Forget DEI As We Know It

Want to make a relevant DEI Statement? Are you tired of struggling with what to say about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues? Do you care about the environment, social justice, and the good of the world, but don’t want to dive headfirst into a political debacle? What do you say about racial equality now…

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What the RIGHT Coach Can Do For You – Part 3

What The Right Coach Can Do For You

It is not uncommon for me to hear the question “How can an executive coach really help someone at a senior level?” A good executive coach can help individuals (and organizations) navigate complex situations, demonstrate visible leadership, and advance business outcomes.  However, the key to getting the most out of an executive coach is to…

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What the RIGHT Coach Can Do For You – Part 2

What The Right Coach Can Do For You

In my 30 years of coaching c-level executives, I am frequently asked how an executive coach can really help someone at a senior level. I get it. Once you have reached this level, you’re expected to know what you’re doing and be pretty good at it. Often, these leaders are confident and don’t spend a…

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What the RIGHT Coach Can Do For You – Part 1

What The Right Coach Can Do For You

I’ve been coaching c-level executives and Presidents of business units and functions at Fortune 500 companies for nearly 30 years, and I still get questions about how an executive coach can really help someone at a senior level. I’d like to provide examples of real-life client situations I’ve worked on recently. But first, I must…

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Thriving in the Storm: Why Senior Corporate Leaders Need Executive Advisors During Economic Downturns

As the world economy continues to provide a test of resilience and adaptability for businesses, senior corporate leaders find themselves under immense pressure to navigate their organizations through turbulent times. These times demand foresight, strategic thinking, and the ability to make tough decisions. An executive advisor can offer invaluable support in steering the organization through…

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How to Ask for an Executive Coach

How To Ask For An Executive Coach

Are you taking on a stretch assignment? Responsible for delivering breakthrough results? Are you being asked to deliver a project where the stakes are high and the risk of failure is great? Perhaps it’s a new product, a new business, a turn-around or a merger integration… or maybe it’s just a really important project or…

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Starting Off Right Leading a New Team

Starting Off Right With a New Team

  Have you landed the big promotion? Taken on a new role? Changed companies, or just taken over a new area in your company? If you have, chances are, you’ll want to make a great impression on your new team and demonstrate visible leadership to them and to your leadership. Taking over a new team…

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Even Great Leaders Need A Coach

Even Great Leaders Need A Coach

You think you’re a pretty good senior leader. Your people seem to like you (at least they say they do). Results and performance reviews are good, and you receive the occasional accolade. Maybe you’ve even had a recent promotion or two and there isn’t a lot of negative feedback. Why would you hire (or ask…

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Why Every Senior Leader Needs a Networking Plan

Why Every Senior Leader Needs a Networking Plan

Do you actively spend time focusing on your network? Do you have relationships in place to get things done at every level? Is the thought of adding networking to your already full plate a bit overwhelming? For many of us, networking is one more pain in the xxx to think about while we’re busy doing…

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Two Secrets To Success At The C-Level

Secret to succeed

Congratulations. You’ve got a seat at the proverbial table! Whether you’ve got a c-level title or not, your seat on the leadership team gives you quite a bit of influence as well as a lot of responsibility to balance.  I’ve been coaching and consulting with C-Level leaders for nearly 30 years and have seen two…

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How To Get Promoted Sooner

How To Get Promoted

It’s a tough competition for roles at the top. In nearly 30 years of coaching and consulting with the c-level and those who want to get there, I’ve seen more than a few interesting tactics for climbing the corporate ladder. Some work. Some make people angry and destroy trust. And some have an element of…

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9 Questions to Ask Before Hiring A Coach

9 Questions to Ask An Executive Coach

Are you integrating into a new executive role? Are you an executive looking to bring in a coach to help you get to the next level? Are you an HR business partner who wants to be absolutely sure their next big hire hits the ground running and is a great culture fit? An executive coach…

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How To Choose A Virtual Meeting Facilitator

Are you planning a leadership team meeting early this year to get everyone aligned? Are you disappointed that it will likely not be in person or that some folks won’t be able to travel to join you? Have you thought about who will be the best virtual facilitator? Or have you given up because this…

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Top 4 Executive Onboarding Mistakes

Onboarding Mistakes To Avoid

If you are starting a new executive role or onboarding executives into roles where it is important that they hit the ground running and contribute quickly, there are a few things you should know. Data shows that rigorous executive onboarding programs can reduce time to full productivity by 40% and improve new hire retention by…

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Secrets To Building The Bedrock Of Resilience

A Foundation For Resilience This is the Spit Bank Lighthouse. It doesn’t look like much, but this structure has stood in the middle of Ireland’s Cork Harbour since 1853 and there is an awful lot we can learn from it as we recover from a pandemic. In 1833, the lighthouse was but a dream in…

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COVID-19 Proves Resilience Is Not About Bouncing Back

This season of uncertain times with no clear end in sight has reinforced my belief that resilience is the single most important character of a leader. Now more than ever, we all need resilience. As we drift farther and farther from what we knew as normal, it seems increasingly unlikely that whatever ‘normal’ was, will…

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How To Build Resilience In The Midst Of Disruption

There’s no question, for most of us, these have been some tough weeks. For some, the impact has been minimal. Maybe you’re adjusting to working from home and dealing with the challenge of moving meetings around and trying to do things virtually. For others, the stress of quarantine, impacts on family members, and economic hits…

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5 Strategies to Build Resilience While Leading Virtually

Leading Virtually

Leading virtually through disruption is tough. If you’re currently in that situation, there’s no easy way to get through it. It’s even more difficult if people are not on the same page, working in different spaces, dealing with their own family challenges related to the crisis, and you’ve got to ‘herd the cats’ to make…

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How Teams Unconsciously Sabotage Results

Have you ever been driving a car headed towards your new home, having recently moved, only to find yourself suddenly turning down the familiar street towards your old home? How did that happen? I’ll tell you how. You were so busy thinking about something else – your conscious mind was so “off-line” – that your…

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Are You Wasting Time On Competency Models?

Building A Capability Model

Do You Really Need A Competency Model? I’ve had a lot of conversations about competency models and I’ve built a lot of them but frankly, I’m not sure I have seen the value-add. When I asked our clients why they are considering investing the time to build a competency model, here are the responses I…

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Is your team inclusive enough?

Inclusive Culture

Creating An Inclusive Culture We don’t know what is going to happen in the market in the coming years, but we do know this: it will be disruptive. Whatever happens in 2020 with the election, tariffs, and the global economy, there is a good chance it will require extra effort on everyone’s part to adapt.…

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Can Resilience Be Learned?

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…

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How To Stop Coping and Start Building Resilience At Work

Start Building Resilience

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.…

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3 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…

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Using Corporate Politics To Drive Change

Using 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…

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How To Choose Resilience

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…

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How 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…

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