Setting Healthy Boundaries at Work

Sometimes when the word boundary is used it can be perceived as a four-letter word. This is because for some, setting boundaries means putting up a wall, blocking people out, disabling their attempts to influence. These people are intrinsically motivated so standing up for their needs supersedes the needs of everyone else. On the other [...]

Passionate Leadership

Passionate leaders are intrinsically motivated and they care about not only their own development they care about the development of their team members. Sometimes leaders view passionate leadership as something that is extroverted, or even sometimes coercive. Passionate leaders genuinely care about others.  They realise that if their teams are high performing, they are high [...]

6 Tips for Leading with Resourcefulness

In the modern workplace, leaders are expected to do more and more with less resources. In some organizations this means the employee complement gets reduced and the workload remains the same or increases. In other organizations there are insufficient tools available, or there are untrained employees. As the evolving external environment drives deeper and deeper [...]

Perceiving Your Performance Accurately

As a leader, it is important to be able to reflect on your performance from multiple perspectives. From an individual perspective, your performance is important because it impacts you and your tenure in your role or with your employer. For Managers, a second consideration is that your performance includes both technical and leadership skills. Both [...]

Is it the Culture, or Employees? That is the Question!

The Wells Fargo scandal is an interesting case study that presents the question, did the employees cause it, or was it the culture?  On one hand, the CEO indicated the scandal happened because of employees.  On the other hand, it appears that employees responsible for sales were under duress because of extreme demands. CNN interviewed [...]

The Angel in the Marble

Michaelangelo once said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved it to set him free.” Leaders who can visualize the potential of their team members and choose to help their coworkers access their internal resources, recognize at least three important factors: Solutions that take multiple perspectives into consideration can yield even better results [...]

Balancing People and Processes

Earlier in my career, I worked with an executive who always reinforced the message, “What gets measured, gets done.”  It is a deceptively simple statement because it has profound implications. For example, if you measure only processes, your people will focus on the process to the exclusion of all else. Additionally, measuring only processes can lead [...]