FORBES: Artistic Unity – How To Radically Improve Your Leadership Communication

As published in Forbes. The human mind wanders. A lot. Almost a decade ago the Harvard Gazette reported that 47% of the time we are thinking about anything and everything other than what we are actually doing! In 2014, TIME reported that the average attention span, thanks to advances in technology, topped out a whopping eight-seconds, citing the attention-grabbing headline, You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish. However, apparently (but not surprisingly) many of us were too distracted to register these findings, as two years later they were reported again by the New York Times. Clearly, our monkey minds are alive (and not entirely well).  Mindfulness, which might be best defined as the ability to give our full attention to what it is we are doing, is now billion-dollar industry! This October, Europe hosted its first conference focused on how we can best incorporate mindfulness into our organizations, but I digress. With our minds so easily distracted and the pings from our “smart” phone only making matters worse, it is no wonder we misinterpret, misunderstand, or completely miss entire communications we ought to have received. It is also why others fail to act upon the vision, values, [...]

By |2021-08-12T14:31:36-07:00November 12th, 2018|
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FORBES: More Humanity. Not Less.

As published in Forbes. Every true act of leadership has only one purpose: to make life better. As such, leadership is rooted in our humanity. It is curious then that so often we hide ourselves within a professional mask of what we think we ought to do and be, only to lose connection, both with ourselves and the people we are meant to serve. When we approach leadership, human “resources,” recruiting, coaching and professional development via mechanical methods, we generally miss the mark entirely. There are a lot of good leaders today. However, too often they lack the one quality that would make them truly great: their humanity. You see, being human is hard. Perhaps the hardest thing we ever do. After all, we seek leadership positions to fulfill our desire for power, control and authority. Yet to be human is to be weak and vulnerable, something most of us fight against our entire lives (and why we love superheroes, as they allow us, if only briefly, to escape our very limited human form). We don’t really understand the power of our humanity until life forces us to our knees, generally through challenging events like job loss, divorce, aging, illness [...]

By |2022-06-14T10:15:53-07:00December 20th, 2017|
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FORBES: Leadership. What Not To Do.

As published in Forbes. In my career, I have learned more about exceptional leadership by being on the receiving end of its opposite. Here are three fundamental things I have learned never do to others, simply because I know first-hand how damaging they can be. 1. Don’t lie. This includes blatant lies, half-truths and errors of omission. If you make a mistake, own it, clean it up, and apologize to all impacted. If you don’t know the answer, say so. Be transparent, sharing your thinking and your decision making process. Share what you can, as soon as you can, so people don’t need to make up a story. Be brave, pick up the phone and have the real (and often hard) conversation with the person you need to have it with. Live your values, as everyone is always watching. Call yourself on your own bull. This is perhaps the most important one, as few human beings handle power well. Keep your ego in check. When you need help, ask for it. Be human alongside the rest of us mortals. Remember whom you serve. Keep your promises. Be your word. Address reality. Discuss the undiscussables. Do the right thing. I repeat: [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:14:27-08:00November 18th, 2017|
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FORBES: What Really Defines Leadership in Today’s World?

As published in Forbes. Lately, I have been thinking about what makes a leader in today’s world. Are we leaders simply because others report to us, or because we are responsible for an area of the business? Are we leaders because we have a future vision that no one else seems to be able to see just yet? Or is the answer that we are only leaders when others are following? After all, how can we call ourselves leaders if, when we turn around, no one is following us or the initiatives we need them to support? After much contemplation, I propose that a leader today is someone who sparks in us a desire to help. In our networked, matrixed, dotted-lined, ever-changing organizational structures, a leader today must be a follower tomorrow, and vice versa. Therefore, we are not leaders simply because of our titles or responsibilities, nor are we leaders because we have a vision for the future. What makes us leaders is our ability to connect with others in a way that makes them want to help us. I once received an email from a new colleague in Asia. This colleague needed information she hoped I could provide. [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:16:29-08:00July 18th, 2017|
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FORBES: The Four Foundations of Exceptional Coaching

As published in Forbes. Many professionals believe they understand coaching well. However, when I teach coaching to leaders and put them into their first conversation, I inevitably find the coach giving advice to the person they are supposed to be coaching. It would seem our desire to help can be our own coaching Achilles heel. Telling others an answer they can (or ought) to arrive at on their own is rarely helpful. It might feel good to the coach, but it undermines the experience and ultimately, the success of the person the coach is supposed to be helping. Whether leaders, managers, consultants, entrepreneurs, teachers or parents, our goal is to develop the capacity of others so they one day go on to surpass us. Unfortunately, few have received training in the processes that distinguish effective coaching from the mechanical aspects of managing performance. In coaching, we start with the premise that we are dealing with a fully functioning human being – another person (just like us), filled with his or her own hopes, dreams and aspirations, as well as insecurities, limitations and fears. Thus, we intuitively understand that coaching is not a neat cognitive process that begins with listening, moves [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:28:54-08:00May 17th, 2017|
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FORBES: Is Your Leadership Brave Enough to Have the Conversation You Don’t Want to Have?

As published in Forbes. Conversations are not important to leadership. They are leadership. Whether one-to-one or one-to-many, conversation is the leader’s primary tool. With so much taking place within any interaction, it is often difficult even for seasoned leaders to process all that occurs. Frequently, we realize we have not addressed the real issue long after a conversation took place. On our commute home, we find ourselves playing out a discussion. Or we notice ourselves having the real conversation we failed to have earlier in the day with our spouse over dinner, only this time sharing key points we didn’t share with the person who could actually do something about them. Much has been written on the topic, which tells us how necessary but rare the skill is. Books like Fierce Conversations, Difficult Conversations, Crucial Conversations and more recently, Conversational Intelligence and The Power of Noticing provide us with tools to more fully recognize all that occurs. By bringing greater awareness to the complexity of human interactions, the goal is to speed up the time it takes for us to (1) recognize the real conversation begging to be had and (2) effectively address it in real time. While most conversations involve the [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:29:26-08:00April 17th, 2017|
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Presence: Where Do You Think You’re Going?

In The Road Less Traveled, author M. Scott Peck makes the claim that life is difficult. On the surface, I agree. Being a spiritual entity in a heavy, physical body on this dark, dense, material plane is definitely no picnic. Our bodies never look how we want them to look, they rarely function as we hope, they break down often, and, eventually, they fail each and every one of us. This is one thing we know for certain. So it is that each of us is trapped in a limiting form and bound by time. Of course, life is difficult! What an inherently frustrating experience this is. I know I am so much more than I can show you in this physical form and in the short amount of time I have. I suspect you feel the same. This is why many of us cannot accept the present moment. It is also why so many of us focus our time and energy solely on getting to what we believe will be a better place. We are working to make our image of ourselves a reality. “This is not yet me,” we all unconsciously say. We are simultaneously inspired and envious [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:18:27-08:00March 18th, 2017|
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“This is How We Do Things Here, Now”: How to effectively change your corporate culture

My mother and father were European, Austrian and Hungarian to be specific. One of the things this meant for me growing up was that if someone came to our house, everyone had to come out from wherever they were, say hello, and immediately we had to offer that person a drink (preferably alcoholic). If the person stayed for more than 30 minutes, it was necessary to offer them food and then, even if they declined (and sometimes especially if they declined), feed them. Providing the basic necessities of life (drink and food) was understood as a sign of abundance and wealth. We had it to give away and my parents took great delight in sharing what we had. If a guest refused our offerings, we (especially my mother), took offense. “What’s wrong with my cooking?” she would demand. “Mom, maybe they just aren’t hungry,” I would try to reason in front of our increasingly uncomfortable guest. She couldn’t conceive of it. The funny thing is that now when I enter someone’s home and they fail to offer me a drink, I find it strange, even a little rude. That’s the thing with culture, it colors how we interpret everything and, [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:19:23-08:00January 18th, 2017|
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Right Here & Now: The use of immediacy in coaching

“I just think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. Mark* was the senior vice-president of a multinational technology company and this was the reason he gave me as to why he had called the sponsor asking if he could work with another coach. When I heard this, I responded calmly: “Look Mark, I am more than happy for you to work with another coach. In fact, I will facilitate an introduction immediately following our call. However, before I do that, let’s look at what occurred in our brief relationship, as I suspect an important learning opportunity exists right here. You game?” I knew that what my client was trying to do was escape me. Simply providing him with another coach would have been easy, but adult development and changes in behavior do not come through easy actions. Although I could sense his skepticism, I give Mark full credit for being open to further discussion. I was able to share with him the key moments I believed had affected our relationship, the kinds of behaviors I suspected were limiting his success with others. I began: “Yes, we did get off on the wrong foot. And isn’t this something [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:19:56-08:00December 18th, 2016|
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Women, I Have An Important Favor to Ask: Please Speak Up!

Years ago, I had the good fortune of hearing American politician Madeleine Albright speak. She told the audience of her time in the White House as the first female U.S. Secretary of State and shared a story I will not forget. The story was about a particular meeting with then President Bill Clinton and various officials. In this meeting, she claims, she tried several times to add her position to the conversation but found it difficult to get her voice heard. She said (and I am paraphrasing from my recollection), “There I was, sitting around the boardroom table with President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and the respective cabinet ministers, and I couldn’t seem to get a word in edgewise! I thought to myself, ‘My goodness, how powerful a woman does one need to be in order to get heard?’” Clearly, if there was a title powerful enough to demand a voice, she held it. After all, not only was she the U.S. Secretary of State, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. I recall the audience bursting out in laughter. Laughing mostly, I suspect, out of relief. For if Madeleine Albright had difficulty [...]

By |2017-12-18T12:20:26-08:00November 18th, 2016|
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