A good friend of mine recently offered an interesting perspective from the top of the organization he leads. He remarked that leaders (of any organization, team, community, or family) should expect to continuously have to make complex and ambiguous decisions. After all, if they weren’t complex or ambiguous, they would have been decided at lower
Last week I was one of several presenters at a client’s annual conference. From the novices to the experienced, we’d all worked hard before the conference to make the keynotes and breakouts impactful. Collectively, we implemented seven key ideas for making keynotes, breakouts, and just about any type of presentation, more powerful. As a result
Imagine working with your closest friends. Think about how it would feel to always love your work. Consider how energized you’d be if you could be your authentic self all the time — at work, home, or in the community. All of that describes my good friend Paul Batz. He doesn’t believe in work-life balance.
The stakes were high for everyone. The selection of the executive search firm, not to mention the CEO the firm would be tasked with finding, was going to be critically important, expensive, and have long-term impact. So you’d think these three finalists among the search firms vying to run the CEO search would have strategized,
Parenting feels heavy for school-aged children in the weeks leading up to a new school year. What little structure afforded by camps and summer activities is mostly over. Open-ended, self-directed “together” time increases amid the looming change of a new school year. Bickering increases. Demands get louder. Complaining is at its peak. This angst that
When is a question more than just a question? Here’s a good example: Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist? That’s actually advice disguised as a question. The problem is, rather than generating dialogue, these kinds of questions often elicit a defense like: I’ve tried…I’ve thought of that…That won’t work because… Do you ever ask
My first “real” job was working the floor at our local Musicland store. When the store closed each day, we’d lower the metal gate to the inside of the Eden Prairie shopping mall. One of my managers, Jeff, would always start the store closing rituals the same way: He’d play Van Halen music super loud.
“Leadership is about stewardship.” That’s how Chris Bachinski, president of GHY International, describes his mindset a year ago going into his new role as the first non-family member to lead the 100-plus-year-old company. Charged with preserving GHY’s legacy while building a strong, resilient future, Chris clearly feels a deep, personal responsibility for safeguarding and growing
In 2004, Carolyn Smallwood was recruited to facilitate a turnaround of Minneapolis-based nonprofit Way to Grow. As the CEO, she assumed fiscal and organizational responsibility to deliver on their very challenging mission: ensuring that children within the most isolated families are born healthy, stay healthy, and are prepared for school. How has she faced that
Once upon a time…in a galaxy far, far away…the best stories begin somewhere, in a time and a place. That time and place present tension. The story explains how the tension gets resolved. But the events of the story are much less compelling than the inner change that people experience as the story resolves. Good
Matt Norman is president of Norman & Associates, which offers Dale Carnegie Training in the North Central US. Dale Carnegie Training is a global organization ...READ MORE