“I want to be a great leader. How do I do it?” Today, most of the people who ask that question are looking for a magic answer. They won’t say it out loud, but they want a “hack,” something that will make everything happen quickly and painlessly. There ain’t no such thing. So put away the idea of a quick  »  Read More

Independent business blogs are blogs that aren’t supported by an organization like a magazine, newspaper, company, or business school. Those people provide lots of great content, but they don’t need any additional exposure. In this post, every week, I bring you posts of quality from excellent bloggers that  »  Read More

There are, conservatively, 300 gazillion books published every year. No one has the time to list them, let alone read them or review them. That’s a problem because there’s a lot of value in many books you may not hear about because of the clutter.  “Short Takes” is my humble effort to cut through  »  Read More

When it’s time to talk to a team member about performance or behavior, you’ll get better results if you do it without the adjectives. Your job is to describe the performance or behavior and their results so you and the team member can have a conversation about how things will change. When you use adjectives  »  Read More

I am blessed with a fairly distinctive bass speaking voice. That was a good thing when public speaking was one way I made my money. My speaking voice opened up opportunities for me. It was part of the reason I wound up doing a short commentary segment on my local NPR station. I’ve learned to use my speaking voice  »  Read More

Independent business blogs are blogs that aren’t supported by an organization like a magazine, newspaper, company, or business school. Those people provide lots of great content, but they don’t need any additional exposure. In this post, every week, I bring you posts of quality from excellent bloggers that  »  Read More

Leaders are readers. Reading helps you discover ideas to try and expand your mental models. In this post, I point you to reviews of recent business books. You’ll find pointers to reviews of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, Leadership to Last: How Great Leaders Leave Legacies  »  Read More

Conversation is a boss’s power tool. Conversations are the most effective way to influence behavior and performance. One-way communication is not a conversation. Only conversation is conversation. This is only one of 347 tips in my ebook, Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time. Just promoted from individual  »  Read More

It had taken a couple of months to get to this point. It all started when our year-and-a-half-old son had diarrhea. It got worse. We took him to a local hospital, but they couldn’t figure out what was going on. He kept getting worse until even Jell-O went right through without changing color. The doctors were  »  Read More