On her way to a promising job interview, Maria can’t help feeling a sense of loss and disappointment when she thinks about some of the reasons she is seeking a change. When she joined her current organization, a nonprofit dedicated to improving local communities, she was enthusiastic and convinced that she could make a real … Read more
Bob had a successful early career in large account sales, and is now in his second role as leader of a national accounts group. His team sells complex systems integration services to the company’s largest customers. Many of his people have technical and engineering degrees. They are usually quite clever in helping their clients solve … Read more
Catherine has been fiercely competitive and quite successful in everything she has ever tried to do. She was awarded academic and athletic scholarships, and graduated cum laude with a degree in electrical engineering from a major university. People have always assumed she was destined for greatness. The confidence that came from her many successes reinforced … Read more
Author’s Note — This is taken from the introduction to a book in progress (working title: The I-Competencies: Head, Heart, Guts and Will as Keys to Success). If anyone has an idea for a shorter title, please let me know. If it works better, I’ll send you a free copy of the book when it’s … Read more
There was an old Star Trek plot about an alien enemy called the BORG. Their mission in the universe was to assimilate all of the other intelligent races. In pursuit of their seemingly unstoppable collectivist mission, they had a habit of intoning “resistance is futile.” They were convinced that they would win in the end. … Read more
You can’t operate in the physical world without making choices. The alarm goes off in the morning. You choose to get up or to burrow back in. If you realize you’ve put on a few extra pounds, you can choose to begin training for a marathon, decide you’re OK and grab another bag of chips … Read more
GenX. GenY. Millenials. Generation ME. Whatever comes next. They’re so different from the way we were. They’re self-centered, anti-social, superficial, unhappy, etc. Maybe not so much, it turns out. Received Wisdom tells us that recent generations are fundamentally different in some very important ways and that these differences need to be taken into account as … Read more
Growth through Pain (Cliché but True) It’s a tough fact of life that we don’t learn much about ourselves or our character in good times. We can’t fully discover our strengths and shortcomings without being tested by adversity. How we deal with it, or how we learn to deal with it, is central to who … Read more
Roger Harrison was one of the founders of the professional discipline known as Organizational Development (OD). In the 1970s, he described a rather novel and tough-minded approach to team development. This was a bit of a departure from the then-vogue tender-minded approaches that assumed conflict and power struggles were symptoms of underlying leadership or structural … Read more
Are top performers made or born? How can I get more of them? The answers to these questions hold the key to every leader’s success. The more top performers a leader can select and/or develop, the greater the success of his or her organization. Competencies are clusters of KSAPs (knowledge, skills, abilities and personal characteristics) … Read more