How Great Leaders Build Trust During Uncertainty
“All I Have in This World Is My Word.” Leadership Is Tested When the Answers Are Unclear One of the most memorable lines from Scarface has very little to do with organized crime and everything to do with leadership. “All I have in this world is my word.” While I certainly would not recommend looking […]
I’m Pretty Far from Okay
What Executive Burnout Is Quietly Teaching Your Organization Burnout Is Rarely Contained to the Executive Suite There is a memorable scene in Pulp Fiction where Bruce Willis’ character (Butch) asks Ving Rhames ‘ character (Marcellus Wallace) a simple question: “Are you okay?” His response has become one of the film’s most recognizable lines. “No. I’m […]
Why Employees Stop Telling Leaders the Truth
“If My Answers Frighten You, Then You Should Cease Asking Scary Questions.” Every Organization Has Conversations Leadership Never Hears One of my favorite scenes in Pulp Fiction is a philosophical debate between Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta). It includes a line that has stayed with me for years: “If my […]
You’re Fakin’ the Funk
Why executive teams become passive-aggressive instead of high trust One of the clearest signs of dysfunction on an executive team isn’t open conflict. It’s passive-aggression. That might surprise you, because most leaders assume no open conflict means the team is healthy. In reality, too much artificial harmony usually means the opposite. People aren’t disagreeing less. […]
Check Yourself (Before You Wreck Yourself)
What are your employees afraid to tell you? The most dangerous problems in any organization are rarely the loud ones. The real risk is the silence around the thing everybody sees but nobody wants to say out loud. So here’s a better question every leader needs to ask, and keep asking: What are my people […]
Can’t Truss It
Do your best people trust you, or are they just tolerating you? One of the most dangerous things in leadership is mistaking silence for trust. When people do what they’re told, answer when asked, and keep the meetings moving, it can feel like alignment. But sometimes what you’re seeing isn’t trust. It’s tolerance. And tolerance […]
Don’t Believe the Hype
Why Your Retention Problem is not an HR Problem — It’s a Leadership Problem Let me tell you something I learned the hard way, in boardrooms and break rooms, on legislative floors and hospital floors: when good people start walking out the door, the first thing leaders do is look everywhere except in the mirror. […]
Who is Talking About You When You’re Not in the Room?
The Conversation Most Leaders Never Hear Several years ago, I was having a conversation with a CEO about leadership succession. We were discussing a group of highly talented executives within the organization, all of whom had impressive resumes, strong performance records, and significant leadership experience. As we worked through the discussion, something interesting happened. Whenever […]
How to Expand Your Influence at the C-Suite Level?
Influence Means Different Things at Different Stages of Leadership Several years ago, I was facilitating a leadership session for a group of senior executives when one of the participants asked a question that immediately captured the attention of everyone in the room. He said, “People keep telling me I need more influence. What does that […]
The Invisible Executive Scorecard
What Criteria Are Being Used to Evaluate You That Nobody Told You About? The Questions Many Executives Never Think to Ask Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of working with leaders at nearly every level of an organization. I have worked with frontline supervisors, department directors, vice presidents, CEOs, elected officials, and senior […]