Category Archives: Leadership

What Servant Leaders Do

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I love to learn about leadership. I’m always for looking for ways to improve as a leader. I recently completed Ken Blanchard’s book, “Leading at a Higher Level” and in it Blanchard devotes a whole chapter to a specific type of leadership he calls, “servant leadership”. Servant leadership may seem like an oxymoron, but if you dig a bit deeper it isn’t. As a leader you should be serving those you lead. An immature person who is in leadership can begin to think that their direct reports are there to serve THEM. This is the opposite of humility. The ego is inflated. The opposite is actually true. Just because you may be high up in an organization or that you have folks reporting Read more [...]
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Watch Out For Your Blind Spots

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If you’re like me you have blind spots. You’re doing your thing, living your life, then WHAM something hits you and you realize that you had a huge blind spot about something. For me, it’s usually has something to do with the way that I relate to others. My personality type causes me to have a weakness in this area. When you’re in a leadership role you need to be more and more aware of the affect your words and deeds have on other folks. So how do you deal with blind spots? I’ve got a few simple ways… 1. Be honest with your self No one is perfect. One of my early blind spots was that I thought I was always right (which is completely ridiculous by the way). As a young lad, Read more [...]
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11 Barriers to Change

by Posted under Company Culture, Leadership, Managing Change | No Comments
I’m reading Ken Blanchard’s book, “Leading at a Higher Level” and one particular section really hit me. In chapter 10, Blanchard talks about “Organizational Leadership” and why leading change is so important. No organization is perfect and a leader must strive to continually move the organization in the right direction. Sometimes that involves small changes and other times it involves drastic moves. In both cases the need to mange change effectively is a skill set every leader needs. Here’s a list of 11 Predictable Reasons Why Change Efforts Typically Fail (again from Blanchard’s book). 1. People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing Read more [...]
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How Understanding Your Personality Can Make You a Better Leader

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I just completed my 7th book of the year, “What’s My Type?” by Hurley & Dobson. I’ve always been interested in understanding personality types ever since I first discovered the Myer’s Briggs personality typing reading the book “Type Talk”. It was very revealing for me being an introvert and lover of science, the book helped me to understand my own personality and how I relate to others (pretty important for an Introvert as especially important if you’re a leader and manager of people). In case you’re wondering, my Myers Briggs profile is INTJ. Hurley & Dobson’s book focused on the Enneagram, which is another method of understanding personality types. The book describes Read more [...]
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Insights on Leadership from Inc

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A recent article in Inc magazine, Bob Sutton was asked some interesting questions about leadership…here some of what he had to say. “In tough times, what leadership traits are the first to go out the window? The ability to look at things in a cognitively complex way. The more stress you are under, the more you oversimplify things. You tend to grab the first decision. It’s really easy to become selfish and stupid. Look at Tony Hayward’s performance after the BP oil spill.” This quote really spoke to me. Mr. Sutton’s comment is really a combination of two things – (1) decision making and (2) character development. I’ve recently been involved in some executive coaching. Read more [...]
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Introverted or Extroverted – Which Are You and Why?

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I wrapped up reading my forth book of the year recently: Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. The author investigated the contrast between extroverts and introverts and sighted several studies which showed the biological cause for these two general personality types. One of the most interesting chapters focused on the Wall Street mortgage meltdown and how introverts and extroverts approached the situation. According to the author, each personality type processes dopamine differently. Specifically how introverts and extroverts respond to the prosect of a reward. The author interviewed Dr. Janice Dorn, MD, pHD. Dorn explains that how our brain structure Read more [...]
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