A few weeks ago, my friend Whitney Johnson wrote a piece around perceptual biases that was inspired by something her daughter experienced in school one day. As Whitney describes in her piece, her daughter gave a presentation in one of her classes, a presentation she had spent much time and … Click to continue reading
When it comes to my role serving as the Governing Board Chairman at my daughters’ high school, one aspect of this leadership role that I enjoy the most is being invited to school events that celebrate the achievements of our students. After all, when you spend much of your time … Click to continue reading
For those who live in one of the northern climates like I do, the arrival of Spring is unquestionably a welcome event on the seasonal calendar. With the anticipated return of flowering gardens and bright shiny leaves on the neighbourhood trees, I couldn’t wait to get to work on the … Click to continue reading
One of the approaches I regularly use on my blog is taking seemingly unrelated topics to the field of leadership to help illustrate some ideas that would help leaders become better enablers for those under their stewardship. In this piece, I’d like to share a new discovery regarding how bats … Click to continue reading
For the last few weeks I’ve been working with a client who has provided an interesting opportunity to examine one of the challenges leaders find themselves struggling with in today’s fast-paced business world. Tom* serves as one of the senior department heads at a mid-size technology firm, overseeing the development … Click to continue reading
Over the last few weeks, I read with much interest a discussion among members of a particular LinkedIn group where they attempted to define the single most important attribute to leadership. For some participants, the most important trait was integrity; others felt that awareness was the key to effective leadership. … Click to continue reading
A few days ago, my wife and I decided to take the kids to the beach, to take advantage of the beautiful summer weather that’s been absent in previous years. Admittedly, I did question whether I should bring along my laptop to use some of that lounging-around time to do … Click to continue reading
As my kids revel in the freedom that comes with summer vacation, reflecting on my daughter’s end-of-year report card got me thinking about how we offer feedback to our employees. As was the case in previous years, she once again earned grades well above the class average. Of course, that’s … Click to continue reading
One of the themes I’ve been writing about on my blog is the importance of focusing on our strengths, of nurturing those innate abilities/talents people bring to our teams or companies to benefit both our businesses as well as our employees. This got me to thinking about the relationship between … Click to continue reading
When we look at the various examples of effective and successful leaders, one of the traits we see that they share in common is exhibiting a strong sense of confidence. Now by confidence, I’m not referring to pushy, aggressive, or self-serving behaviour. Rather, I’m pointing to those leaders who create … Click to continue reading
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work under several bosses and observe the different styles of leadership each of them brought to the position. Some of them proved to be textbook examples of how not to lead a team while others were unremarkable, but nonetheless competent in the … Click to continue reading