Perspectives
The Rise of the Bosshole
I was procrastinating this morning and ended up watching a video that featured Kevin O'Leary (aka Mr Wonderful) as he waxed poetic about being a Bosshole. I never thought I would see someone actually be proud of this. In leadership parlance, one of the marks of a good...
Cooperating with your competition
Spoiler alert - Do not read this if you intend to watch the Tour de France later today. Today's Tour de France was an amazing spectacle of how you can succeed by cooperating with your competition. In fact in the Tour, if you want to win, you must cooperate with your...
Hiring and the Art of Selection
I watched an excellent video today with Mario Laudi and Kristina McDougall of The Laudi Group. While the topic is about hiring, I think it is an excellent perspective on what you must have to get a new job and succeed in a small company. https://vimeo.com/69318104...
Nenshi for Mayor (of Toronto)
As I watched Rob Ford talk yesterday about the Great Toronto Flood I couldn't help but compare him to Naheed Nenshi. (Smaller city, bigger flood.) Without trying to bash Ford as there are enough people to do this, I tried to figure out what makes Nenshi such a good...
What’s up with teamwork?
Why is it that managers think teamwork is better than employees do? Everyone says that managers are oblivious to reality and don't really know what's going on in their companies but until now, I have yet to see this reflected in research. We just surveyed 500...
Creating a dynamic corporate culture
I've had a few interesting discussions about corporate culture recently and how it gets reinforced in an organization. One group I talked with has a quarterly contest in which employees get nominated by their peers for work that displays their corporate culture. One...
Two stories about communication
I was talking to several people (which I do from time to time) and heard two great stories about companies whose communication with staff is exemplary. In the research I'm doing, this is coming across as one of the biggest complaints that people are having, employees...
Leadership Process Redux
The research and training I'm doing has made me realize that it's not enough to train someone to be a better leader, you have to give them a forum in which to lead. You have to give them a structure within which they can use their skills and behaviours. You need to...
Leadership Process
Whether you believe in Trait Theory, Skills Theory, some behavioural theory of leadership or whatever, the problem remains that if you don't have a leadership process built then you won't do a very good job of it. Please forgive the references to soccer but it's much...