Personal Growth
Have you received feedback that you need to be more succinct? Has your CEO or peers commented on improving your storytelling ability? Does it sometimes feel like people are losing interest when you’re sharing necessary details? Telling a great business “story” is a critical skill in the C-Suite. Being concise…
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Sometimes, we need to slow down and think. It’s in reflection that we begin to make meaning of the things that have come at us so fast that all we can do is either duck or grab hold and deal with what’s coming at us. The last several years have…
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As a senior executive coach, I work with high-performing executives at a variety of companies across many different industries. Admittedly, most are large companies with a few exceptions. One of the most rewarding things about this job is the ability to see patterns and help clients see around “corners” so…
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It is not uncommon for a prospective client to ask, “How can an executive coach really help someone at a senior level?” A good executive coach/advisor can help individuals (and organizations) navigate complex situations, demonstrate visible leadership, and advance business outcomes. However, the key to getting the most out of…
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“Organizational Resilience” Takes Top Billing at Davos One of the most exciting things for me as an advisor to multinationals is comparing patterns I see to the themes at the World Economic Forum. Hearing about issues that CEOs and world leaders are working on gives me a jump on peeking…
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In over 30 years of coaching c-level executives, I am frequently asked if an executive coach/advisor can really help a senior leader. 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…
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I’ve been coaching c-level executives, Business Unit Presidents and Functional Leaders at Fortune 500 companies for over 30 years. I still get questions about how an executive coach/advisor 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…
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As the world economy continues to test the resilience and adaptability for businesses, corporate leaders are under immense pressure to navigate 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 through troubled waters, anticipating…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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Do you have an executive leadership coach? Are you thinking about executive coaching or business advisor services? Do you want to be sure you get your money’s worth from the investment? How will you know it will be a valuable use of your time? Coaching and business advisory has been…
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Do you actively spend time focusing on your network? Do you have relationships in place to get things done at every level? Or 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…
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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 influence as well as a lot of responsibility to balance. I’ve been coaching and consulting with C-Level leaders for nearly 30 years. I have seen…
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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…
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1 Are you integrating into a new executive role? Are you an executive looking to bring in an executive coach or advisor to help you get to the next level? An HR business partner who wants to be absolutely sure their next big hire hits the ground running and is…
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As the excitement of landing a new executive role sinks in, the pressure begins. How will you demonstrate visible leadership in your first 100 days? Can you be sure you will make a significant enough contribution early on to validate the company’s choice in hiring you? How will you build…
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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. It starts with core…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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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? Does it take longer to get things done because you can’t get people’s attention on the real…
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Have you ever gone into a situation…maybe a tough conversation… with one intent in mind, only to come out having done or said something else? It happens to all of us and it can chip away at our resilience. We think we’ve got it, but it’s not easy to consciously…
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“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…
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“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…
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“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…
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“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…
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“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…
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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…
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Do you have a great team that needs development but lack a budget for training and access to an internal world-class learning team? Perhaps you’ve been limping along sending people to local conferences when you can to try to develop them. But while that may appease your team for a…
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I recently had the honor of closing Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business’s Executive MBA Alumni Summit with a talk about Resilience. 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…
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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…
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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…
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Resilience & Change Agility: 100 Global Finance Leaders Can’t Be Wrong At one global company, equipping leaders to increase resilience and adaptive leadership in the face of rapid, disruptive change has strengthened the partnership between Finance and the business it supports. Recently, over 100 Finance leaders from twenty countries convened…
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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…
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