany: When I took time to formally acknowledge and thank my employees for...
Build A Resource Of Great Ideas
When I’m choosing the next book to read, I typically gravitate to non-fiction. I’m super motivated to learn new information and always am excited when I come across insights that can improve my life in some way. My problem has never been in finding enough wonderful material to read. My problem is recalling the really great ideas soon after I...
Handwritten Notes Drive Uncommon Performance
On my most recent birthday, I got a call from a former employee, Lucas. Now a very successful bank manager, Lucas was a brand-new teller when I first met him fifteen years ago in my role as Regional Manager. After being seriously injured in a helicopter crash, he’d been forced to leave the Marine Corps to find an entirely new career. With no...
Four Things Leaders Must Do In January To Ensure A Hugely Successful Year
"The beginning is the most important part of the work." ~ Plato Leaders beware: the first week of January is a tough time for a lot of people at work. Your employees are returning to their jobs with fond memories of vacations and holiday celebrations lingering in their minds, and the thought of starting over against new goals and objectives is...
Acknowledge Effort If You Want To Inspire Persistence
This post is my apology to a former and great employee of mine whom I now realize I led very poorly – all the while she worked feverishly to complete an important project for me. What makes me feel especially guilty about all this is that this employee, Kimberly, at one point really loved working for me. She routinely called me “MWB,” an...
Lead With Care And Never With Fear
When I interviewed Dr. Mimi Guarneri for Lead From The Heart, I asked if there were physiological reasons for why people who felt more cared for in the workplace were more productive. She responded without hesitation. “There are only two human emotions, love and fear,” she told me. “Ultimately, you want your default mechanism to be love. But...
People Don’t Sue Doctors They Like
In his entertaining and insightful book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell reinforces an idea I presented in Lead From The Heart: How people are made to feel has an enormous effect on their future behavior – especially when a leader makes an inevitable mistake. To illustrate the point, Gladwell tells us that the risk of a doctor ever being sued has very...
Too Much Heart In Leadership Will Backfire
Each week in these posts, I present examples of how leading from the heart has the effect of inspiring extraordinary engagement and productivity. It’s my fundamental belief, of course, that leadership fails when it’s over-influenced by the mind and the heart is not consulted. This week, I’d like to offer some perspective. Just as leadership...
Tough On The Outside But Human On The Inside
In my most recent professional role, I was in charge of nationwide sales leadership for nearly 1,000 stock brokers – aka investment product sales representatives. Prior to this position, I spent a large part of my career managing in Washington Mutual’s retail bank and with people whose natures were generally quite cooperative and accommodating....
My Tribute To Jim Rohn
One day just a few weeks ago, I woke up thinking about Jim Rohn, a person I heard speak at a company conference in 1987. That Mr. Rohn popped into my consciousness just as I was waking wasn’t entirely surprising to me. Information he shared in his presentation nearly 25 years ago had a profound and lasting effect on my life, and I still speak of...
Lead From The Heart? Duh!
During the time I was writing Lead From The Heart, I was invited to play in a charity golf tournament with some of my former work colleagues. Our pairings were pre-assigned and I ended up riding in a golf cart with Jed – an often prickly fellow who once worked for me. After we’d played a few holes, Jed seemed genuinely interested in hearing what...
One Leader Who Got It Right In His Moment Of Truth
We learned not long ago that a dear family friend, Rachel, had taken her own life. The news, as you might imagine, was immediately shocking and devastating to all who knew and loved her – a married woman who’d devoted much of her life to raising her son and daughter and seeing them both graduate from college. What struck me over the subsequent...
The Profound And Enduring Power Of Encouragement
During the eulogy he gave for his father, Senator Ted Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy, Jr. recalled a day shortly after losing a leg to cancer when his dad invited him to go sledding on their steep, snow-covered driveway. Following his first reluctant ride down the slope, young Teddy slipped and fell as he attempted to walk back up the icy road....
Join My Tribe! (And Reasons Why I Have A Tribe If You Already Joined).
I tend to have a metaphysical attitude about the books I read – I believe they’re put in front of me just when I need their specific information in my life. Whether you agree or disagree that the universe conspires to help you this way, I recently came across a book that reinforces my conviction. When I’d finished writing, Lead From The Heart, I...
Leadership Insight From Science: The Heart Holds Great Sway
“Keep the heart out of leadership” is one of the most enduring axioms in business. Without a challenge or a doubt, most of us have accepted on face value the belief that it’s best not to connect personally with people who work for us, to demonstrate care for them in any way or to influence them with anything other than our brains and their...
Re-engage Your Team Before Anyone Leaves
It came as a shock to me one day when one of my best employees, Sarah, came in to my office and resigned. I guess it was such a surprise because she had worked for me for nearly five years and I had relaxed into a belief that she would somehow always be on my team. Stupid me. Like any bad outcome, we learn from experiences like this. I remained...
Undercover Bosses All Have The Same Epiphany
If you’re a leader and you haven’t yet tuned in to watch Undercover Boss, I highly recommend you make it a staple. Just in case you’ve been living in a cave over the past two years, Undercover Boss – shown Sunday nights on CBS – features a CEO or high ranking executive from a well known American company who’s disguised, given an alias, and sent...
Your Best Boss Ever?
I’d like for you to think back on all the bosses you’ve had in your life and identify which one of them was the best ever. Once you have that person in mind, take a look at these two lists of attributes and see if one isn’t more descriptive: Leader A Inspiring Appreciative Natural Candid Constructive Generous Requesting Sharing Valuing...
Man Up!
I had coffee with an old friend this week and, by the end of our conversation, I had the content for this week’s post. My friend, Kelsey, was a human resources manager when I first met her 30 years ago. Sitting across from her in her office one afternoon, I endured the most grueling and stressful interview of my life. Gratefully, things worked...
How Washington Mutual Lost Its Heart
Note: This blog post was first published in the Editorial section of The Seattle Times on Sunday, September 25th, 2010 In a stunning coincidence, today marks the 122nd anniversary of Washington Mutual’s founding – and the third anniversary of its demise. WaMu survived the Great Depression and a crisis that wiped out a quarter of all US thrifts in...
More Control Is The Antidote To Workplace Stress
For over forty years, Sir Michael Marmot, professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College in London, has been monitoring the health of 28,000 workers – people who all work at “Whitehall,” the citadel of Great Britain’s civil service. Seeking to determine if professional rank influences workplace stress, Marmot found Whitehall...
Unite As A Team – And Win!
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned about leadership is how amazingly well employees perform when they’re united as a team and committed to a shared mission. Several years ago, I was leading a region of 30 bank branches that had been consistently high achieving. Month in and month out, we ranked in the top 10% of the 85 nationwide regions –...
Display Equanimity (And Never Lick Anyone’s Sandwich) When Others Succeed.
I have a twin brother and, as ten-year-old kids, we made a firm agreement: whoever made it into the TV room first got to pick which shows we watched. More often than not, we enjoyed a lot of the same programs – Superman, the Three Stooges and Bugs Bunny cartoons. But there still were times when my getting into the den second meant I was stuck...
Distilled Wisdom From America’s Chief Executives
Have you ever wondered whether American CEOs share similar leadership traits – whether there’s a short list of qualities which propelled all of their careers? New York Times writer, Adam Bryant, did, and interviewed more than 70 top leaders in order to find out. In his new book, “The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons From CEOs...
Unconditional Acceptance Of Ourselves Makes Us Better Leaders
While I’ve only worked for a handful of truly inspiring leaders in my life, what this small group all shared was a deep belief in themselves and their abilities. They were extremely comfortable in their own skins and embodied a form of self confidence that repelled any and all fear of others succeeding at their expense. As I think back on these...
Just Because You Work For A Jerk Doesn’t Mean You Have To Manage Like One!
There have been lots of reports lately suggesting that many people believe they work for a really bad boss. Whether or not that’s true for you today, it’s quite likely that you’ve worked for someone during your career who displayed abominable leadership skills and made your life unnecessarily miserable. So, think of your worst boss ever and see...
Support The Deeply Human Needs In Everyone You Lead
In order to become a truly magnificent leader – and to consistently lead with and from your heart – it’s crucial you never forget that the employees you manage and supervise are human beings. Something so obvious tends to easily get lost in the workplace – otherwise I wouldn’t be making a point of emphasizing it. Even more important to remember...