Unless you are the sole proprietor of your business and work in isolation, tucked away somewhere in a closed room, you have to work with, for, and alongside others.  In every job there is a certain amount of give and take with which we must all contend. We must be able to get along if...

  Effective leaders know that enough is enough We love to talk. We came from the manufacturer that way. It seems that leaders are talkers. Indeed, some languages have no word that would translate “leader”. Their word is orator, one who speaks eloquently. So we tend to say things…a lot of things. But perhaps there...

  It was an embarrassing display. I was in a another city working for a non-profit organization. The organization’s director , I'll call him Clark, and I were at a local restaurant for dinner. The waitress was having a difficult time that evening and got a couple of things wrong. I watched in stunned disbelief...

“Good luck on your new position,” said the outgoing chairman. “You’ll start heading towards your objectives, look behind you, and find no one there.” “I don’t know why no one will help,” complained another leader. “Surely they can see I am overloaded. I can’t understand why they don’t step up and pitch in.” If there...

Does your right hand know what your left hand is doing and why it is doing it? In assisting organizations, businesses, and individuals in developing and implementing an effective vision one of my first questions is what is your vision for this company? After hearing their definition, I will ask the department heads, the associates...

You see them too if you ever scan the listings. I am talking about the jobs sections of Craigslist. You can make thousands of dollars working for an unnamed company whose application address is a blind one. This is a common theme of mine. The setting was a private school. The newly installed headmistress faced...

In the first article in my Flipping the Switch series, I wrote about a sales manager frustrated with a top performer on his team (article here). The problem came about because the sales manager and the salesperson in question were after two different things. The article immediately before this one (the Principle of Positive Balance)...

They stand out, those charismatic leaders. Larger than life and more enduring than time, their names remain known and their works referred to yet today.  People like Jesus, Caesar Augustus,  and Charlemagne anchor ancient history.  In the more recent past it is Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, Henry Ford, Aimee Semple McPherson, Churchill, Hitler (despicable but...

A friend once remarked that “It is amazing how much you can get done if you just do it.” A look at a jobs offered column on line or in a newspaper will inevitably turn up several with the qualifier “Must be a self-starter.”  Why? Because you hire people to extend your reach, multiply your...

So far, you have articulated your vision for the company or organization. You have identified your circle of concern and your limited circle of ability. You have listed the tasks that can be delegated to someone else and created a list of people to whom you can delegate those tasks. You have identified and articulated...