“Git-R-Done”: Why Making Things Happen is Harder Than it Sounds “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale In any given workday, anyone in a leadership role needs to Get Things Done (manage tasks and advance projects) and Make Things Happen (lead others to achieve results). Yet anyone experienced working within [...] Read More>
Leadership Blog
Going Beyond the Script
Going Beyond the Script You know WHAT to say – but HOW will you say it? When faced with reorganization or layoffs, managers and executives are generally provided with scripts to guide the difficult conversations that they will have with affected staff members and teams. Those scripts provide a guideline and an element of predictability [...] Read More>
The Creative Act of Leadership
The Creative Act of Leadership This article originally appeared in the Ottawa Business Journal’s online edition during the week of March 26, 2012. Do you think of leadership as a creative act? Creativity is a process of developing something new that has value or use. Leaders are constantly challenged to generate new ideas and new [...] Read More>
Creating the “Light-Bulb Moment”
When was the last time you had an “a-ha” moment? You know – one of those occasions when a flash of clarity suddenly illuminated your mind and helped you resolve a lingering problem or imagine a brand-new approach to things. Think about where you were when it happened – what was the context? Chances are [...] Read More>
The Flow of Leadership
“In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.” – Lao Tzu In a recent Executive Pulse leadership call, a group of senior leaders from different countries and sectors discovered that they have similar experiences around what we’ll refer to [...] Read More>
Trying to “Win Hearts & Minds” as a Manager? Don’t Waste Your Time
If you’ve spent any time at all in management – and in management courses – you have likely encountered the expression that good managers are able to “win over the hearts and minds” of the people they need to influence. “Winning over hearts and minds” may express every manager’s Holy Grail – but it’s a fundamentally flawed goal... Read More>
