Most of our work involves helping leaders and teams develop the soft skills that are critical to great leadership. Sometimes though, poor soft-skill behaviors stem from hard skill weaknesses. Here’s a case in point: Lack of strategic selling experience [list style=”customlist”] ● Background — A while ago, a company we work with regularly had a major…
So often, companies set ambitious goals and leaders work hard to meet them with little success. Why does this happen? The answer is pretty simple, and we all get it: Setting goals disconnected from reality is a prescription for failure. Yet, prominent leaders and companies continue to make this mistake. And it’s pretty understandable. It’s…
After being involved in leadership development programs for decades, we see one clear pattern for success: involve the leaders in co-creating the programs. So often, it’s the leadership development professionals who develop new programs and roll them out. And the larger the company, the more likely this is to happen. After all, don’t deep, sophisticated…
Every month, I talk to companies who lament the mistakes they’ve made by hiring the wrong senior leaders. Amazingly, despite the pain, they usually do not change their hiring practices. So, the pattern continues, poor hires for one of three reasons: [list style=”customlist”] ● Bad behavioral fit ● Bad relationship fit ● Bad motivational…
Since the 2008 recession, budgets for people-related initiatives have been very limited. At the same time, companies have been slow to hire. This means that as economic growth has returned the existing workforce is constantly being asked to do more. We’ve all heard the phrase “forget work/life balance, think work/life integration.” The point is that…
On a recent trip to Florida, I had the chance to observe children at play. They ranged in age from 5 to 12. What struck me immediately was just how congruent their behaviors were with those of leaders we are asked to coach and train: low emotional intelligence, poor listening skills, weak self-control, difficulty collaborating,…
I’m continuing to think about issues where we coach leaders because they didn’t learn skills earlier in their careers. Executive presence is a great example of this. There’s really no excuse for an executive close to a senior leadership position to lack executive presence. Yet it happens all the time and we as coaches are…
About once a month, we get the same request: “one of our leaders is lacking in emotional intelligence, are you available to coach him on this issue over the next six months?” It’s amazing how prevalent this issue is and how many different companies make this request. I never say no, and the coaching engagements…
The centerpiece of today’s HR service delivery model is the HR business partner role. These are the individuals who are charged with delivering strategic HR advice to business unit leaders. Great HR business partners can drive great talent decisions and enhanced business results. Yet, in so many companies, HR business partners are not performing their…
Recently, I met with a senior talent leader for a major company. We were talking about companies that are known for great talent practices. The name Walmart surfaced in our discussion as one of these companies, despite the fact that, to our knowledge, Walmart does not engage in robust development activities when compared to the…