As a leader, one thing you must be vigilant about is keeping an eye out for any process or culture creep which might lead to complacency or a disconnect with the present-day realities found just outside your office walls. While there are many examples in today’s headlines of organizations which have drifted so far off-course that it’s hard to see a viable turnaround in their near future, few illustrate the risks and fallout from such situations as the ensuing drama around the capsizing of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy.

In the piece “Seven Tips for Becoming a Better Boss”, leaders from several organizations which were recently recognized as being one of the “Best Small Workplaces of 2011” share what they found to be the key steps which were behind their organization’s success and positive workplace environment.

In light of the actions of the Costa Concordia captain and his superiors, this piece ironically also reveals how the current culture and workplace attitudes at Costa Cruises set into motion actions which not only lead to this fatal maritime disaster, but which also played a role in defining how their employees responded to this crisis.

Consider, for example, the following three lessons these leaders ascribe as being key to their collective success as an organization, and how the Costa Cruises leadership’s failure to do the same has now cast some serious doubt about the future viability of their organization. Click here to continue reading »”3 Leadership Lessons To Keep Your Organization From Running Aground”

How do we stop or curb drama in the workplace? That’s the basis of the conversation I had with Marlene Chism in the fifth episode of my leadership podcast series, “Leadership Biz Cafe”.

Marlene is a speaker, author and founder of The Stop Your Drama Methodology, an eight-part empowerment process to increase clarity and improve productivity and personal effectiveness. Marlene has a master’s degree in HR Development from Webster University and is the author of “Success is a Given: Reading the Signs While Reinventing Your Life”, as well as recently published “Stop Workplace Drama – Train Your Team to Have No Complaints, No Excuses and No Regrets”

Over the course of our conversation about how to manage workplace drama, Marlene and I discuss the following:

• Learning to appreciate the difference between the drama that arises at work and the drama that comes out from your reaction to that situation.
• How a lack of clarity leads to workplace conflict and what we can do to regain clarity when our perspective about what’s going on around us becomes obscured.
• How to identify the gap between your goals and where your team is and the relationship this gap has in creating drama in the workplace.
• Why we need to take responsibility for what we can control in order to resolve workplace conflict.
• That workplace drama in itself isn’t the real problem; that it’s something more personal and more within our control that we can address.

As I mentioned at the end of the show, Click here to continue reading »”Leadership Biz Cafe Podcast #5 – Marlene Chism on Stopping Workplace Drama”

Imagine working for an organization where one of the senior managers insists on yelling at his employees because he believes it’s the surest way to garner the respect of those he leads and now, the front-line managers are beginning to follow his example by yelling at their team members.

Or what about working for a company president whose driven to attract the best talent under the guise of needing their help to make his organization more innovative, only to turn around and demand that they simply do what he tells them to do.

Better still, imagine what it would be like to work for an organization where year-end bonuses are tied to the amount of vacation time you give up, and not on your performance and contributions made to the organization’s collective efforts.

Although these might sound like fictional plot lines for a movie or TV show that satirizes the dysfunctional nature of today’s workplaces, they are in fact the real-life examples shared by one of my readers about the toxic work environment they face every day. And unfortunately, these kinds of scenarios are becoming more and more the norm of what employees face in the workplace.

Naturally, there is a tendency to assume this rise in toxic work environments is yet another consequence of the persisting economic uncertainties many industries and countries are currently grappling with. However, the reality is that such assumptions only serve Click here to continue reading »”Are You Creating A Toxic Workplace? Ask Yourself These 4 Questions To Find Out”

I’m delighted to present a new feature here on my site: a new podcast series called “Leadership Biz Cafe”.  Through this new podcast, I hope to invite business leaders and leadership experts to join me in conversations about their ideas and insights on the challenges and opportunities to be found in today’s increasingly competitive and global market.

For my first episode, I welcome Guy Kawasaki, the best-selling author and former Chief Evangelist at Apple, to the guest chair.  Guy is the co-founder of the popular online content aggregator Alltop.com (you may have noticed the site badge in the sidebar of my site) as well as one of the founding partners of Garage Technology Ventures.  Earlier this year, he released his latest book called “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions” which recently made the New York Times bestseller list.

I had the opportunity to get an advance copy of Guy’s book and after reading it, I invited him to be the first guest on my new podcast series which he graciously accepted.

During the podcast, we discuss a number of topics including:

• What does enchantment mean and what’s the first step to take to become more enchanting
• How we can develop more trusting and beneficial relationships
• Why trying to be influential is not the best long-term strategy
• The 3 steps every leader can take to enchant their employees
• Why employees need to enchant their boss (one of the unspoken truths many of us don’t like to admit)

It’s a great interview and Guy and I even shared a few laughs along the way.  So I’d like to invite you to check out this first episode of the “Leadership Biz Cafe” podcast and please let me know what you think of the show by leaving a comment below.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this new addition to my site and what topics you might be interested in hearing more about in some of upcoming shows for this new series.

Click on the player below to listen to the podcast:

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Links mentioned during the podcast:

Visit Guy Kawasaki’s website to learn more about his book.

Buy Guy Kawasaki’s book “Enchantment” on Amazon.com (or Amazon.ca for Canadian readers)