Self-Awareness & the Impact on Others Self-Awareness is the key to unlocking your Emotional Intelligence (EQ). It also happens to be the first skill you must master if you want to be an extraordinary leader. And yet, so many of us focus externally on situations, events, and people that are beyond our control. This external…
The Challenge to Be Extraordinary (VIDEO BLOG) Defining what you believe about being extraordinary by anyone other than yourself, is very dangerous. Why? Because if you allow others to define extraordinary for you, you will always be conforming to someone else’s’ ideals or way of life. And if they choose to live an ordinary life…
How to Reengage Your Teams … With Purpose (VIDEO BLOG) When we lose sight of our why, we lose sight of our purpose. We become less focused because we lack clarity and so our energy gets diluted. An employee who lacks focus is ineffective and ineffective employees become unmotivated and disengaged. As a leader you…
Defining Leadership … I’m an Excellent Driver Defining leadership is about as easy as trying to describe the experience of tasting chocolate to someone who has never experienced sweets. Why? Because everyone has a vastly different opinion about how to define leadership. I once heard a so-called expert on everything define driving in traffic and not…
A friend of mine once asked me a question when I was going through a pretty tough time in my life … “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” Believe it or not, my initial response was, “I want to be right dammit, don’t you?” Over the course of…
Leadership Projection: Is It Just a Mere Image? Projection is a defense mechanism where we take a part of us that we don’t like (i.e. our arrogant-self, selfish-self, or our untrusting-self, etc.) and project it onto someone else. For example if we look at someone and say ” What an arrogant ass” while there may…
Productivity & The Law of Unintentional Consequences A short time ago I was working with a team of senior leaders. We were discussing the overall purpose of the organization and the bottom-line goal that was driving the organization forward. In most companies these are things like profit margin, revenue, sales targets, production goal, etc.. This…
Influencing Others: Outside-In or Inside-Out Your greatest ability to influence others comes from the fact that influencing others is not an outside-in job … it is an inside-out job! Before I explain why … answer the following questions and be brutally honest with yourself: In a conversation with another person, do you spend the majority…
How To Make Better Decisions … “This indecision’s buggin’ me … exactly whom I’m supposed to be … so you got to let me know … should I stay or should I go?” The Clash When it comes to making decisions … sometimes we get stuck. Maybe you’re being confronted with the decision to begin…
Leadership Faux Pas #9 – Confusing Humility With Humiliation “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” ― C.S.Lewis Sometimes leaders confuse humility with humiliation. Look up the definition for humiliation and you will see words like … embarrassment, shame, indignity, and degradation. Look up the definition of humility…