Posts by Jennifer Eggers
Can Resilience Be Learned?
Today’s landscape is one of unprecedented, rapid, disruptive change. With little margin for error, leaders and teams are expected to adapt to change and react to setbacks quickly. In our experience, the only way to tackle these challenges and come back stronger is by building resilience yet very few people are actively preparing to do…
Read MoreHow To Stop Coping and Start Building Resilience At Work
Defining Resilience Chances are when discussing the topic of resilience you have heard various definitions that paint a picture of “bouncing back” from stress, crisis, setbacks, etc. To test this concept, I tried bouncing a ball and realized something significant: After it hit the ground it rarely came back higher than where it had started.…
Read More3 Simple Steps to Increase Team Resilience
“An organization without purpose manages human resources, whereas an organization with purpose mobilizes people.” – Juan Carlos Eichholz Resilience Starts With Alignment Any healthy organization is formed with a specific purpose in mind. That purpose is usually defined by the organizational mission, vision, and values. However, over time an organization’s purpose can get clouded by…
Read MoreUsing Corporate Politics To Drive Change
Change Starts With Alignment The need to have people on the same page is huge when implementing a major change. This is particularly true when the change involves thinking differently to solve a problem that can’t be solved by doing things better, faster, or cheaper. Enabling leaders to get people aligned is always necessary, but…
Read MoreHow To Choose Resilience
Resilience Begins With A Choice How many times have you made a choice that did not result in the outcome you intended? Did you even know you were making a choice? Often we unconsciously choose the path of least resistance. We default to what is comfortable and requires the least amount of change. Improving our…
Read MoreHow To Kill Your Team’s Resilience
Guilt & Resentment Are you tired of corporate politics and drama? Some of us are better or more strategic in dealing with it and some organizations are more ‘political’ than others, but it’s not uncommon for there to be an unspoken or hidden layer of politics just close enough to the surface to keep us…
Read More8 Signs You Need A New Organizational Structure
When To Rethink Your Organizational Structure “Is it time for a new organizational structure?” This question does not always have an obvious answer. Organizational restructuring, by definition, can be disruptive, even when handled as smoothly as possible, and even with the best of intentions. There is always a risk that the new structure will bring…
Read MoreAuthenticity: Fuel For Resilience
“Authentic leadership is revealed in the alignment of what you think, what you say, and what you do.” – Michael Holland Resilience Takes Authenticity When life is hard or any sort of disruption hits, we have a finite amount of energy with which to deal with it. Think of this as a gas tank in…
Read MoreCorporate Restructuring That Drives Strategy
Corporate Restructuring That Works Starting a business, whether a lemonade stand or a consulting firm with a new approach to corporate restructuring, begins with a realization that something is missing in the market. Often, an entrepreneur feels so strongly about the missing piece that they are willing to drive a stake in the ground. A stake…
Read MoreThe Key To Building Adaptive Leadership
The Case For Adaptive Leadership Do the challenges you face today seem more complex than they did, say, five years ago? Does it seem like they involve more people or that it takes more involvement from stakeholders to build a solution that works? Is it starting to feel like managing stakeholders is as complex as…
Read More3 Qualities of Resilient People
Why Resilience? Most athletes spend about 90% of their time training to be able to perform at peak levels 10% of the time. For example, professional football players train six days a week to play one game on Sunday. Business leaders are a different story. They are expected to perform 90% of the time with…
Read MoreIt’s Time To Think Differently
Adaptive Challenges Have you ever wondered why things are a bit more difficult at work recently? Do the types of challenges your team faces every day somehow just seem harder and more complex? Ever feel like it’s taking longer to get things done because you just can’t get people’s attention on the real issue? Well,…
Read MoreRedefine Your Comfort Zone For Breakthrough Results
“Before anything great is really achieved, your comfort zone must be disturbed.” – Ray Lewis Comfort Zones Have you ever struggled to get out of your comfort zone? At one point or another, we are all acutely aware of our comfort zone – usually when we’re bumping up against it head first. We know we…
Read More4 Qualities of Aligned Organizations
“The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, making a system’s weaknesses irrelevant.” – Peter Drucker Imagine a company where everyone – from the CEO to the newest intern – shows up knowing EXACTLY what they need to do every single day, even on those days where plans fail and…
Read MoreHow Personal Fulfillment Drives Business Strategy
“Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” – Anne Sweeney The Path To Fulfillment If you plan to take a long journey, you need a compass or a map (or at least a GPS). The journey from overweight to healthy and fit…
Read MorePurpose: The Key To Better Decision Making
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” – John F. Kennedy Your Purpose As an avid outdoor kid, one of the first things I remember asking for at Christmas was a good multi-purpose tool. Back then it was a Swiss Army knife called the Huntsman. It had two knives, a little saw,…
Read MoreHow Your Comfort Zone Is Holding Your Organization Hostage
“A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” -William Shedd Our comfort zones are protective boundaries we construct over time. Most of our boundaries were imposed long ago for self-protection and have become coping strategies. We all use the coping strategies we have personally designed to keep us…
Read MoreAuthenticity: The Catalyst To Building Resilience
“Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you’re supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a mask on to please those around you.” – Dr. Phil Authenticity Can’t Be Copied Everyone likes…
Read MoreThe Secret To Choosing Resilience
“In the power to change yourself lies the power to change the world around you.” -Anwar Sadat Choices & Resilience How many times have you made a choice that did not result in the outcome you intended? Our choices define us. Improving our ability to make tough choices in the moment shapes our ability to be…
Read MoreFilters: Your First Step Toward Resilience
Resilience. It is the single most important characteristic of leaders today and almost no one is talking about it. We are. The journey to becoming a resilient person or organization begins with our window to the world, the way we see, sift through and interpret events, and our ability to extract meaning from it. We…
Read More#1 Leadership Skill Most Teams Miss
Resilience Isn’t About Bouncing Back Today’s landscape is one of unprecedented, rapid, disruptive change. With little margin for error, leaders are expected to adapt to change and react to setbacks quickly. Unfortunately, the skills required to tackle these challenges, process quickly, and come back stronger require thinking differently in ways that are rarely mentioned in…
Read MoreThe Shocking Truth About Binders
I want to tell you about a pet peeve of mine…binders. For me, this realization struck hard before LeaderShift® was a twinkle of a business plan and carried through most of the executive roles I played throughout my career. Maybe you’ve been there. For me, it started at the mercy of those shiny tie consultants.…
Read MoreThe Single Most Important Characteristic of Leaders
I recently had the honor of closing Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business’s Executive MBA Alumni Summit. I realized that the audience would be full of people with enough leadership potential to have their MBA paid for by a company and enough stick-to-it-iveness to get that work done while juggling high powered jobs, kids, family…
Read More3 Skills Needed for Adaptive Leadership
Traditional Training Doesn’t Produce Adaptive Leadership Skills People are constantly facing business issues they have never seen before, and they are coming at an increasing rate. Too often employees feel like running on a treadmill, going nowhere fast. The harder they run, the more worn out they become and have no progress to show for…
Read More#1 Way to Lead A Successful Digital Transformation
Are you struggling to keep your business organized while transitioning to a more digital experience? Is it becoming less obvious who owns what…and why? Are silos in your organization structure getting in the way as the shift to increasing automation accelerates? More and more, organizations are realizing that as they become more digital, their structures…
Read MoreIs Work Keeping You Up at Night?
Are ‘What Ifs’ Keeping You Up At Night? Do you ever wake up late at night in a cold sweat wondering if all the hard work you are doing to execute your strategy is really going to make a difference? Sure, your strategy is sound, after all experts helped pull it together, but what if…
Read More5 Tipping Points Where Mergers Fail
One Too Many Mergers? Strong economies bring growth which inherently brings change. To achieve growth, there has been a significant increase in mergers and acquisitions over the last several years. While mergers and acquisitions clearly grow organizations, there are unintended consequences that can limit and, in some cases, undermine growth. Leaders seeking growth acquire organizations…
Read More4 Steps To Tackle Relentless Change
Is Your Organization Staring Down Relentless Change? Organizational change. It’s real. It’s big. And it’s flying towards you like a 10-ton meteor you have no hope of stopping. The kind of change that causes you to question the work you do as you know it, your relationship with co-workers, and what you need to deliver.…
Read MoreBlasting Personal Agendas
The Number 1 Way to Blast Personal Agendas Have you been in a meeting when personal agendas take over? Usually, everyone politely ignores Fred, the VP who’s gunning to expand his empire a bit further, all while hoping someone ‘above’ will reign him in. It’s hard not to think of the good Fred would do,…
Read MoreWhat I Learned at Harvard About Leadership
I expected ego. I expected challenge. I thought I had a target on my head. And I was wrong. This year, for the first time, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government permitted a small percentage of non-Harvard scholars to participate in Ron Heifetz’s Adaptive Leadership Network. It was humbling to be included, and when the…
Read MoreAdaptive Leadership That Doesn’t Adapt
The Case for Resilience in Organizations There is a lot of talk about building adaptive leadership to thrive in the face of rapid disruptive change. Sometimes this has to do with merely adapting to a lot of change and sometimes it is a full blown effort to find ways of thriving while facing down the…
Read MoreThe Secret of Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive Leadership: The Antidote to VUCA VUCA. The acronym that reminds us we live and work in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world. As if we needed reminding. I don’t think we have one client that isn’t trying to compensate for the pace of rapid, disruptive change, whether it be through restructuring, prioritization, building…
Read MoreThe Bully in the Boardroom
Is There a Bully in Your Boardroom? If you’ve been in corporate America very long, you have probably met a bully in the boardroom. They exist at every level and it is surprising how many actually get to the boardroom. Often it’s narcissists who believe it’s their duty to rule the world. For example, the…
Read MoreAdaptive Leadership: Leading Without a Map
Adaptive Leadership Do leaders really know where they’re going? In today’s ever-changing business environment, even the most seasoned leaders cannot always anticipate the waves of rapid, disruptive change that seem to crash at every turn. Of course, there are still stable industries, but even the stodgiest of those are working to be more innovative. Why?…
Read More4 Tricks: Asking Questions To Drive Strategy
Do Your Questions Drive Strategy? Becoming a “strategic partner” has become a bit of a cliché. It’s a tired phrase that is often ill defined and confusing, particularly to people so focused on the day-to-day, transactional work of getting things done. It’s easy to ask the right questions when we know the content; however, it can…
Read MoreBeat Up from Restructuring? The Antidote to the Aftermath
Have you ever seen a corporate restructuring where the dots didn’t connect? After all the angst that comes with organization design, have you ever felt like there was: Work that wasn’t missed until it went undone? Hand-offs between processes that don’t go smoothly? Critical decisions no one was empowered to make? Uncertainty around who was doing (or…
Read MoreGetting Real: Your Glass Is Not Half Full or Half Empty
Life is hard. That is the line I use to start talking about the model I built to help leaders develop resilience. It is always fun when the ‘rah rah’ people are sitting in the front because they tend to shake their heads and get annoyed until finally one will raise their hand and tell…
Read MoreThe Shocking Truth About Faith In The Workplace
Uh oh. The topic everyone avoids in the work place. I did too until I realized how important it is to great leadership. Leadership is hard. It is lonely at the top and anyone who leads others gets stuck in difficult situations from time to time. It’s what leaders sign up for when they step…
Read MoreResilience: It’s Not About Bouncing Back
When you ask the question, what is resilience, the first and most common thing people usually say is, bouncing back. Or maybe, bouncing back from adversity. It seems to be the common understanding. It is also one I would dispute. Have you ever watched a ball bounce? Let’s just say you stand on a tall…
Read MorePart Two: How To Avoid Humor That Hurts (And What To Do Instead)
If you read my last article, you heard about the C-Level leaders I’ve observed recently who used bad humor as a vain attempt to connect with their audience. Sadly, this is, more common than one might think. As ineffective and toxic as this approach is though, there is a reason people use it. These guys…
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