Leadership is a practice and not an easy one.

As you move up in any organization, it requires far more intention and focus on your part. Most of the skills you need are to deal with the hidden or unhidden emotion of others. Understanding other people’s perspective will be your most valuable skill. You do not have to agree with them, you just need to acknowledge and appreciate their point of view.

Once this skill is developed you are capable of moving mountains based on your ability to listen, understand, and have each individual be heard and honored for their contribution.

Questions build understanding

To begin the practice of understanding requires you to move to “open ended” questions (and open-mindedness). Below is a small sampling of open ended questions:

• What are your ideas about the best way to accomplish this goal?
• You seem passionate about this topic - what do you think we absolutely need to do to move forward?
• I have not heard your thoughts on this topic...

Good management habits are the process, not unchanging content!

Good management habits are the foundation of great leadership. They grow at the intersection of knowledge, skills and desire. Leaders are passionate about acquiring the knowledge available and marshaling the skills needed to get the job done right.

It is work, hard work to cultivate those habits but they pay off by supporting your goals and - by building the confidence to anticipate and look forward to meeting new challenges to the success of an enterprise. Too often, success allows those habits to go fallow. When it is pointed out that they are not practicing the good habits that brought them success, some CEOs respond, “I have a good team around me and they need to practice those habits more than I do” or “I have to focus on strategy” or “My time is needed on building the new.”

Many CEOs think that applying new knowledge and utilizing new skills means losing their identity,...

Flow & Grow or Struggle & Strife

The key to "flow and grow" vs "struggle and strife" lies simply in perception. Leaders who can look their thoughts boldly in the eye and say, "that’s not true" are the ones who set the pace and pioneer new paths. The greatest discoveries and achievements are made by people who are willing to see beyond their perception. Here are three ways to leverage your perceptions:

View your business as organic

Leaders who understand that how they built the business is not how they need to grow it are the ones who create strong sustaining performance. When you change your perspective to see your business as organic then you are able to step in the right practices to consistently focus on what you need to tend to for healthy growth of your business. Here are a few key areas to focus on:

• Define the right daily business practices necessary for healthy growth and outline it so others can follow, participate and enhance them.
• Choose carefully what to...

Goal Setting: It Takes More Than Wanting It

"Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them" - Jack Canfield

Goal Setting

It’s not rocket science, right, setting goals? Yet there is a world of difference between wanting it and achieving it. One of the CEOs we work with has given us permission to share some of his leadership journey and path of discovery. He is an entrepreneur who has created his own recipe for success based on clarity and reality.

Be Clear

One of his key practices for creating consistent and ongoing success is his ability to set clear goals and communicate them to his team. Additionally, he defines how success will be measured -- the milestone metrics -- and what to do when...

Your North Star

Leaders who dare to dream and design ways to bring them to reality have that certain "je ne sais quoi" that speaks to others. It says “there is something cool going on here”… let’s follow and discover it.

Tuning into their inner North Star, Leaders use it to make decisions and continue to move ahead toward the dreams on their horizon. They listen, grow, and learn how to bring their dream to reality in an ever-changing world. Dream makers/leaders know the path to building the dream is not the same as where they began. This truth seems to keep them fresh, clear, and agile to adapt within a dynamic world. Finding new ways to build and achieve each dream.

Passion, drive, aliveness, motivation, engagement, awareness, openness, and curiosity seep through the pores of a leader when they follow their own North Star.

• What dreams/ ideas have been swirling around waiting for the right time, the right budget, the right investor, etc.?
• What permission...

Developing Leaders & Managers

If you are responsible for developing leaders and managers, then you need to be the kind of mentor to put them in situations that allow them to grow new skills that meet the needs of leading people, evaluating situations and articulating expectations. You are their mentor for learning how to make galvanizing decisions in new and challenging circumstances.

Developing leaders and managers takes the following:

• Ability to see raw talent and drive within the individual
• Clarity to know the words they describe for themselves as a leader will take time for them to grow into
• Wisdom to trust that their experiences, learning, and mistakes over time will allow others to grow and develop
• Insight to withhold judgement, temper, impatience, and frustration as others grow and develop
• Fortitude to understand that growth and development require clear expectations, strong values, and consistent feedback (both positive and developmental) on how they are doing
• ...

Compete defined- strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same

"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it." Walt Disney

Collaborate defined - work jointly on an activity, especially to produce or create something

"The secret is to gang up on the problem, rather than each other." Thomas Stallkamp

To Compete or Collaborate, that is the question.  The answer is both are good and can be done is a way that creates new pathways for all.

• There are people who are more collaborative by nature and they achieve great outcomes.
• There are people who are competitive by nature and when they work together as part of a team they create great outcomes.

It is not really collaboration or competition, it is the focus on a clear goal and outcome that creates benefits for all.  We have seen the beauty of this model over and over in many ways:

• The iPod - music...

“If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.”
― Warren G. Bennis

In this world of busyness it is easy to be caught in the current and float, rather than  swim.  To be a leader in your profession or tribe requires coming from your center, your truth.  In addition, you need to be able to clearly articulate what is important and why.  You can no longer "walk the talk". This world needs you to "talk what you are walking" so people can see the path and the road ahead.

“...once you recognize, or admit, that your primary goal is to fully express yourself, you will find the means to achieve the rest of your goals...”
― Warren G. Bennis,

Here are seven practices to keep you center and grounded as a leader:

1. Expectation - understand in every situation what...

“In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital.”
― Warren G. Bennis

Change is around us all the time.   The role of the leader is to define where they want to maintain focus and growth.

These skills become absolutely imperative to guide yourself and others through change:

"The art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings." --Kakuzo Okakaura

1. Awareness - maintain a close connection to the market and your customers.  Understand what is important to them, their vision, what they are investing in, and what keeps them up at night.

2. Purpose - have a clear vision and purpose of your company, organization and/or team so that when the confusion and distractions abound ( and they will), you can come home to your purpose, your vision, your goals.

3. Decisive - the ability to make decisions is imperative to creating flow in any organization.  The truth you need as a leader is that sometimes people will make wrong decisions.  How...

"At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense." - Carl Sagan

One of the keys to true and solid strategic thinking is to let your mind dance in the unknown, the impossible, the improbable, the extreme, the nuts, and the crazy.   By allowing yourself the freedom to explore beyond your frame of thinking, tapping into your counter intuition, you begin to expand the possibilities and probabilities of the future.

As a leader you need to ensure you are constantly testing your limits in this way. To do this requires you to daily attend the university of life.

Below are practices to support your development:

• Surrounding yourself with people you are not comfortable
• Eat foods outside your norm
• Go to the streets/keep your street skills...