Everywhere you look today you can find discussion about skills (more so than competencies, which we will get into later). There is the need to upskill, re-skill, future-skill, and of course, the looming workforce skills gap crisis. …

While there’s always been a need for companies to transform to compete and grow, the pandemic pushed many companies to make quick transformations to survive. Considering that most transformations fail, what separates successful transformations from failures? Without leaders setting the strategic direction, operationalizing decisions, and energizing the workforce, successful transformation…

I recently facilitated a discussion with a group of senior leaders about their business priorities. I asked them, “What key challenges is your business facing?” The group shared an influx of challenges, naming 18 different business priorities, many of which revolved around developing leaders. But can you guess what challenge…

As I’ve watched numerous new CEOs step into their roles, one of the biggest surprises for a lot of them is just how many different hats they have to wear. It’s almost like having entirely separate CEO leadership personas for different moments. The need for these different personas — all…

Last month I was facilitating a leadership development course when I was asked a provocative question: “Why should I care about organizational and leadership culture?” At a time when many organizations cite talent as their greatest challenge, we can easily find ourselves occupied with managing important operational tasks. Yet there…

Whatever a leader is expected to accomplish, they must do it while working with others, and to accomplish that, the leader must effectively interact with others. This is where the “basics” come into play, and why they should not be forgotten. Building a case for the basics The basics are built on the premise that there…

Creating a coaching culture is a high priority for many HR teams. The problem? Some HR teams go about building a coaching culture in the wrong way. They coach and train top-level leaders about how to coach effectively and why a coaching culture is important. …

When my bright and adorable nieces were five and eight years old, they and their parents came to visit me and my husband at Christmastime. All the way from Tennessee to Pennsylvania. We four grown-ups would be sleeping in the main floor bedrooms of our one-story house. The two kiddies…

How do you feel about feedback? Does the word “feedback” conjure up negative feelings? Maybe you’ve received feedback that has been damaging. Or maybe you struggle to share meaningful, effective feedback in the workplace. Many leaders I work with find giving feedback difficult; they avoid it because they don’t know…