Which Stage of Leadership Do You Operate In?

Jun 10, 2014 | Leadership Development, WBS

Do you know which stage of leadership you operate in? The following is a quick and dirty overview of my leadership model: The Five Stages of Focused Leadership Development® Stage 1 Leaders identify ways to improve and leverage current processes and procedures. They also create and provide basic documentation on how they do select tasks so others can step in and perform their duties when necessary. Stage 1 leaders value creating and simplifying systems because they realize systems help them...

Increase Your Power; Give It Away

Oct 1, 2013 | Leadership Development, WBS

I originally wrote this article in 2003, but it's theme is exactly what I discussed with a leadership group last week as we discussed my book, Something Needs to Change Around Here: The Five Stages to Leveraging Your Leadership and in particular Stage 2 Leadership. In Stage 2, if you don't let go, others can't do the work. I hope you enjoy this post from my archives. The old adage, “You're only as strong as the people around you” is true. Yet so many of us in management tend to forget it, and...

Effective Goal Setting

Aug 6, 2013 | Strategic Planning, WBS

We all set goals in our personal and professional lives. However, many of us fail to set our goals effectively, and therefore never achieve them. Our goals are often stated in terms such as "I'll increase productivity next week." That's too vague to give anyone guidance or to spur motivation to enhance performance. To help ourselves and our employees understand what we want to achieve, we need to implement S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting. "S" Stands for SPECIFIC "M" Refers to MEASURABLE "A" Means...

Are you Valuable or Valued?

Apr 9, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service, WBS

We've heard over and over "Add value for your customers!" But what does that mean? According to Webster's Dictionary, VALUE means "Monetary or material worth". Therefore, "Add value for your customers" must mean we have to add some thing (product, service, or other benefit) that adds tangible monetary or material gain for our customers. How do we do that? We need to find out what is valuable - and not merely valued - by our customers. There's a big difference between providing something that...

Good Managers Are Not Necessarily Good Leaders

Jul 17, 2012 | Leadership Development, WBS

I was speaking with a client recently about his company's heir-apparent: his son. He wants his son to take over as the company "leader" in a few years. His son is very organized. He runs a solid department, manages his staff well, satisfies customers 90+% of the time, and manages his project and department budgets well. However, he's lost when it comes to thinking long-term, studying the industry and competition, identifying new opportunities to pursue or ponder, or in developing the company -...