Lead Change Group

The more I think about character-based leadership and the leadership traits I want to model, I keep coming back to the gap between who you lead and who you serve.  Character-based leaders tend to line those up pretty closely.  The question seems to be: How big is your “WE”?

We all want to win.  No one gets up in the morning and decides, “Today, I think I’d like to lose for a change.” You never tell your spouse, “Honey, I’m so used to losing that today, I’m managing expectations.  My goal is to lose.  That way, when I lose, I’m a winner!”  We use [...]

A book’s length is not a direct indicator of it’s value or depth.  Many a lengthy book has put me to sleep and many a short book has had wonderful insights.  The Leadership Test by Timothy R. Clark Ph.D. falls into the later category.  It’s a very quick read but it left me with a [...]

On a conference call October 19 with other members of the Lead Change Group, I learned about the 4 categories of emotional intelligence. The main divisions are Awareness and Management in one dimension and Self and Others in the other dimension. The grid looks like this: What quadrant would you say you naturally fell into? [...]

As a manager, what’s the best thing you can do for your organization?  Is your highest goal making money?  Is it the financial largess of your organization, or the praise of your customers?  Have you ever wondered how noble it is to help a very few people make a lot of money?  What is the [...]

I’ve read a few articles criticizing Warren Bennis and others for the way they tend to polarize leaders vs. managers or leaders vs. managers and supervisors.  Wally Bock always has an interesting perspective and he posted a much commented Three Star Leadership blog post here.  Wally has rich experience in leadership development, developing new leaders, [...]

I realize people don’t like the “middle-manager” term, but in reality, most of us are “middle managers.”W e might prefer being the top person in charge or focus on being at the bottom of some organizational pile, but most of us manage from the middle.  We manage people (ourselves at a minimum) but we also [...]