Hybrid teams are nothing new. Pre-COVID, many hybrid virtual teams existed. Some team members worked from the office full time, some worked from home or from the road full time, and others did a mix of the two. So what’s so different as we look ahead to work in the future? What’s different is the…
I’m excited to announce that The Ken Blanchard Companies has just made available a free ebook that provides practical information and easy-to-use tools to increase your leadership effectiveness. If you’re familiar with my work, you know I’m a big believer in “different strokes for different folks”—meaning that I believe there is no best leadership style;…
Dear Madeleine, I am a sales EVP in fast growing but incredibly competitive software. The pandemic threw demand into overdrive, which is great, but it means quotas have ballooned as well. Our structure is regional and all of the regional VPs report to me. My issue is one very whiny VP who is convinced that…
Over the years, I’ve talked with thousands of people about servant leadership. Every so often somebody will come up to me after a speech and say to me, “You know, Ken, the style of leadership you just talked about is exactly the way I’ve been leading people for years—I just didn’t know there was a…
Dave McKeown’s new book The Self-Evolved Leader is, at its essence, a roadmap to leadership excellence. Presented in four sections, this practical handbook guides leaders along the journey, covering everything from building a foundation of effective leadership to sustaining their newfound skills. McKeown believes leaders are caught in a cycle of mediocrity—and he says it’s…
Dear Madeleine, It has recently become apparent that one of my newer direct reports is lying. In one instance, he told me a presentation was proofed and ready to go and I found out it wasn’t when I went into the document on our shared drive to make a change. In another instance, I learned…
“I’m sure you’ve heard the saying People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And that is so true for anyone who is in a leadership role today,” says Kathy Cuff, senior consulting partner at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “In our SLII® leadership development class we conduct an exercise…
“So many of us are dealing with changes to our work routines. It’s generating a mountain of new requests and tasks that require us to get things done using new guidelines, practices, and procedures,” says bestselling business author Dr. Vicki Halsey, VP of Applied Learning at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “Leaders need to: (1) be…
Dear Madeleine, I am the EVP of sales for a global professional services and SAS company. As you can imagine, we are reeling from the pandemic and the economic train wreck that seems to be coming at us. In the midst of this chaos, I have a long-tenured sales professional—let’s call her G—who is running…
Marcus Buckingham believes some basic assumptions about work are simply no longer true in today’s business environment. He shares his insights in his latest book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, coauthored with Ashley Goodall. Lie #1: People care which company they work for. Many companies use their corporate…