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
What’s impacting performance in the workplace more than anything else these days? Many people would say it is stress, which is pushing some to the point of full-blown mental health issues. Consider how Graeme Cowan, author of Back From the Brink, describes this reality in the Fall 2014 issue of Global Corporate Xpansion Magazine: “In a hypercompetitive global economy, organizations must be ‘on’ 24/7. Yet this scramble for perpetual performance is taking a harsh toll on employees. They relentlessly push to get ahead and stay ahead- working longer days, emailing after hours, taking fewer vacations- often with little acknowledgement for
“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
I’m going to contradict myself (again). I seem to do this a lot, outlining a way to be process oriented by designing a traditional talent management program. We’ve done this over the last couple of weeks by describing how to do job analysis, job descriptions and design a compensation plan. But the key to knowing how to design any talent management program is to know yourself, or rather know your company. For mid to large companies, having job descriptions and a wage structure to define how you compensate people is more than likely completely necessary. It keeps things consistent, fair