“The most successful leaders have a clear understanding of what leadership means to them. They are able to articulate this viewpoint to colleagues and direct reports for the purposes of building stronger relationships,” says Pat Zigarmi, a founding associate of The Ken Blanchard Companies. Zigarmi recently sat down with Chad Gordon of the Blanchard LeaderChat…
Organizations are quickly releasing policy statements as part of their contingency response to the coronavirus outbreak around the world. In addition to having well thought out strategies, it’s important for senior leaders to be prepared for questions that will inevitably arise as soon as these policy statements are released. When leaders are not prepared to…
Dear Madeleine, I really messed up—and I’m so embarrassed I’m thinking of quitting my job. I yelled at one of my direct reports during a team meeting. I was very tired because I had been up all night with a sick kid, and I was super stressed because several of my own deadlines were looming.…
Want a more purposeful, aligned, and engaged organization? “Make sure managers and direct reports are taking a collaborative approach to performance,” says Susan Fowler, senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies and coauthor of the company’s Self Leadership training program. “It starts with agreed-upon goals,” Fowler continues. “In my early days as a consultant,…
As a part of onboarding, Mike Rognlien, builder of awesome people at Facebook, would always ask new employees if the culture at Facebook was a deciding factor in their decision to join the company. “Every time, in more than six years of asking that question, almost every hand would go up,” says Rognlien. “Then I would…
When an organization invests in coaching for their leaders, it is often because they want to move the leader from “almost ready” to “ready now” on promotion lists. In many of these situations, the coaches are asked to help the leaders improve and increase specific skills or develop and deploy underutilized strengths. Basically, skill acquisition…
Dear Madeleine, Can you clear something up for me? I have been told by a former coach and others that I need to be more “authentic.” But I have also just received feedback in a performance review that I am too brusque, condescending, and cold. And if one more person tells me they are intimidated…
In this episode of the Blanchard LeaderChat podcast, we speak with Ken Blanchard, co-editor of the new book, Servant Leadership in Action. For Blanchard, servant leadership isn’t just a book or a nice-to-have management concept. Instead, he sees it as a movement—a shift from leadership that is self-focused to one that is others-focused. “The world…
Dear Madeleine, I am a fairly new marketing manager for a large consumer goods firm. I have three great people who work for me—I inherited them, so I lucked out. We function like a well-oiled machine. The problem is my boss. She was promoted about two years ago and now oversees several managers of different…
Dear Madeleine, I recently found, left behind on the photocopier, a list of performance evaluations, pay, and bonuses for all of my coworkers. Turns out new hires are being brought in at substantially higher pay and bonuses than what the old timers are getting. Also, a person who is universally viewed as a total slacker…