Partners in Top 100 Firms overwhelmingly express a preference for their firms to remain independent. Not surprisingly, there have been very few recent mergers combining Top 100 Firms. This period of calm is highly reminiscent of the climate among the Big Eight firms in the 1980s. Few predicted the upcoming spree of mega-mergers that created…
Business strategists who follow the accounting profession are sending a consistent message: “The work of accountants is going to be heavily automated by further advances in technology. Firms need to move into value added advisory services to maintain growth and profitability.” When we talk to managing partners, we hear this same prediction. Surprisingly, though, the…
Many CPA firms have been expanding rapidly, both organically and through mergers and acquisitions. This has included significant geographic expansion beyond the firms’ core locations. It has also included expanding into new areas such as IT-related advisory services. Firms that have not expanded think seriously about the need to expand and whether they can remain…
The most critical issue facing the accounting industry today is the war for talent at all levels. In fact, the first sign that a CPA firm is in trouble is when the firm is not able to recruit, develop and retain great people, especially to succeed their current leaders. These firms have only three choices:…
Many accounting firms have robust formal learning programs for their staff early in their careers. Over time, the amount of formal training declines to some ad hoc programs plus required CPE training, and most meaningful learning takes place on the job. This is not a bad approach in principle. The key is how this experiential…
The word passion comes up frequently in the context of business strategy for accounting and advisory firms. I still remember when Jim Schiro was first elected chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers in the 1990s. During his first address to partners, he told us that “passion” was one of his three strategic initiatives for the firm. He recalled…
As the saying goes: “it’s lonely at the top.” Nowhere is this truer that for the managing partner of a regional accounting & advisory firm. Surrounded by talented partners who have a personal stake in every decision made, the managing partner needs a place to get objective help, understand the competitive landscape and show his…
Getting partners to transition toward retirement as they approach the firm’s retirement age is a problem facing many CPA firms, and its implications are far-reaching. Most firms in the Top 100 have a mandatory retirement age between age 60 and 66. Accordingly, partners within a few years of this age should be expected to begin…
As we were wrapping up a strategic planning discussion with one of our clients—a major accounting and advisory firm—the firm’s managing partner turned to us and asked, “What would really change the way our partners interact with clients? Partners have strong client relationships. They know client executives well personally and professionally. They just find it…
Every CPA firm has a signature strength that provides a competitive advantage and can be leveraged for growth. Often, when we ask partners to identify that strength, they are not aware of it. Let’s look at a few examples of “hidden” signature strengths. One firm’s partners pointed to the real estate practice as the firm’s…
We used to think that copying others or repeating the same actions because they are institutionally easy or have worked in the past was very non-strategic behavior. Experience has shown us that in some cases it may be the most strategic behavior for particulars firm when it comes to expanding geographically and expanding specialties. How…
Measuring productivity at accounting and advisory firms is different from doing so for other industries. This concept was brought home to me recently in a conversation with a former colleague who is now working for a large industrial company. His organization had just announced a downsizing which led him to quip: “We’re just going to…
This is the fifth in a series of blogs on the subject of accounting firms and their operating models: Centralized Model – Locally Integrated Model – Regionally Integrated Model – Nationally Integrated Model – Federated Model The Federated Model: Firms that take this approach establish federated relationships with other firms in different major US cities, typically…
This is the fourth in of a series of blogs on the subject of accounting firms and their operating models: Centralized Model – Locally Integrated Model – Regionally Integrated Model – Nationally Integrated Model – Federated Model The Nationally Integrated Model: Firms that take this approach establish offices in major cities in each region of…
About once a month, we get a similar comment from clients: “one of our partner candidates 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 today. To us, it’s a siren call for teaching emotional intelligence much earlier,…
This is the third in of a series of blogs on the subject of accounting firms and their operating models: Centralized Model , Locally Integrated Model, Regionally Integrated Model, Nationally Integrated Model, Federated Model The Regionally Integrated Model: Firms that take this approach establish offices in major cities in a given geographic area. A good example…
An excerpt from Accounting Today’s article by Richard Stanger and Carolyn Carlson, Winning the War for Talent. It’s a win-win for both your firm and candidates: firms that offer summer internships get to lock up great candidates early and the candidates can secure a permanent job before their senior year. That’s why the best approach…
An excerpt from Accounting Today’s article by Richard Stanger and Carolyn Carlson, Winning the War for Talent. Great firms acquire and develop talent from the bottom up, starting with entry-level hires. There are three keys to successful campus recruiting: Get your partners involved, beginning with campus interviews. Nothing gets the attention of candidates more than…
An excerpt from Accounting Today’s article by Richard Stanger and Carolyn Carlson, Winning the War for Talent. There are two components to hiring great experienced partners and staff: sourcing and interviewing. Staff referral programs can be a good source for experience partners and staff. However, in today’s market many times experienced staff come from recruiters.…
An excerpt from Accounting Today’s article by Richard Stanger and Carolyn Carlson, Winning the War for Talent. Many accounting firms have programs that give bonuses to staff for sourcing candidates. In some cases, these programs are highly successful, but in many they are not. What makes the difference? The answer is culture. The firms that…
An excerpt from Accounting Today’s article by Richard Stanger and Carolyn Carlson, Winning the War for Talent. Winning the War for Talent at all levels is the most critical issue facing the accounting industry today. In fact, the first sign that a CPA firm is in trouble is when the firm is not able to…
When we discuss succession planning with clients, the position of managing partner(s) and group leader(s) are quickly mentioned as critical. This is understandable since these individuals run the firm and have deep institutional knowledge. Then we further press clients: “Name other people in the firm whose departure would seriously hurt the firm’s business?” This query prompts…
This is the second in of a series of blogs on the subject of accounting firms and their operating models: Centralized Model Locally Integrated Model Regionally Integrated Model Nationally Integrated Model Federated Model The locally integrated operating model: This is when firms establish satellite offices in areas close to the firm’s central office. A good…
Firms in the accounting industry have been expanding rapidly over the last few years, both organically and through mergers and acquisitions. This has included significant geographic expansion beyond the firm’s core location. As this pattern continues, it is becoming imperative for firms to commit to one of several operating models to enable strong governance, attract clients…
We all know the classic management principle: “what gets measured gets done.” This maxim has been around so long that no one is sure who said it first. Is it correct? Not always. It is clear that measuring results is not enough. You must also reward them. Let’s modify the management principle to: “what gets…
Decades ago Peter Drucker observed that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Fewer business maxims have proved to be more accurate. However, when it comes to developing a business strategy for an accounting firm, success often depends on the partners’ willingness to accept culture change. Let’s look at a few examples: Specialization — As firms move…
We’ve just completed a series of three blog posts on behavioral interviewing, each focusing on different levels of candidates. It’s a good time to point out that there are actually three key aspects to interviewing: Selling the firm — At the end of the day, when it comes to the best candidates, you are interviewing…
Perhaps the most pivotal role in an accounting & advisory firm is the client service partner, sometimes called a relationship partner. These are generally the audit partners who have overall responsibility for the client relationship. These roles are defined in terms of revenue responsibility, new business, staff development, technical abilities and so forth. But it’s…
Interviewing stakes are highest when the candidate is a lateral partner. This makes the quality of the interview critical. Here are some key issues and questions organized by the prospective role of the lateral partner candidate. Client Service Partner Partners in this role make up the overwhelming majority of the partner group in all firms.…
Building talent from the bottom up is a persistent challenge for accounting and advisory firms. We get the question all the time: “How can we accelerate staff from hours-based compliance work, to being able to deliver real value to clients?” Paradoxically, many Millennials ask the same question in reverse: “How can I quickly develop the…
Several years ago, we ran a series of staff focus groups for a professional services firm that was struggling to engage its staff. It wasn’t a sweatshop by any means. The culture was best described as: (1) high on accountability — aka measurement, (2) driven by utilization — aka hours, and (3) heavily crediting tenure…
When interviewing experienced staff, the key is to understand their behaviors in the context of their experience. Here are three examples of good questions to help you do this. As you read them, you’ll notice that the questions are actually statements rather than true questions. They are open-ended — making the candidate think and synthesize…
Many accounting & advisory firms have programs that give bonuses to staff for sourcing candidates for open positions. In some cases, these programs are highly successful, in many they are not. What makes the difference? The answer is culture. The companies that do this well begin the process before staff join the firm. During recruiting…
Most Accounting & Advisory firms were founded by managing partners who were great rainmakers, developing a disproportionate part of the firm’s new business. Some of these legends are still in place. Most have been succeeded by future generations of managing partners who are heavily involved in firm management, particularly for firms that have reached a…
January is “mentoring” month, the perfect time to begin or renew a mentoring relationship for mentors and proteges alike. Here’s a tip on how to make mentoring work best: tie it to experiential learning. Mentors can do many things — helping their proteges secure experiential learning opportunities and get the most out of them…
Why do larger accounting & advisory firms grow faster organically than mid-size firms? Believe it or not, the main reason is how they develop their managers and their partner admission standards. Back in the 1980s when Big 8 firms first started hiring lateral talent, they applied a new standard: asking lateral senior managers to…
In many ways, entry level interviews present the greatest challenge. Here are a few reasons: The candidates have little or no work experience on which to base probing questions The interviewer needs to strongly sell the firm to candidates who have limited perspective on different firm cultures The generational difference between interviewer and candidate can…
“It’s the staff, stupid”, to use Clinton-like lingo to get to the point. Our clients universally sub-optimize on their greatest asset, their people. Let’s review the elements of a great staff program for the accounting & advisory industry: 1. A strong mission statement and employee value proposition linked to the statement. The specifics will differ…
Fifteen years ago Tom, a partner in a national accounting & advisory firm and leader of a specialty practice group, was attending his firm’s annual partners’ meeting. As he listened to the managing partner Steve’s address on firm strategy, he heard the words: “and partners, we may even tinker a bit with our old friend…
In a large accounting & advisory firm, a partner is the captain of the ship, handling the most complex matters, developing business, thinking strategically about growing the business and delegating thoughtfully to 12 to 15 staff members from director to entry-level who gain strong experiential learning from this model. In a regional accounting &…
As we work with our clients on business strategy, we see a consistent trend: young star performers at the partner, senior manager and director levels who are not being used to their highest potential. The forum for these observations is work-stream meetings where we get to see practice leaders present their business areas and…
By next June, our economy will be 72 months into the current economic expansion. That’s a long time. And the expansion has been heavily stimulated by a lot of government intervention in the forms of hard cash to bail out major financial institutions, low-interest rates and record government spending. We’re not predicting an imminent…
Mid-size accounting firms are beginning to expand their advisory services. This activity, which can make strong business sense, can present some structural and cultural issues that may be easily overlooked. Accounting firms have titles and structures that differ meaningfully from those of advisory/consulting firms. Titles such as senior, supervisor and manager that are pretty universal…
A lot goes into developing a business strategy for these firms. The work needs to be guided by four fundamental principles: 1. The elements of the strategy need to be the right things to make the firm more successful. — This means taking into account the firm’s clients and target clients as well as…
Most accounting & advisory firms with at least 50 partners have implemented some program where partners mentor staff. The quality of these programs, the levels of partner involvement and staff satisfaction vary from firm to firm. Our clients, seeking benchmarks, often ask: what constitutes a great mentor? Partners become great mentors when the partner/protege…
So you want to grow more and better partners? If you’re serious, then be prepared to invest partner time mentoring your senior high potential staff. Not the way most firms do it now, paying lip service to mentoring without real investment. Take a step back to rethink your approach. Then, design the right program…
As midsize regional accounting & advisory firms expand to serve more client industries, they struggle to identify leaders for these new areas. In fact, expansion aside, they may not have enough strong leaders for their existing portfolio of industries. For this reason, it’s important to cluster industries to match a firm’s leadership bandwidth. The…
For staff in accounting & advisory firms, what does best places to work mean? Here’s a list of some common criteria: • Work/life balance • Not a sweat shop • Strong training programs • Great benefits • Fair compensation • Trusting the people you work for • Caring…
It’s time for law firms to reconsider their basic operating model. The long-standing assumption of large and mid-size law firms has been that recruiting the top academic graduates from prestigious law schools is the way to build the strongest firms. Similarly, use of an up-or-out partnership model, which has served firms well for a…
The greying of Accounting & Advisory firms has arrived, and it’s leaving a large leadership shortfall. On a national level, the number of CPA partners over the age of 50 rose to 64% in 2015, bringing these firms to a tipping point. Older partners are working later into their careers, and younger partners are working…
In working on strategic planning for accounting & advisory firms, a key issue is always: moving forward, in which client industries should the firm invest? A quick glance at firms’ websites reveals that most firms are already largely organized by industry — sometimes exclusively. However, these organizational alignments were developed based on firms’ historical…
In many organizations, expectations have moved from “get it done soon” to “get it done now”. This type of environment can cause people to stop asking questions and move right to decision or action. Many times these decisions or actions lead to poor results. And, if questions are asked, many times they are the wrong…
Because of their unique characteristics, nonprofits can require some added leadership development focus before new strategic plans are developed. Often, these organizations are founded by passionate individuals who, over time, may not make the best strategic leaders of their organizations. Or, organizations may bring in “rock star” leaders who can command attention and raise money…
It starts by understanding that there are different kinds of confidence. There is the capital “C” confidence that comes from one’s self-esteem. You know the type, the individuals who are so assured of their ability to be successful that they comfortably admit when they don’t have the answer. And there is another kind of…
Strategic planning is especially important in the nonprofit world. These organizations have similar risks and opportunities as commercial businesses, but they often don’t have the competitive market to keep them “honest”. Or, put a little better, by the time they realize they are in trouble, it is often too late. A few years ago, we…
In our strategy work with regional accounting and advisory firms, one of the thorniest issues is how to migrate the firm’s partners to service line specialties. To partners who have been doing both audit and tax work for their entire careers, the thought of changing now as part of a strategic planning process can be…
Personal competencies are the foundation of a leader’s effectiveness, yet many executives have shaky foundations that challenge their ability to be effective. They can’t easily inspire others. They have difficulty communicating their vision and they lack self-confidence. Most important, they aren’t self-aware of these flaws, despite which they continue to rise to upper echelons of…
Many of us remember the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when U.S. Airways Captain Chesley “Sulley” Sullenberger III safely landed a commercial airliner on the Hudson River. In his recent Forbes article http://onforb.es/1SlzcrJ Sulley shares his belief that it takes more then technical skills and abilities to be a successful leader. He states that “you also…
We regularly assess leadership succession candidates and outside applicants against desired behaviors for a role, determined by using the Bizet Job Activity Rating online job profiling instrument. When we do this, the behaviors where the candidates show weakness are given a lot of scrutiny. Recently, a client executive whose role was going to be open…
Last week, we tested a new concept. We gave a half-day workshop to 12 CEOs and their senior staff members that focused on using increased awareness of self and others to develop understandable messaging for their business strategies. We developed the workshop in response to the CEOs’ consensus that their greatest challenge is not developing…
Increasingly, accounting and advisory firms are looking at their business strategies with a view to driving higher growth and profitability. Developing an effective strategy requires addressing several important, and often difficult, issues. It also requires crafting a strategic plan that the firm’s partners will buy into and effectuate. Over the next few months, we’ll publish…
It was an early summer evening, and I was sitting in a taxicab on my way to Lincoln Center. As predicted, heavy storm clouds were gathering, and the soft din of thunder was rumbling in the distance. Heavy rain was in the forecast, but so far the roads were dry. We were traveling south on…
We asked ten senior HR leaders for their top choices for books to read this summer based on their favorite books. The combined list includes classics as well as new books. We added a few of our own picks. Here’s the list we recommend for Summer 2015 reading! (Alphabetical order.) 10% Happier: How I Tamed…
Last weekend I was walking along the Hudson River behind a family of four — two adults and their children, a boy and a girl that I would guess were ages 8 and 6, respectively. The father, named Steve, was talking to his wife while the boy was walking at her side in an absent-minded,…
Some of the more interesting conversations I’d had with clients in recent years have concerned how much weight quantifiable results and demonstrated competencies should respectively be given in measuring leaders’ performance. The prevalent practices in this area for companies of all sizes and industries range from results/competencies weightings of 100%/0% to 50%/50%. Not surprisingly, the…
On a recent, gorgeous spring day, I was eating a sandwich for lunch on a park bench when a well-dressed businesswoman sat down next to me. She smiled, acknowledged the great weather and asked what I did. I introduced myself and explained that we are strategic leadership advisers. “Funny,” she then said, “that is exactly…
For decades, companies have flip-flopped on the issue of 360 feedback. Some do it a few times then drop it. Others use it only as part of targeted developmental programs and still others just don’t believe in it. The one area of near consensus is to use 360 feedback for developmental rather than evaluation purposes.…
I’ve written several blogs on the importance of developing behavioral profiles of high performing incumbent leaders. The focus of these pieces has been the value of using behavioral assessments to identify future leaders and then training these succession candidates through simulation workshops reinforced by targeted coaching. What about using these profiles to help hire better…
We’ve been stressing the importance of collaboration as a core team competency. Often this competency can seem elusive, even after it’s stressed as a key team operational principle. Here’s a recent example. A team of investors was drawing on its research analysts to support its work. Some of these extended team members collaborated easily with…
I was recently talking to a senior executive of a not-for-profit organization who was expressing frustration over the lack of good performance measures for members of his staff who engage in helping clients fulfill their grant obligations. Some staff members have as few as 15 clients while others have as many as 60 clients. And…
For a change of pace, I’m going to ask you to engage in a short exercise that I learned on the first day of my coaching training at Columbia University. Look at the following list of words, then read them aloud slowly and clearly letting the impact of each word sink in as you proceed:…
We all hear the message: “Don’t think work/life balance, think work/life integration.” This is interpreted to mean that you need to be available 24/7 to do what’s required for work, feathering personal activities between work priorities. At least this has become the expectation. And the possibility of 24/7 connectivity ushered in by the internet and…
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…
Earlier this month, Carolyn Carlson participated in a panel discussion on trends in the consulting industry for TheConsultantLounge. Carolyn was joined by two executive consulting leaders to: share personal insights on the consulting market, lessons learned as seasoned consultants and leaders, and answer the audience’s burning questions. The event was sold out with over 75…
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…
The most rewarding thing about our work is that we are able to help people quickly become more effective in their professional lives. Recently, we have been asked by several smaller companies to help strengthen the abilities of their leaders. While most of our work is with larger companies, we really enjoy working with leaders…
It’s been years since Peter Drucker taught us that culture eats strategy for breakfast. On a more micro level, culture can quickly chew up and spit out even the most talented people who don’t understand and can’t navigate the culture. I saw a great example of this recently. A woman executive I know was hired…
Talent Minute: Moving the needle on accountability within your organization
About five years ago, the concept of focal jobs emerged. Advocates of this concept stressed the importance of identifying the most critical roles in a company and investing development dollars in these roles as well as rigorous planning for successors to the incumbents in these roles. Despite persuasive thought leadership in this arena, the focal…
Cultural deficiencies are often the biggest impediments to business success. Peter Drucker put it well when he wrote: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Yet, despite these time-honored words, companies continue to design and launch ambitious strategies without seriously tackling the cultural obstacles to implementation, mostly because they don’t really know where to begin. There are…
As we spend time with senior executives, advising them, coaching them and facilitating workshops for them, it’s jumps off the page how important passion is to success. To grasp this point, passion must be understood a little differently from its common meaning. Passion doesn’t always mean a visible display of enthusiasm or sheer extroverted energy.…
The New Year is a time for important resolutions and commitments, both personally and professionally. And 2015 is special for leaders and employees. It’s been a long six years since the recession of 2008, and it’s finally over. GDP and employment are on the rise, and a new sense of optimism reigns for the economy.…
Recently, I wrote, Five Steps to Guide Strategic Thinking, a blog post that emphasized the way leaders should organize their thoughts and behaviors in pursuing a strategic initiative. Last week, I was asked a question by a reader of the blog piece: “What precedes this process? Our leaders can think very strategically about their work.…
We’ve been advocating leveraging success in leadership development by profiling successful leaders and using their behaviors as the basis for developing your organization’s leadership competencies. Once established, we teach these behaviors to other leaders and future leaders in workshops, initially adding only a few additional competencies from our leadership competency library. The library contains the…
Appreciative inquiry is a powerful tool for motivating and engaging employees. Instead of asking why something is not working or being critical of an employee’s work, think about taking a different approach. Ask the employee to think about a similar situation where he was successful. Then ask what enabled the success and how he and…
Some of my recent leadership development client work has shined some new light on gender diversity. Much of our time in leadership workshops is spent helping leaders who got recognized earlier in their careers as top-flight subject matter experts learn the softer capabilities needed to be a strong leader. This transition is one that great leaders…
We are often asked how strong leaders can be developed quickly with confidence that they will be successful in the organization. In responding to this question, we always ask three key questions: [list style=”customlist”] 1. What does a strong leader look like today? 2. What would make your leaders even stronger? 3. What is the…
Last week StangerCarlson presented “Coaching Teams in Shared Space” at Columbia University’s 1st International Coaching Conference. Carolyn Carlson moderated a lively panel discussion on improving team performance and the challenges with team coaching. Slide show of the presentation in slideshare embed below. StangerCarlson coaching teams in shared space 10 23-2014 final sm from Carolyn Carlson
During his keynote address at the 1st Columbia University International Coaching Conference, Dr. Warner Burke stressed the importance of learning agility as an executive competency and the difficulty in measuring proficiency at this competency in a statistically reliable and valid way. As I sat listening to Dr. Burke’s presentation, I became aware of an irony…
The last 20 years have been a watershed for leadership development across a broad array of industries and geographies. The emergence of competencies, executive coaching, mentoring, social capital, team building, behavioral role profiling, neuro-science and assessments has provided opportunities for developing great leaders to address increasingly complex business issues with alacrity and confidence. Against this…
Dr. Tom Frieden the Director of the CDC recently commented that the SARS epidemic cost the world’s economy over “40 billion dollars” as a result of the unnecessary restrictions on travel and trade during the crisis: a monumental impact for a disease that was concentrated in relatively few places and was largely resolved quickly. There…
Carolyn Carlson will be moderating a panel discussion at the 1st International Columbia Coaching Program Conference to be held in New York City on October 22nd -23rd. She will be joined by three panelist who will discuss the use of team coaching to drive teams to higher performance levels. Richard Stanger will be among the…
It’s lonely at the top, but it’s not boring. You get bombarded with information from all directions. Everybody is trying to influence you. As a strategic advisor, a big part of my job is to help CEOs get rid of the background noise, look at the critical issues in bright light and make actionable decisions.…
In our study of language, we learn about the different tenses such as present, past, future, subjunctive and conditional. The “negative pregnant” is not on this list. Yet, it is a frequently used tense that your people hate to hear. What is the negative pregnant and how can you avoid it? There are two forms…
Closing your leadership gap requires a strategy.
Now that I have your attention, please listen carefully. Engaging and motivating people is not a transaction. It is a life long mission. Just like romance, an obvious point for anyone who has made a long-term relationship work successfully. I’m reminded of an incident early in my career. I had the good fortune at age…
Boomers and Gen X’s think about Zen. Millennials don’t like Zen, far too passe’. They like Xhil (pronounced zil) a term so new that it’s not even in Wikipedia. Where does it come from, and what does it mean? Xhil comes from exhilarating, or perhaps exhilarated. When Millennials get engaged, they get that Xhil feeling.…
We are often asked to help leaders or teams think more strategically as they do their work. It’s not that they don’t do good work, it just lacks the cognitive structure of good strategic analysis that is more likely to lead to great work. We address these requests by co-creating workshops with the clients based…
Welcome to the StangerCarlson Talent Minute. I’m Carolyn Carlson. A few days ago I received an email from a former colleague of mine after listening to our last Talent Minute post –To be a Great Manager Develop your Coaching Success Competencies. I know that it was meant to be tongue and cheek however it was…
Over the last several months, several middle market companies have asked us to facilitate the process of considering their business strategies. We’ve suggested combining a senior leadership team strategy workshop with getting input from the workforce through surveys and focus groups. This two-step approach has led to robust discussions and significant changes in business direction:…
Welcome to the StangerCarlson Talent Minute. I’m Carolyn Carlon. I recently read a HBR blog by Monique Valcour (July 17th, 2014) titled “You Can’t be a Great Manager if You’re Not a Good Coach”. I totally agreed with her comments; developing highly effective managers has been hobby of mine for many years. I understand why…
Increasingly, I’m seeing companies listing job openings for business partners in both the HR and IT areas. While there are advantages to bringing fresh talent to any organization, in this particular role, it is far better to develop your own candidates. Here are the reasons: [list style=”tick”] Consistency. — HR business partners need strong consulting and…
Increasingly, companies seeing the benefits of executive coaching are building internal coaching capabilities for high potential employees, a group for which it generally is not considered cost-effective to use external coaches. The programs vary widely in their quality. In fact, some have arisen ad hoc, while others have been planned carefully. Few, however, incorporate the…
It’s time to face a new reality: voicemail is dead, killed by Millennials. We all hate to check it and we rarely leave messages. When we see a missed call on our smart phone, we return the call. If we see that a voicemail was left, we probably don’t listen to it if we recognize…
In a recent blog, I talked about creating future leaders by building on successes. I advised doing this by mapping the behaviors of existing successful leaders in the organization with the Bizet Job Activity Rating job profiling tool and using these behaviors as the basis for developing future leaders. I suggested “gently” adding new behaviors…
I recently wrote a blog about the value of team building for consulting teams — including members from both the consulting firm and the client — to help prevent the “breakdown and rescue” that almost always seems to happen at some point during a project. As I pointed out, this costly cycle can be stopped…
We are often asked how strong leaders can be developed quickly with confidence that they will be successful in the organization. In responding to this question, we always ask three key questions: 1. What does a strong leader look like today? 2. What would make your leaders even stronger? 3. What is the best approach…
Recently, a senior talent leader and I were discussing how certain employees are asked by leaders to join teams based on the employee’s reputation from past work. Unlike some other employees, these employees are always in demand for the contributions they make. We described this quality as magnetism. I’ve had similar discussions with other talent professionals over…
By now, almost all companies of significant size have transformed to an HR service delivery model which pairs HR Business Partners with senior line executives leading units of approximately 500 employees. To perform their role effectively, the HR Business Partners must act as HR business consultants to their line clients, bringing talent-related solutions which are…
Earlier this week, I was talking to two company executives about strengthening team performance. They had already put substantial effort into this area and they were not getting results at the desired levels. Specifically, they had trained a large portion of the workforce on expected behaviors of team members and developed ways to measure demonstration…
We’ve been stressing the importance of teams to business success. The benefits of successful teams are clear: Diversity of thought contributing to stronger outcomes Innovation at levels well beyond individual capabilities Better business results Socialization of information to and from stakeholders Experiential learning which adds organizational capability Getting these benefits requires that your teams have…
Recently, I’ve been blogging about improving team performance. The focus has been internal teams, beginning with the senior leadership team. In fact, the principles of team performance improvement apply just as effectively to extended teams. Here are a couple of examples to consider: Consulting teams — When consulting firms do work for their clients, it…
Today, some helpful humor and a preview of thoughts to come. … I’ve been blogging about teams in several contexts: performance, assessments, team building and coaching. A key tenet of our perspective is the importance of the six core team competencies: engagement, collaboration, innovation, trust, empowerment and awareness. Since we’ve promoted these competencies, they’ve begun…
On Thursday, April 24, our CEO, Richard Stanger, will be delivering a guest lecture on the Use of Assessments with Leaders and Teams at the NYU HR Management Masters Program. He will discuss how using specific personality, relationship, behavioral and thinking style assessments can improve leader and team selection & performance. Richard Stanger (@RichardStanger) is a leading thought leader and…
At StangerCarlson. we are constantly refining our approach to our leadership and talent offerings. Our executive and team coaching offerings have several unique characteristics, one of which is how we measure growth 90 days after coaching has finished. The purpose of this approach is to establish that growth and renewal are continuing beyond formal coaching.…
In the last few years, we’ve worked with several middle market companies to design or formalize their talent processes. Some of the companies have been global. There is a clear theme which emerges from this work: find out what’s being done well before beginning the work. A great example of this is performance management. Recently,…
On Thursday, April 10, our CEO, Richard Stanger, will be delivering a guest lecture on the Use of Assessments with Leaders and Teams at the NYU HR Management Masters Program. He will discuss how using specific personality, relationship, behavioral and thinking style assessments can improve leader and team selection & performance. Richard Stanger (@RichardStanger) is a leading thought leader and…
Recently, I’ve stressed how important engagement is as a team competency and discussed how this competency can be developed. Equally important is not to behave in a way which destroys engagement — something leaders do all to often. Interestingly, the source of these damaging behaviors comes from a leading expert in marriage therapy rather than…
I’m preparing to meet with the sponsor team for one of my clients later today. On the team are two senior executives and my client’s HR business partner. We already completed personality assessments, 360s and feedback. We’ve also prepared draft development goals to be addressed in coaching. Today’s main agenda is to have the goals…
Welcome to StangerCarlson’s Talent Minute. I’m Carolyn Carlson. In our recent seminar on Evaluating Team Performance a crowd of over 20 Talent and HR leaders firmly agreed that: Most employees don’t consider the work of teams their highest priority and most employees don’t believe their contribution to teams is fairly measured or valued. At a…
Engagement is one of the six core team competencies. When a team is engaged, team members have open group discussions where they can build on each others’ ideas, innovate and create value. They are able leverage rich diversity of thought. This stands in sharp contrast to teams which work in highly structured meetings making presentations…
We spend so much time focusing on individual competencies — leadership competencies, core competencies and job-related competencies — that the concept of team competencies hardly gets considered. Yet, most important work is done by teams, and without the six core team competencies, the team will under perform. Let’s review these competencies, identify the team behaviors…
Lately, I’ve been blogging on ways to improve team performance, including team coaching. This blog piece discusses the actual process of team coaching, as distinguished from preparation, scheduling, sponsorship and measurement, which I have discussed previously. It focuses on the actual coaching actions and conversations that take place during active team coaching. Our team coaching…
We are regularly asked to conduct team building sessions, usually for senior leadership teams, many of which are global. My first response to these requests is generally “what are you trying to accomplish?” Once we get this answer, we are able to develop the right approach for the specific team. Team building can range from…
Team coaching is becoming recognized as the best way to create high performing teams, beginning with the senior leadership team. Well coached teams learn to exhibit real teaming behaviors: ·Group discussion vs. individual presentations ·Collaborative behaviors vs. siloed behaviors ·Open discussions vs. tightly structured format ·Building on ideas vs. reporting on activities ·Growth mindset vs.…
What keeps Millennials engaged and productive? The opportunity to develop capabilities that employers will value in the future. The requirements of this new generation of knowledge workers are clear: develop me or lose me. A recent HBR blog piece, If You’re Not Helping People Develop, You’re Not Management Material, makes this point most persuasively without…
Studies show that companies with effective boards are significantly more successful. A recent HBR blog piece, The Key to a Better Board: Team Dynamics, really brought this home, stating that boards “that are able to function effectively as a team have an 800% greater impact on firm profitability than any one well-qualified board director.” The…
Data now show what we’ve know for a long time. When it comes to hiring senior leaders, fit trumps skills match by a mile. A recent HBR blog post, For Senior Leaders, Fit Matters More than Skill, makes this case convincingly in pointing out that “of the 40% of leaders who are hired from outside…
We all talk about how important it is to give employees continuous feedback, both positive and corrective. Managers struggle to give any feedback, especially corrective feedback. Paradoxically, a recent HBR blog piece, Your Employees Want the Negative Feedback You Hate to Give, presents data showing that employees want feedback, especially corrective feedback. Why is it…
Sometimes reading blogs can be fun. A recent HBR blog piece, Employees Who Feel Love Perform Better, is a great example of this. It talks about how much better employees perform if they feel loved or cared for. And, I must admit, all other things being equal, a loving workplace will make employees happier than…
A recent HBR blog piece,The Case for Hiring “Outlier” Employees, points to a wonderful practice which SAP and other forward-thinking companies have adopted. These companies have started hiring substantial numbers of employees on the autism spectrum for certain jobs where these individuals can be expected to outperform other employees. These companies, and others who may…
A recent Wall Street Journal Article, Amazon’s Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires, describes Amazon’s highly attentive interviewing process for new senior hires. All candidates must interview with a slate of “bar raisers,” tough interviewers who probe deeply for weaknesses and for compatibility with Amazon’s needs in the open position. It is clear…
Existing practices for managing, evaluating and rewarding employees are coming under attack, and for good reason. For the most part, they do not work. Just yesterday, I wrote a blog piece, Team-Based Performance Management, urging that team performance replace individual performance as the leading barometer of achievement and discussed how such an approach could work.…
Recently, I’ve written several blogs about teams, focusing on the steps to creating high performing teams that innovate and drive business results. These blogs have acknowledged the unfortunate disconnect between performance management, as practiced today, and team-based performance. Put simply, most companies measures and incentives drive individual performance and results, thus undermining strong team behaviors…
Companies pay a lot of attention to behaviors. Desired behaviors, often referred to as competencies, are often published as critical for advancement within the organization. Demonstration of these behaviors can directly affect performance ratings. What does not always get attention, however, is the timing of behaviors, particularly behaviors that are not desired – often called…
Increasingly, important work is being done in virtual teams which do not have the opportunity to meet in person. There are several factors driving this trend: 1. More companies are operating in multiple countries, making it harder for people to meet in person, particularly in today’s cost-conscious environment 2. More companies are allowing employees to…
We all know that big business breakthroughs usually happen in teams. Unfortunately, precious few teams are high performing, building on team members’ energy and ideas to deliver game-changing innovation and exceptional results. Equally surprising is how little companies invest in team development versus individual performance management which further erodes the right team behaviors. Companies are…
Regular feedback to employees outside of the annual review cycle is a rare event in performance management. We hear leadership – both HR and the line – paying strong lip service to managers: “good feedback should be a continuous thing. It’s what we expect of you.” They are right, it should be a continuous thing,…
The use of executive coaches has grown rapidly over the last several years. There are several reasons for this, but probably the most prevalent are the performance and rapid development demands placed on executives. They are expected to quickly be effective in ways that pure work ethic will not address, particularly where interpersonal insights, emotional…
In both goal setting and performance evaluations, there is an ongoing debate as to whether to stress exclusively results or some mix of results and competencies. Companies answer this question in different ways. Those that significantly stress competencies strongly believe that the right behaviors matter as much as pure results, whether financially or project focused.…
This question always seems to get more than its share of attention and emotion: “should we use a three-point scale, a four-point scale or a five-point scale?.” The answer depends on your company’s performance rating history by scale point and on what is intended to be accomplished by any change. Here are the possibilities and…
Lately, it’s become fashionable for leaders to talk about healthy turnover. I hear things like “we’re not losing our best people, just those who aren’t really engaged.” As I listen to these conversations, it sounds like healthy rationalization — a way to avoid feeling bad about the consequences of a disengaged workforce. These statements could…
Most so-called teams do not really function as teams. Instead, they are a group of people working on a project or, perhaps, even leading an organization, who operate fairly autonomously. They do their work, staying in their swim lanes and making sure to contribute to regular team meetings and status updates. Of course, it doesn’t…
For weeks the news media has been buzzing with stories about poor planning for implementation of Obama Care. One Wall Street Journal Opinion piece went so far as to refer to the President as An Executive Without Energy. What’s really surprising is that Americans are viewing this as some kind of unique screw up when…
A recent HBR blog piece, Taking Over from an Incompetent Team Leader, provides some very helpful advice to leaders who are replacing predecessors who were not effective. One of the suggestion is to “explain your behavior; don’t make team members guess.” This is really excellent advice. Believe it or not though, new leaders often struggle…
In recruiting leaders, it is critical to pay close attention to how well the candidates will fit with the other members of the leadership team — a factor that is at least as important as the individual’s skills and experience. A recent Inc. blog piece, The Right Management Team Transforms Chaos Into Calm, discusses the…
The press is having a field day celebrating the demise of a GE-type forced performance distribution program by Microsoft, Here’s To The Death Of Microsoft’s Rank-And-Yank, as well as several other companies. Under the program, the forced ranking of employees by performance ratings was accompanied by a mandate to reward the highest performers and terminate…
I’ve been writing regularly about the challenges of gender diversity in senior leadership roles in the United States. A recent survey conducted by Columbia Business School and the Women’s Executive Circle of New York and cited in a Wall Street Journal Article, Women See Slow Progress In Leadership, clearly demonstrates that things have not improved.…
In so many facets of life, we take things for granted once we get used to them. People are no exception. We get very excited about new relationships whether social, customer (see, for example, When a Company Is No Longer That into You) or recent hires. But, once they lose their honeymoon halo, we tend…
There is a huge gap between talent practices at large companies and those in the middle market. Large companies have gone through major transformation over the last 15 years, moving from manually based personnel processes to web enabled employee and manager self service. This change has allowed these companies to focus their HR teams on…
A recent HBR blog piece, And You Thought the Weekend Was Supposed to Be Fun, based on survey results from Germany, points out that for highly educated individuals, life satisfaction drops significantly on the weekend compared to during the work week. In contrast, lesser educated individuals pretty much maintain their life satisfaction levels over the…
When it comes to Developing managers the stakes are high. Do it properly and your employees will become engaged and make your customers happy. Do it poorly and your highest potential employees will leave and your customers will suffer. Yet, despite the clear evidence of the benefits of strong, engaging managers, most companies do not…
Great leaders are decisive. They consider risks — analytically and intuitively — and are able to make important decisions without costly delay. In fact, decisiveness is a critical measure of executive effectiveness. As with all strengths, however, decisiveness can be used improperly and become a weakness, even a fatal one. This is likely to happen…
We all know people who are so high maintenance that we want to run the other way when they approach. It seems that no issue is too small to complain about as they walk the halls or use digital space to vent. Less recognized are people at the opposite end of the spectrum who shun…
A recent HBR blog piece — Do Customers Even Care about Your Core Competence? — sets the stage for bringing customer experience to the fore in designing talent management initiatives. The focus of the blog piece is that companies all too often think internally when identifying core competence rather than focusing on how core competence…
Let’s be truthful. A significant number of senior leaders lead by intimidation. One of the reasons why Donald Trump’s iconic “you’re fired” became so popular is because it’s exactly what can happen. Once, when I was conducting 360 assessments, a senior leader’s peers and subordinates complained to me that the leader responded to threats from…
When it comes to appointing leaders, we just can’t seem to help ourselves from naming the wrong person for the job. And this is as true for internal appointments as it is for outside hires. There are several reasons for this mistake: 1.Appointing Individual Contributors to Leadership Roles. This is a common occurrence. It happens…
We all know that conflict can be uncomfortable. And we all know people who stir up conflict for the sake of conflict. We do our best to avoid these people. But we need to learn to recognize the difference between good conflict related to ideas and bad conflict related only to personalities. There are four…
Innovation is the life blood of survival in today’s business world. Apple innovated, Blackberry didn’t; Google innovated, AOL didn’t, to give two examples. The question is how to foster innovation, particularly in a public company where existing products can easily trump future ideas, given the constant pressure to meet quarterly earnings expectations. A recent HBR…
A recent HBR blog post, Meet the New Face of Diversity:The “Slacker Millennial Guy, delivers a message of hope that Millennial males, rather than formal diversity initiatives will finally break the glass ceiling for aspiring female executives. The blog post gives examples of male surgical residents insisting on more reasonable work hours and male lawyers…
Good communication is critical to all relationships, business and personal. Sometimes though there are people with whom we just can’t connect, and it drives us crazy. You know that feeling. You want to hang up the phone or run for the door. When this happens, is there much hope for fixing the problem? Often not.…
We look at leadership effectiveness as encompassing three components: personal effectiveness, relational effectiveness and assertiveness. Each of these components, in turn, has five attributes, all or which require well honed and tested skills relating to thought, communication, action, emotional intelligence and energy. In light of our work in this area, it was refreshing to read…
Great leaders are decisive. So why isn’t decisiveness a key criterion in leadership selection? Whenever we conduct focus groups of employees, a major frustration that emerges is leaders, including managers, who just don’t make timely decisions. How did these people get into leadership roles — especially since decision-making style is one of the easiest things…
Is it actually possible that male insecurity is preventing women from breaking the glass ceiling? We’re not sure of the answer in the absence of reliable data, but a recent HBR blog, Men’s Self-Esteem Drops When Their Female Partners Succeed , cites new data relating to romantic relationships. The data shows male self esteem dropping…
Companies keep telling us that, despite their best efforts, they are failing at gender diversity at senior leadership levels. We listen, knowing that their efforts, while well meaning, were doomed to fail. Then we ask “are you willing to do what it takes to fix this problem.” We are assured that they are. In fact,…
A recent HBR piece advises leaders: Be Yourself, but Carefully, proposing that they adopt selective authenticity in their business interactions. The advice is reinforced in a related podcast by one of the authors. Here are some key points from the HBR authors integrated with my thoughts: 1.Always Be Genuine. Don’t make up stories or exaggerate…
We’re all familiar with Pete Seeger’s song set to the words of Ecclesiastes about “a time for every purpose under Heaven.” As the text,which by tradition is read at this time of year, tells us, there is “a time to build, …a time to be silent and a time to speak.” These are ancient lessons…
As consultants who stake our reputations on really making a difference in employee engagement and business results, we are frequently asked “where should we start to drive engagement and performance?” Or, from executives of companies with very established talent practices: “why are we spending so much money on our talent programs and getting so little…
Recently, I watched the movie Goodbye Columbus for the first time since I saw it in the theater in 1969. The romance film is best known for Ali MacGraw’s debut as an actress in a leading role and for its sad ending, in contrast to the happy ending of The Graduate, a much better known…
Ladies and Gentlemen, today we are going to talk about politics. We’ve just finished a grueling New York City Democratic mayoral primary season. The apparent winner is Bill de Blasio, an Italian who managed to get enough votes from the black community to easily defeat the leading black candidate, at least for now (avoiding a…
One of the toughest things for a leader to do is encourage others to speak openly about their ideas, freely challenging the leader’s point of view. After all, we all come to the party with a certain pride of authorship, and while we say we check our egos at the door, this is rarely completely…
Do you love a boss who treat you kindly? Is this enough? This is a critical issue. We spend considerable time focusing on the importance of managers who can engage their people, stressing things like prioritization and availability – because the absence of these traits is so disengaging. But there is another aspect: the seemingly…
Great leaders are great listeners. They encourage others to express their opinions and seriously consider what they hear, even if it challenges pre-existing beliefs http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2013/09/03/6-ways-leaders-can-get-better-results-by-not-talking/. Yet, when we think of great leaders, listening is not the attribute that first comes to mind. Our perceptions of leadership are heavily influenced by Hollywood. We expect leaders to…
As HR Professionals have you ever stood in front of an employee group as you were sharing your company’s new employee development program and you get mostly blank stares, maybe one or two heads nod. I have, and it’s frustrating. It’s time for us to change the dialog; it starts with changing the implied employee…
When managers get frustrated, they sometimes describe their work as herding cats. And the more managers are being asked to manage Millennials the more cats it seems they have to herd. If you’ve ever owned a cat, you know what a challenge that can be. Asked to describe the Millennial population, managers use expressions such…
I’ve written a series of blogs focusing on the urgency of addressing gender diversity in new and customized ways, pointing out that approaches currently used are unlikely to break the glass ceiling http://stangercarlson.com/2013/08/27/developing-women-is-risky-business/ http://stangercarlson.com/2013/08/28/women-in-waiting/ http://stangercarlson.com/2013/08/29/designing-for-women/. I’ve also explained the value of diversity from a business standpoint http://stangercarlson.com/2013/07/24/unlocking-diversity/. Now along comes an HBR blog piece that…
My last two blogs have focused on gender diversity and the need to design the right approach for your company. My message has been to look at so-called best practices, but don’t just copy them. The key to results is within your company rather than by emulating the failed approaches of others. First, I focused…
A recent HBR blog piece, How Women Drive Innovation and Growth, describes just how large a market women represent, controlling an estimated $20 trillion in global consumer spending — a growth market more than twice as big as India and China combined. It then goes on to make the case for diversity. After all, how…
In a most persuasive HBR blog piece: Women Don’t Need to Lead Better Than Men. They Need to Lead Differently, Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, makes a compelling case for greater gender diversity in senior executive ranks. She points out that only 15% to 20% of women are able to reach this level despite…
A recent HBR Blog piece Closing the Chasm Between Strategy and Execution makes a compelling case for strategists and executors collaborating with each focused on assuring that the others are successful. I’d like to build on this case by looking at who the Executors are and what it really takes to be confident in executing…
Don’t get too comfortable with a paradigm. It’s guaranteed to change. For years it looked like Human Resources was an exception. As consulting firms were reorganizing to go to market by industry, their HR practitioners were pushing back hard, claiming that they were in an area where industry did not matter. From their perspective, shared…
Whether it’s a merger, re-organization, or downsizing it is difficult to motivate employees during times of upheaval. Why? Because most leaders are reading from the “playbook” handed to them by Legal and most likely the change is affecting them personally too. In Authenticity and Leadership I share why I believe Authenticity is at the top…
Dear Earthlings, We have been observing your primitive ways from afar for thousands of years. Finally, we are breaking our silence to stop you from silencing the first generation on your planet that reminds us of ourselves. You are on the verge of seriously messing up your future – the very people who will pay…
If you do a little research, the list of desired leadership qualities will overwhelm you. You will beg for a shorter list. So, here it is: 1. Vision — If you don’t have vision, you can’t lead. There are times where vision requires predicting future consumer demand or competitors’ offerings. If you blow this, you…
It is increasingly being recognized that the key to talent management, innovation and business performance is a strong manager cadre http://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastianbailey/2013/08/15/look-after-the-suits-they-drive-competitive-advantage-more-than-strategy-or-innovators/. Here’s my list of the things managers need to do well to effectively engage employees and drive stronger business results: Be Accessible — Employees have no time for a manger who has no time…
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong impulsively fires an employee, Abel Lenz, last Friday for filming Mr. Armstrong during a conference call delivering a tough message about upcoming cost reduction and layoffs. Then the CEO follows-up with a memo of apology. Not surprisingly, the media gets all over Mr. Armstrong describing him as “going viral.” then, perhaps…
To be an Effective Leader you must be Flexible. This means you need to be Resilient, Agile, and Adaptable — 3 leadership traits that demonstrate Flexibility. In prior posts, I shared why I believe Resiliency and Agility are important attributes of an Effective Leader. Here are my thoughts on why Executive Leadership requires Adaptability. In…
I’ll bet you can name the first two great lies without any effort. The third one remains unnamed because nobody is willing to admit to it. Well, here we go: American Business is Great at Managing Talent!!! Yes, that’s the biggest lie possible. I’d sooner believe that then check is in the mail or you…
A recent blog post of ours began the discussion of this topic by presenting the three components of Leadership Effectiveness: Personal Effectiveness, Relational Effectiveness and Assertiveness. This post expands on Personal Effectiveness and its components. It is interesting that a recent HBR webinar relates to the first three components of Personal Effectiveness. It explains the…
In discussing strong leadership traits and manager behaviors, accessibility ranks extremely high as a factor in developing leaders, growing talent and shaping culture. This important behavior needs to be balanced with prioritization, the subject of some of my recent blogs. A recent Forbes blog piece makes the case for accessibility as THE top tip for…
Lately, I’ve been writing about prioritization as an important aspect of leadership, identifying it as one of those skills that virtually never makes it on a critical competency list, yet is just that: critical to leadership effectiveness because of its impact on engagement and productivity. An important aspect of prioritization is the ability to stop…
A change in top leadership is a most precarious time for any organization, including major companies and countries. The risks are portrayed graphically in The Pillars of the Earth, a classic historical novel by Ken Follett, best known for the fictional thrillers he has written over the years. I highly commend it to Boards of…
My most recent blog post discussed the benefits of knowledge workers making better use of time to execute on important priorities. It commented on the role of managers in this process. A recent HBR blog piece provides some good further thought to the role of the manager in helping knowledge workers perform, pointing out that…
A recent HBR podcast talks about the need for knowledge workers to spend more time on things that really matter and less time on the multitude of things that are a lower priority yet take up most of the day. Although not presented as such, the podcast brings into focus a skill that is never…
On Saturday night, I saw Woody Allen’s new film about a woman named Jasmine who, following her husband’s arrest and ruin for defrauding his investors a la Madoff, seeks in vain to rebuild her life in San Francisco. Instead, she devolves to a desperate, borderline state with presumably little hope of recovery. What’s revealed late…
Resiliency is the measure of an executive’s acceptance of realities and, beyond that, the ability to drive business results in this complex world. It has become so critical to executive performance. There is a close connection between Confidence and Resiliency. A recent Forbes blog focused on Confidence as being one of the most important business…
It’s become fashionable to stress Competencies in designing programs for developing leaders, growing talent and shaping culture. Increasingly, demonstrated Competencies are finding their way into the annual evaluation process where their weight can be significant. But what about Skills? Are there Skills that are so broad-based, even transformational, that they deserve the same emphasis? In…
We have engineered the individual performance process increasingly finely over the last ten years, and each new advance in technology helps cut it even finer. It’s time to look at how much value this activity is creating? While I’m not aware of a study that has looked at this issue in depth. The anecdotal evidence…
More and more good ideas are surfacing on how to be a leader who inspires and empowers, completely shedding the command and control approach . Most often the concept advocated expresses the new leadership style as a series of key behaviors by the leader. This checklist approach is helpful. but it is critical to keep…
Mike Myatt’s July 28 Forbes Blog Piece on outdated leadership practices provides a lot of food for thought. He looks at roughly 30 areas of leadership focus and contrasts the traditional perspective with today’s thinking, nicely bundling all concepts into just a word or phrase. It gives us a great snapshot of what’s right and…
Since my last post on Executive Leadership, I have done a considerable amount of reading, listening and learning about what it takes to be an effective leader. My first post on this subject discussed Authentic Leadership, then I discussed the need for Resiliency as a Leader. Now, I am adding Agility to the mix. Agility…
So much energy goes into Developing Leaders, Growing Talent and Shaping Culture. In all the activity, a key point almost always gets lost: You can develop, grow and shape a lot of things in people, but not their values. This means that such things as Integrity, Trustworthiness, Honesty and Truthfulness are inherent in people or…
A recent HBR blog piece makes a convincing case that criticism of ideas in meetings results in much better outcomes than just saying yes to a leaders or a subcommittee chair. In fact, this point is so important that I would go even further: only by accepting — in fact catalyzing — criticism and and…
A recent HBR blog piece talked about curiosity as a leadership trait capable of getting much higher team performance. The main message is to transparently put your views on the table then solicit the views of others with curious questions, rather than rhetorical questions or questions asked merely to gain support for your point of…
A recent piece on the HBR Blog Site discussed a series that litmus tests to help in judging people and their real potential. Examples cited are meaningful listening, giving rather than taking energy and self-awareness. It is certainly possible to take the list of the ten criteria suggested and build it into a structured interview…
I first started using the term “people manager” when I joined IBM over 10 years ago. At that time, I thought the term was different, even interesting. I wasn’t sure why it was so important to distinguish the “people manager” skills from other manager activities. However, I knew it was important, even a pain point…
I’ve already identified this as the leading pain point of senior HR executives. This and several future entries will address this subject in more detail. As Baby Boomers are retiring, employee ranks are thinning, executive layers are disappearing and development budgets are shrinking, the road to executive ascent needs to be shortening. Yet can it?…
A recent Forbes blog discussed how women are reluctant to seek out leadership roles, avoiding these positions in favor of safer career paths. I have witnessed this behavior in a number of situations, in each of which a very qualified woman hesitated to move forward in the same way as men. Most interesting to me…
A recent HBR blog shows data reflecting the low scores that Board members give their companies for Talent Management which Board members, in turn, rate as critical to future success. This makes me wonder how these Board members would rate the Talent Management practices at the companies where they work, usually as senior executives. It’s…
In thinking about what it takes be an effective executive in today’s world, Resiliency comes to mind as a highly valued leadership attribute. Think about it this way: nothing is easy. Competitive cost pressures abound in all industries, new products and services are coming to market at a record pace and, while unemployment is still relatively…
Rarely does a day go by when I don’t encounter an important business executive making questionable decisions about scheduling priorities. Sometimes, it’s the executive’s administrative assistant who is the culprit; other times, it’s the executive himself or herself. Consider what is at stake. An executive’s most valuable personal business asset is time. Using time toward…
I’ve been gathering informal feedback from senior HR executives on their top five pain points related to developing leaders and growing talent. Here are the winners: 1.Accelerated Leadership Development – I’ve already mentioned this in a recent blog post, and it tops the list. As Baby Boomers are retiring, employee ranks are thinning, executive layers…
The word authenticity comes up often in discussions about developing leaders, though real authenticity can be hard to find in many leaders we meet. To be sure, most successful leaders have learned to appear authentic, except that when talking to close confidants behind closed doors, it becomes clear that what the public is seeing is…
A recent blog, Leadership-Why Talent is Overrated, by Mike Myatt in Forbes — So, what role does motivation play in becoming a leader? Some assert that it’s the overwhelming characteristic of leadership. See for example: To them, to be motivated, passionate, determined to get it done, hard working and relentless is the essence of leadership.…
With increasing frequency, as Baby Boomers prepare to retire, senior Talent professionals are citing the absence of an effective approach to accelerated leadership development as their major pain point. As a case in point, recently I was having dinner with a prominent SVP HR and we spent most of the evening on this subject. He…
As part of reviewing a Company’s recruiting process, the senior talent executive broached the subject of reviewing and updating the organization’s competencies – specifically a list of roughly ten behaviors expected of all employees. She pointed out to me that the competencies were probably outdated and should be refreshed. I asked how the competencies are…
Before you can deploy effective talent programs, processes, and practices there must be a common understanding of the definition of talent. Talent can mean different things to different leaders within your organization. Recently, I was engaged with an expert team discussing a client’s desire to use talent as a source of competitive advantage. The executive…
Recently, I was talking to one of my clients in the senior talent position at her company. As we were discussing the role of managers in talent management, the subject came up of teaching managers to have “engaging communications” with their employees. The focus was around what you would expect: delivering feedback, delivering performance results,…
