It’s All About Your People

The dictionary defines empathy quite simply: “It’s the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” And for most of us, this simple sentence describes one of life’s greatest challenges. We come at everything from our point of view. Our personality, combined with our backgrounds and experiences, drive how we see…

Many leaders often struggle with how to help their people develop and grow. Occasionally, they find themselves trying to change things about a particular employee that simply can’t be changed. Mark G. Gardner, CEO and Founder of Avatar and Vistage member, has developed a model to better understand the primary…

How a Bold, Curious Leader Turned Laclede Chain Around In my new book “On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights,” I share a story about a client, Laclede Chain, that was “on the brink.” Stuck or stalled, however you describe it, Laclede had grown and captured market share but then reached…

"A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together." --Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe A diverse Executive Team of talented, strong, diverse individuals is a great thing, right? Diversity can promote passionate discussions, provides multiple perspectives, create a richer range of options, and, ultimately produce better decisions.…

At a recent workshop, I spoke to a roomful of Human Resources directors about Blue Ocean Strategy® and how it was relevant to their roles in organizations that are changing. Their biggest challenge, they said, was less about adapting their strategies or enabling their organization to execute on new strategies. Rather,…

CEOs and executives typically spend much of their leadership time at the head of a successful ship. But when it becomes necessary to adapt to change, they have a hard time steering that ship when the market winds shift and they need to change course. Do they need to add…

We are wired as social beings, with a strong need to connect and belong. In every interaction with your employees, you are either creating a psychologically safe or psychologically harmful environment for them. In his book, Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn…

Leaders are like fruit - you are either ripening or rotting. In today's dynamic and rapidly changing environment, no one can remain perfectly "ripe." If you try to hold the line and remain static, your organization (and world) move past and you fall behind and begin to decline. Consider this…

“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”  Charles Brower or Ovid How do you receive new ideas? Leaders know that ideas…

I wish I had a dollar for every time one of my Vistage members says that “good employees are hard to find.” It’s easy to know when you do have one. They consistently exceed expectations and work well with others. But, what exactly makes a high-performing employee? Not surprisingly, the…