The Self-Aware Leader: Take an Inside-Outside Approach

Can someone be a great leader and not be self-aware? I believe all great leaders are self-aware. If you don’t know how your behaviors affect others, it’s difficult to lead successfully. Furthermore, leaders who aren’t self-aware can cause significant damage. The news is filled with reports about highly visible executives (I hesitate to call them…

Managing Negativity at Work

“Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lie our growth and our happiness.” This is one of my favorite quotes, most often attributed to Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning. It holds an answer to…

Are You a Trustworthy, Self-Aware Leader?

In our new book Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, my coauthor, Randy Conley, and I cover a lot of topics—fifty-two, to be exact. As the subtitle suggests, a primary focus of the book is the area of trust in leadership. To be truly trustworthy, a leader…

EGO Getting in Your Way? Ask Madeleine

Dear Madeleine, I am a director-level leader in a national insurance organization. The culture here is that things get done slowly, and only when everyone agrees with the change. I have been tasked with spearheading a ton of change, which is desperately needed. I have not made any friends with my approach and my boss…

7 Coaching Steps for Managing a Hot Temper

In my role as an organizational coach, from time to time I am asked to work with leaders who struggle to manage anger and emotional outbursts. Amazingly, they often don’t realize that going on an angry tirade during a staff meeting or berating a direct report in front of colleagues is conduct unbecoming of a…