The late James MacGregor Burns, Ph.D. wrote in his seminal 1978 book, Leadership, “If we know all too much about our leaders, we know far too little about leadership. We fail to grasp the essence of leadership that is relevant to the modern age and hence we cannot agree on the standards by which to measure, recruit, and […]
Category: Management
A Ladder of Inference is Made of Values
How do we make sense? Researchers and scholars have been trying to understand how we make sense of our experiences for ages. Chris Argyris and Donald Schoen created the ladder of inference model to describe human decision-making. This model shows how we become consciously aware of available data and attribute meaning to that data, ultimately […]
Warning: This is a POOPy Post on Doing Your Business
“If you want to be the boss, you must deal with a lot of sh#t!” said my usually reserved Dad, who was then President of Dix Enterprises, Inc., a mid-sized athletic equipment reconditioning company. I worked with my Dad the month before I started graduate school, and I had asked him what it was like […]
Leader Has Become Meaningless
Reading LinkedIn posts on #leader and #leadership has me frustrated,confused, and more than a little discouraged. Most people have no idea what the words leader and leadership mean. Do we even understand what we are talking about regarding leaders and leadership? Merriam-Webster offers the following two definitions of the word leader relevant to business usage: […]
How to Create Excellent Performance
What Does Excellence Look Like? “I don’t understand why three of my sales reps can be so much more successful than the rest of my team,” shared my coaching client, who is a senior sales manager at a large international firm. “What do your rock stars do differently than your garage band players?” I asked. […]