“Brutal honesty” is supposed to be a good thing. Lots of bosses pride themselves on it. But gentle honesty is better. Honesty is good. You want to be honest with team members about their behavior and performance. But for most bosses most of the time, the more brutal the honesty, the less likely it is to be  »  Read More

Thomas J. Watson, Sr. knew a thing or two. He started admonishing his staff to “think” while he was still at NCR. Later “Think” was trademarked by IBM and became the company’s official slogan. Watson knew that we all do too many things without thinking or without thinking about the possible  »  Read More

When I was a boy we didn’t have a lot of money. We ate well, but there was a lot of tuna-noodle casserole and a lot of leftovers. Actually, other people ate “leftovers” and it was a bit of a downer for them. At our house it was “eating Creole” and we looked forward to it. My grandfather had  »  Read More

Want to be a great boss? Spend time talking with your people. Sure, Tweets and emails and text messages are important, but conversations are the real power tool. If you touch base often with your people, you’ll have conversations naturally, because that’s what people do. Those natural conversations will be about lots  »  Read More