What happens when an employee is financially ready to retire but hasn't decided when to leave? Sometimes the answer is TBD: Two Bad Days. Here's what retirement, employee retention, and a full sales pipeline have in common.Read More
When leaders catch every problem their team throws at them, they may unintentionally train people to stop solving problems themselves. Learn how to build accountability, coach stronger problem-solvers, and stop becoming the Chief Problem Solver.Read More
When every problem lands on your desk, solving it may be the fastest answer, but it’s rarely the best one. Great leaders coach people to bring their thinking along with their problems.Read More
Good work doesn’t always speak for itself. Managing up means understanding what your leader values, communicating what matters, and making it easier for them to make good decisions.Read More
A client told me something recently that I haven’t stopped thinking about. We were talking about what coaching has done for him over time, and he shared an analogy that captured it better than anything I could have written myself. He compared having an executive coach to teaching someone to ride a bike. At first,...Read More
I never expected a dying tree in my backyard to teach me something about workplace culture. But after years of replacing trees, hiring landscapers, testing soil, and spending money trying to fix the problem, I finally realized something leaders often miss: sometimes the problem isn’t what you’re planting. It’s the environment you’re planting it in....Read More
Great leadership coaching isn’t about doing the work for someone—or disappearing once they find their balance. The Bicycle Test shows why lasting change happens when support continues long enough for new behaviors to become habits.Read More
I was sitting in church this weekend when my pastor asked a question that stopped me mid-note-taking. “When you’re about to get good news and bad news,” he said, “which do you want first?” He asked the congregation to raise their hands. Overwhelmingly, people wanted the bad news first. Then he made a claim that...Read More
Organizational change rarely fails because leaders choose the wrong strategy. More often, it fails because organizations mistake discomfort for failure. Every meaningful transformation creates resistance before it creates results. Ironically, I learned one of the best lessons about leading change while sitting in my orthodontist’s chair. Eight months into braces, I thought I knew what...Read More
There are many gurus out there who say “eat the frog” first thing in your day, especially in sales, getting the hardest thing or the thing you dread out of the way to ensure it gets done. I’ve taught this for years. I’ve tried it myself. It works, in the sense that the hard thing...Read More