Leadership

Adaptive Listening – How to be a Great Listener

I stumbled onto this TED Talk by Maegan Stephens & Nicole Lowenbraun on listening and loved it. I highly recommend that you take the 11 odd minutes to watch the entire talk. It is interesting, entertaining and highly insightful. The key insight they share is that there is more than one way to listen at work. The speakers share that every conversation at work has an underlying goal that requires us to show up and listen differently. Developing the ability to listen well is key if we want to build a high performing team and if we want to become […]

Leadership

Why Your Most Powerful Tool is a Question Mark

I read this post by Nina Kern today about how to use questions to drive change. If you are leading a change project, I highly recommend reading the entire post here. Most change initiatives fail not due to lack of good strategy but due to lack of agency on the part of the people who need to make these changes. When we mandate change, we usually trigger a threat response within people who have to make the change. However, if we lead with curiosity and questions, we invite them to partner with us and define why and how they change. […]

Leadership

The Power of Belief

I was introduced to this TED talk by Kelly McGonigal by Peter Cook via his blog post here. Watch the talk if you have the time (about 15 mins) – its funny, insightful and hopeful – a rare combination.

Leadership

How To Create The Conditions For Good Things To Happen

In a recent post, Mike Shipulski shared some conditions for good things to happen. You can read the entire post here. One of the things that he talks about is to make it easier to do the right things. I have explored this concept earlier in this blog post where I talk about how convenience trumps everything else. There is another aspect of this very same phenomenon that we can use as leaders – making the wrong things difficult to do. Every leader worth their salt knows the areas where the potential for mistakes in any given process is the […]

Leadership

Warning Signs to Watch out

Premise: In the early part of the 20th Century, the CIA (yes, that CIA) created a manual for its operatives to help teach them the art of sabotage. One part of the manual was meant specifically to train them to sabotage organizations. While you may not have someone actively trying to sabotage your organization (or maybe there could be), there might be behaviors that are unintentionally sabotaging your operations. So, it is a good idea to learn about these behaviors and nip them in the bud if we start seeing them playing out in our teams – intentionally or unintentionally. […]