Three Modern Leadership Lessons from Greek Mythology
The Trojan War provides great leadership lessons for the Greeks that are still relevant today. This one comes from before the Greek Army conquered the City of Troy. Achilles had just given up his life in the war. His suit of armor was to be awarded to the most valued living soldier in the Greek army. Odysseus and Ajax both …
Read MoreDoes Leadership Make You Feel Like a Jerk?
“Leaders don’t ask if they have to do the assignments,” I barked the other evening at a participant in our Tribal Leadership Approval Program. Immediately, I wished I’d held my tongue or spoken a little more gently. Perhaps I could have asked an open ended question inviting the group to explore their own relationship to leadership, authority, and “have to …
Read MoreWhy There Are No Silver Bullets
My CBS Money Watch blog this week focused on fixing your company. I mentioned in that piece that many people will object to my language, saying: “isn’t it better to instead focus on “what is working” or “let’s stay positive and appreciate what is right with our company.” This objection has been gaining ground in the last few years, and it’s …
Read MoreDave’s Really Bad Day: A Prius, An Ambulance and UCLA
It’s true what they say about car accidents. At least the bad ones. Or at the least the only bad one that I’ve had—last Wednesday night. I don’t remember the Prius taxi cab turning to get on Southbound 405 in Los Angeles. I don’t remember the “large” or “enormous” Mercedes turning into us (the taxi driver and me). I don’t …
Read MoreAn Empirical Life
This week, I wrote two blogs. CBS Money Watch focuses on the mindset of great leaders, and paints a picture of what companies would look like if Empirical Leaders ran things. The Huffington Post goes deep into what an Empirical Leader would look like, and poses a test to see if you are one. As a summary of those two …
Read MorePersonal Lessons from Lonmin
My CBS Money Watch blog post this week focused on the recent violence and related tragedies at Lonmin in South Africa. While working on The Three Laws of Performance with my co-author Steve Zaffron, I spent weeks at the company in 2006. That trip was transformational to me. On the one hand, the optimism of the people was moving. On the …
Read MoreRule #1 of Communication: How to Save the World
Rule #1 of communication is to say something in real time about what bugs you. If something another person does bugs you, you’ve got about a week to say something before the issue sinks into your soul and rots. It’s easy to say “communicate in real time,” but much harder to do it, and harder still to do it well. …
Read MoreThe Two People, and Three Months, that will Change Your Life
In this week’s CBS Money Watch blog, The Most Important Message to Leaders, I wrote about three factors of iconic leadership: your core values, great gift, and cross-trained intuition. The challenge you’ll have is that it’s hard—almost impossible—to find these three elements on your own. The obvious advice is: have a partner. We’ve studied two-person relationships for years at CultureSync, …
Read MoreWhat I Learned, and Didn’t, From my Personal Assessment
When Dave first suggested that we learn a bit about the assessment approaches used by Dan Kaufman, and Shannon Waller (see Dave’s CBS Money Watch blog, Finding Your Great Gift, for the details), my first thought was “ugh, another assessment to add to my collection?” You see, I know my MBTI, DiSC, Colors, MBS, CPI, LOTR, and a few other …
Read MoreMore on Micro Strategies
My blog post this week on CBS Money Watch focuses on how to use the micro strategy model to do what leaders and action heroes do, over and over again. The purpose of this supplemental blog post is to give the background on the roots of this model, offer a workaround for when you don’t have enough assets, and give …
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