Leaders Live in A Glass House with Arjan van Weele

Arjan van Weele, a Professor of Purchasing and Supply Management living in the Netherlands, discusses his perspective on leadership competencies that apply for any leader, no matter where you are within your career journey. Interview Summary JH: The Fourth Industrial Revolution brings unique and new dynamics when it comes to leading. There is a new business context that is happening worldwide,…

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Is Leadership Development the Answer to Low Employee Engagement? (Yes.)

This White Paper is excerpted and adapted from Ultra Leadership: Go Beyond Usual and Ordinary to Engage Others and Lead Real Change (Giuliano, Lioncrest, 2016). Where are we? 90% of leaders think an engagement strategy is important while only 25% of organizations have one (ACCOR). Research by Gallup, as reported in The State of the American Workplace in 2013, discovered that roughly 70% of…

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Thought Leadership – Piercing The Bubble

If you value your own opinion more than others do, you might be suffering from a common form of self-delusion. Referring to yourself as a thought leader makes you a tone-deaf narcissist; not necessarily a great thinker. For my part, I’m in the process of trying to eliminate the term “thought leadership” from my vocabulary. This week, after months of reflection, I’ll be instructing our team to…

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6 Communication Habits of Extraordinary Leaders (and How They Manage Conflict)

Like him or not, in my view President Obama is the epitome of a master communicator. Next time you see him on television notice his use of communication strategies including body language, voice inflection, gestures, and the intuitive ability to establish and maintain trust. Communication is critically important for personal and professional effectiveness. In my experience as an executive coach…

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Bad Leaders Don’t Forgive

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.” ~Mahatma Gandhi Today I’m writing about a topic that is rarely talked about in the leadership domain, especially amongst corporate leaders. Now, before you poo-poo the idea, please allow me to explain further.  In my opinion, forgiveness can’t be ignored, because to do so is to defy a natural law like gravity. Forgiveness…

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Leadership And Making Choices

Choice; it’s a simple, yet critical aspect of leadership. Academics and business theorists often gloss over the basics of leadership preferring to trivialize their importance. It’s far too easy for those with an elitist approach to leadership to dismiss simply as sophomoric, and obvious as irrelevant - nothing could be further from reality. Leadership has little to do with complex theory, but…

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Leadership Isn’t About Checking Boxes

Today’s post is a short rant, but one every leader should take to heart – STOP CHECKING BOXES. Leadership isn't about checking boxes, anyone who believes leadership can be reduced to task management is simply flawed in their thinking. Here’s the thing - you can manage to a list, but you certainly cannot lead to a list.  A check the box approach to leadership accomplishes only one thing – it…

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A Leadership Job Description

When was the last time you read a leadership job description? We have job descriptions for every position under the sun, but I’ve yet to see one for leaders. Virtually every job description you’ll read lists “leadership ability” as a quality/characteristic/attribute that is valued, and in fact, most list it as a requirement. So why is it we place so much value in leaders, when we can’t even…

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Great Leaders Are Interesting – Are YOU?

Let's face it - the best leaders have always grabbed our attention and piqued our imagination. They have a way of captivating, fascinating, and intriguing us. It’s the interesting people with whom we want to engage, as they’re the ones who inspire and motivate us to be better and do more. The simple truth is few of us desire to be led by those whom we don’t find interesting. So my question is…

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Leadership – It’s About The People

If you think leadership is about you, your ego has led you astray. Leadership has little to do with you and everything to do with those you lead. If you think leadership is about the bottom line, think again; it's about the people. Without people, there is no bottom line. Closely examine the core characteristics of great leadership, and you'll find it’s not power, title, authority, or even…

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Leadership and Resourcing

It's not what you have, but what you're able to make out of what you have that matters. Every great leader understands the importance of creating leverage via proper resource allocation. The best leaders possess an innate understanding of how to create resources where none exists - they know how to deploy and redeploy resources to maximize opportunities and to minimize risk. So my question to you…

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When Humor Isn’t So Funny

The old saying "everybody loves a comedian" has regretfully given birth to a time where everybody thinks they're a comedian. Sadly, what many have failed to realize is the old saying noted above was meant to be sarcastic...We all love good humor, but the truth is all humor is not good. The timely and appropriate use of humor is an asset to any leader. Likewise, distasteful or inappropriately…

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Leadership & Toxic Work Environments

I have read a tremendous amount of information over the last several months on the topic of toxic work environments. While these articles tended to stir the pot a bit, they were in my opinion mostly missing the mark. The articles should have been written on the topic of poor leadership. Toxic work environments can only exist where a lack of trust and respect are present, and this can only occur…

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Looking For Leadership

Really? Identifying leaders? Have we really degenerated to this point? News Flash – If you have to look for leadership it doesn’t exist… Today’s post is not going to sit well with many in the leadership profession, but then many of my posts seem to have that effect. My premise is a simple one - Leaders need no identification as they instinctively and inevitably make their presence very well…

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Leadership Self Examination

Are you a good leader? Want to find out? If you're looking to benchmark your leadership ability the following self-examination will give you a baseline to build from. While this test is not as detailed as more comprehensive assessments, I have nonetheless found it to be fairly thorough. That said, any self-exam is only as good as the honesty of those taking the test. If you check your ego at the…

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Leadership & Veterans Day

Today's post is part tribute, part rant, and part leadership tutorial. The tribute is to commemorate the celebration of Veterans Day, the rant to vent some of my pent-up frustrations about what I view as some disturbing trends, and the leadership tutorial to share what I believe our business leaders can learn from their military counterparts. While my thoughts may seem to be a bit fractionalized…

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