The Power of Asking
Recently I was sharing some data with a group of leaders on the impact of asking for feedback. The data showed an exceptionally strong correlation between asking for feedback and the overall effectiveness of a leader. One of the leaders commented, “I must be a great leader then because I seem to get boat load … Continue reading
Keeping Your Strengths from Becoming Weaknesses
Recently I was coaching Richard, an exceptional leader. He had a huge desire to build a great educational product. While most people would be satisfied with the product as it was, he was constantly searching for the latest, greatest research and approach which left him continuously redesigning the product. All these changes generated a huge … Continue reading
The 16 Days of Competencies: #11Builds Relationships
As featured in the article “Making Yourself Indispensable” published in the October 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review. Recently, Harvard Business Review published an article titled, Making Yourself Indispensible, by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman—co-authors of The Inspiring Leader and principals of the leadership development company, Zenger Folkman. After years of extensive research, we at … Continue reading
The Yin and Yang of Strengths and Fatal Flaws
When Jack Zenger and I discovered that what made leaders great was the presence of strengths and not the absence of weaknesses, it fundamentally shifted our view about how leaders can improve. Our efforts to make leaders better had been primarily focused on fixing weaknesses. As we teach people about this research on building strengths, … Continue reading
Sense and Nonsense in Leadership Development
There is a great deal of nonsense that has been written about leadership. It includes meaningless statements such as, “managers do things right, leaders do the right things,” or, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way,” and goes downhill from there. The torrent of clichés and non-actionable … Continue reading
5 Elements of the Best 360 Degree Feedback Assessments
The advisory Council at the Stanford Business School asked their members what they believed attributes business leaders needed most to become more effective. The consensus within the group was the need for greater self-awareness on the part of leaders. Yet we all know that as leaders move upwards in organizations, the likelihood of them receiving … Continue reading
The Flaw in Focusing on Weaknesses
The typical weakness-focused 360 process seems to communicate to managers only what they don’t do well. One leader commented, “They try to embarrass and humiliate us enough to motivate us to put some effort into improving something we really don’t care much about.” This lack of motivation shows in the results. In our research, leaders who focus only on fixing weaknesses saw half as much gain in effectiveness as those who work on improving strengths.
Tell, Ask, Listen: 3 Steps Toward Becoming a Great Communicator
When we conduct employee opinion surveys, the most common theme we observe in our written comments for organizational improvement focus on “Communication.” One of my favorite comments was, “I don’t know if I am in line to be demoted to janitor or promoted to CEO. I need feedback!” Communication is also a very common theme … Continue reading
The Leadership Ceiling: How Leaders Can Build Up or Bring Down an Organization
The Leadership Ceiling The probability is high that a leader will be less effective than their boss. There are exceptions to this rule, but the trend is very clear. In a study of 5,285 leaders from 5 different organizations, we examined the effectiveness of leaders at different levels of the organization. The measure of leadership … Continue reading
3 Reasons Leaders Shouldn’t Fix Weaknesses
Remember your first encounter with those dreaded, scary, and puzzling “Chinese finger locks”? I still recall my amazement when my elementary school age fingers got trapped the first time and I couldn’t pull them out. And I was even more amazed when I learned about the counter-intuitive solution – push my fingers toward the center, … Continue reading
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