I recently read an article focused on building relationships between business faculty and students. In this article, Dr. Maryellen Weimer discusses research on the value of building rapport that indicates that open communication and a feeling of “alikeness” increases motivation, increases quality of work, establishes greater trust and leads to overall greater student (and faculty) satisfaction.

As I read this I couldn’t help but think that the context is very similar to those of us in management or leadership roles and our relationship with our employees. Like faculty, there is often a distance that is established within the system based on …

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As some of you have been subscribers for awhile, you know my take on the argument of the difference between managers and leaders. For the most part, it’s a difficult, and in my opinion useless, argument because it confuses what one does with who one is.  Our language gets us stuck since there is manager vs leader, managing vs leading, and management vs leadership. Those people who are most informed, or who are students in my classes, will argue that John Kotter makes a distinction between managers and leaders. While that may have been the case with some of his …

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Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, then you aren’t.  

 

Margaret Thatcher, 10/23/25-04/08/13

It has always amazed me that in America we are so often “surprised” when women are chosen for high levels of leadership responsibility and we are truly challenged at the idea that a woman could just as easily be the best choice for national leadership as a man. If we were to elect a female president, there would be a certain amount of self-pride that we are so diverse and accepting as to consider that the gender of the top leader …

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What drives the identification, development and promotion of leaders in your organization? Is it actually the person’s ability to lead? For many organizations, the leadership qualities of a candidate for promotion or hiring may be a small part of the consideration, but the real focus is the competence of the leader in whatever technical area is represented. This is especially true in middle level positions as individual’s rise to higher levels of leadership responsibility, in many cases because they are the best technically at what they do.

Author and consultant Mike Myatt, in a recent post on Forbes, argues,

We live in …

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If there is one thing that can create a destructive and toxic culture it is when the most common mode of organizational communication is whining.  As opposed to productive criticism of things that can and need to be addressed, whining is simply complaining that things aren’t as we would like them to be. It is a social invitation that says, “I’m miserable. Join me and we can be miserable together.”

Of course, the fact of the matter is that there is a lot to whine about today. Many of your employees and followers are facing enormous stress from changing financial conditions …

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Given the nature of today’s economy, the apparent permanence of uncertainty regarding the “fiscal cliff,” and the ongoing wringing of hands and pessimism spewing from our television sets and other media, one might think that today’s business leaders are on their last legs. Several articles I’ve read lately have asked whether the age of the entrepreneur is over and have speculated that America’s prosperity may have run its course.

Download CEO New Year’s Resolutions 2013

Don’t mention any of that if you speak to those who responded to this year’s “CEO New Year’s Resolutions Report” which I author and publish with …

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