It’s All About Your People

I was only 26 and excited about my new role as Controller. As a first time manager, I was driven by a desire to be a leader who both listened to, and acted on, my employees’ problems. I encouraged everyone to bring me their unsolved problems. One after another, I…

  Congratulations! You finally realized that your business can’t grow by doing everything yourself, and you have started to build the team of Executives that you always wanted. Now, how do you manage them?   Imagine the following scale: Full empowerment Aka abdication Micromanagement   On the extreme left is…

How frequently do you provide or ask for feedback? In Vistage, we believe that feedback is a gift, and we give it liberally. It is core to how my members improve, and it enables them to see situations from new perspectives. Yet, most of the CEO’s and leaders that I…

“First, you have to understand yourself, because the hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself .” Bill George. True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership Can you remember a leader whom you trusted? Who was consistent? Who honored their personal values and motivations regardless of the situation? If…

In 2010, Tony Mazzella had an insight during one of his Vistage meetings.  After hearing one of our expert speakers, he realized that the culture that helped create his successful business had changed and he had multiple cultures because of recent acquisitions.  His company had become too internally focused and…

Boaz Rauchwerger, an award winning Vistage speaker, recently spoke to one of my Peer Advisory Groups.  He reminded members that regardless of how you generate revenue,  “You are in the people business, and to be successful, you need the cooperation of others.”  To create cooperation, you must show a genuine…

Vistage CEO Coaches recommend that their CEO and Senior Executive members meet monthly with each of their direct-reports for a developmental one-to-one (“121”) meeting . While very important, sometimes, these meetings just don't work and you may find yourself dreading a meeting with a certain direct-report. Do you wonder why,…

    So far we have covered the first two ingredients of asking open questions. The third ingredient is the easiest. It is the technique or how you word the questions.  When asking open questions, avoid all traces of a suggestion, action, recommendation, etc.  Use “What…”, “How…”, “Tell me more…

In my last blog, I reviewed the first ingredient of asking open questions- showing up with the intention to learn and understand. The second ingredient is becoming aware of, and managing, your interference. What is interference? It is actually two things. First, it’s that incessant voice we all have in…

Peter Drucker said "...the leader of the past knew how to tell.  The leader of the future will know how to ask."  How well do you listen and ask open questions? Most members of my Peer Advisory Groups find it very difficult. Listening has two parts: the receptive part of…