Leaders are readers. One of the easiest and cheapest ways to grow as a leader is to read about leadership and take the knowledge gained from your reading and apply it. When asked about the best leadership books out there, here are the ones I recommend. Great leaders lead themselves first. You can’t lead others if you can’t leader yourself through strong personal habits. The best personal leadership book I have found is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Leaders are influencers. For a timeless classic on influence, read How to Win Friends and Influence People by
I want to round out the goal setting discussion by focusing on the importance of feedback. To illustrate, feedback has played a critical role in a current client business coaching engagement. To begin the coaching process this past summer, we employed a 360° feedback mechanism to help set priorities for the client’s development. Feedback was first necessary to set goals and priorities. Based on areas for improvement, we developed four questions that she asks herself each and every day. These are all “yes” or “no” questions. (As example, a question I ask myself every day is “Did I do something to develop new business
Davis Ozier is a perfect example of the value Veterans can bring to business. After serving in combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Army as leader, he is now working on his MBA at the Darden School of Business to apply his leadership skills in the private sector. Through his experiences, he can help us learn some very important lessons in dealing with real world problems. Here are 5 leadership lessons Davis learned through his service: 1. Make the decision (or recommendation). We will never have all of the information that we wish, but will still be forced to make the decision.
“I just want them to show up and do their job and not complain,” said one burned-out manager to me not long ago. He was struggling with how to motivate the performance of several members of his staff, and in his exhaustion to try to be a leader, had adopted a mindset of something far from leadership. So how do leaders influence and impact the performance of employees when sometimes we just want them to show up and do their job and not complain? 1. Adopt a Leadership Mindset. First, a mindset of leadership needs to be present. Leadership is
“This is why I’m not married anymore,” said a participant in a recent leadership training class. She was partly kidding, but it was obvious that the results of her personality assessment, which were being used to launch the leadership training series we were conducting for her company, had struck a cord. Her personality assessment showed that she was a highly dominant, take charge, get it done kind of person. These characteristics had served her well in her role in finance with the organization, but she realized that maybe her personality had impacted the success of her marriage. In another conversation