Let’s pretend you have a performance appraisal system that rates people on a scale of 1-7.  One being the worst, seven being rock-star status.   You have ten direct reports and you have honestly and accurately rated them all (we’re assuming a perfect world here, bear with me). Here’s the breakdown of where people fall: You have three people in the 1-3 range. You have six people in the 4-6 range. And you have one lone rock star at 7. Which group should you focus most of your energy on in the coming year? If customer satisfaction research leads us to

I remember when I got feedback one time after a leadership training session that the training needed to include more role-playing. I hate role-playing. Or at least participating in it, so I assumed everyone else hates the exercise of pretending too. But besides hating it, I thought there were other learning methods that could emulate the same type of result that role-playing could, so I avoided it. But when I think about trying to coach and teach people through critical leadership moments- those that require courage- role-playing, or at least practicing what needs to be done may be the best