Coaching for Leaders

Leaders Aren't Born, They're Made

MemberCast 11: How to Accelerate Your Learning

Three actions to accelerate your learning:

  1. Approach leadership development as a crafter, not as a consumer. Be intentional about producing great learning for yourself be being equally intentional about what you listen to, read, or spend your time consuming.
  2. Don’t confuse quantity of information with learning. Reduce your inputs so you have more bandwidth to go deep.
  3. Make your learning actionable. Stop after you’ve read, watched, or listened to something and make one commitment, just a small one, that you can move on right away, to get the momentum started.

MemberCast 10: Three Secrets of Great Delegation

Executive coach Bill Bliss says,

The number one role of any leader is to identify and prepare their successor.

Begin with these three practices:

  1. Clear expectations on the outcome.
  2. They put together the initial project plan (not you) and come back to you for alignment and coaching.
  3. You decide in advance when you’re checking in and keep to that schedule — and avoid all the politics of micromanagement.

MemberCast 9: How to Make Better Decisions

Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic, says:

Leadership can be lonely, and the only way to overcome that loneliness is to surround yourself with truth tellers and people who care about you.

Take one of these two actions:

  • Engage an ally this week that will help you make a better decision.
  • Track down an opponent that will challenge you to think practically and bring out the best in your work.

The Benefits of Rookie Status

rookie

When I first picked up Liz Wiseman’s book Rookie Smarts* a few months ago, this quote hit me square in the face:

While many corporate training and development programs are anchored in aspiration-based learning, the reality is that we respond better to desperation-based learning.

I’ve transitioned much of my client work in recent years to address times of struggle. Liz reminded us how essential it is during struggles to ask questions — and be transparent about what you don’t know.

Here are the most useful links from this episode:

If Liz was helpful, these episodes will be too:

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Leadership Development & Org. Politics

leadership development

On the first Monday of every month, Bonni and I respond to listener questions. This month, we shared thoughts on leading change, leadership development, organizational politics, and certifications.

Here are the most useful links from this episode:

If our responses helped, these episodes will be useful too:

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Your Permission to Fail

permission to fail

My parents own a 1999 BMW 328i convertible. For reasons I won’t bore you with, it had been many years since I’d driven it until recently. When I did, I was thrilled to discover my Garth Brooks Greatest Hits CD still lodged in the CD changer.

I listened to his song, “Standing Outside the Fire.” Here are two lines:

Life is not tried, it is merely survived
If you’re standing outside the fire

If you’re looking for an example of a leader who standing right in the fire, trying each day, you need look no further than Kristen Hadeed. On this week’s episode, she told us how she built a business on being real, making mistakes, and perhaps most importantly, just trying stuff.

Here are the most useful links from this episode:

If Kristen inspired you, these episodes will help too:

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