Sometimes life lessons come from surprising places. In early 2004, just nine months after completing treatment for breast cancer, my wife, Katie, was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. During the months that followed, I learned an important lesson about connection that influenced my perspective on how to approach organizational change.
I wrote about this lesson in an article published by SmartBrief. If you are navigating change in your organization or personal life, I hope this piece is an encouragement to you.
Loneliness isn’t something that people like to acknowledge, but it’s a real issue for many people today. Many leaders are so busy that they don’t even realize that they are in fact lonely. That’s a problem because loneliness is a “super stressor” that makes it difficult to perform at your best.
In a new article that I wrote for Forbes, I describe how loneliness is affecting today’s leaders and why we all need to take steps to address the issue in our lives and organizations. I hope you’ll read the article and consider ways you can boost connection in your workplace.
Attitudes toward leadership styles have changed. Characteristics that are common in female leaders are now recognized as essential to the success of any leader – regardless of gender. In fact, studies show that women leaders are outperforming men in many key areas.
So what’s the secret to this success? The answer may lie in many women’s dual focus on both task and relationship excellence. Learn more about this effective leadership approach in an article I wrote for Forbes.
I highly recommend reading Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer’s recent books, Leadership B.S. and Dying for a Paycheck. In them he makes a compelling case that most leadership training has failed to produce effective leaders and that the poor state of the vast majority of workplace cultures today is harming the health of people. He provides an abundance of evidence to support these conclusions. Professor Pfeffer recommends boosting connection in workplace cultures (which, as most of you know, is the focus of our work). You could read Professor Pfeffer’s books and become depressed, but I’m not. Below I explain why.
Some guys may get instinctively defensive when the phrase “like a girl” is tossed at them, but it’s time for them to embrace it, and actually welcome it, if they want to be an effective leader.
To learn why, join me and my wife Katie Stallard for a unique webinar hosted by ATD on Thursday, September 20, 2018. Inspired by the #LikeAGirl campaign, we’ll share recent research and a fresh perspective on why women have superior leadership skills, what men can do to improve, and humorous and heartwarming examples from our own experiences. Learn more and register for the webinar.
September has arrived and if you’re with an organization that plans by the calendar year, you’re less than a month away from the start of the final quarter. I’ve always felt September is the ideal time to gather the team together and check our alignment. By that I mean, are we focused on what needs to be completed before year-end? Are we set as a team, and individually, to finish strong? Are there things, like a car wheel out of alignment, that are pulling us off course, causing unnecessary wear and tear, making us function less efficiently?
In workshops and seminars we teach on creating a Connection Culture, we like to show videos that bring the points we make to life. One type of video we use is to show great leaders in action so people can observe their language and behavior. It gives them a vision to aim toward. To that end, we are going to be posting video of great leaders who connect on YouTube and using the #greatleadersconnect hashtag. If you have video of a great leader that shows him or her connecting, please join us in posting it on Twitter and using the #greatleadersconnect hashtag.
Our first tweet is going to be this fantastic video of Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks Coffee Company, accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Seattle Business Magazine Executive Excellence Awards. Starbucks co-founder and executive chairman Howard Schultz introduces him. In articles we’ve written, we’ve described Howard Behar as Starbucks’ secret weapon. In this video, you’ll see why.
I had the pleasure of participating in the No Bad Bosses Podcast, which is hosted by MANAGEtoWIN CEO David Russell. No Bad Bosses features conversations with business leaders on how to be a great boss, how to hire great people, and how to avoid common leadership mistakes.
In this podcast, we discuss the importance of connection in the workplace and common leadership challenges. Listen to our full conversation.
As the current year draws to a close, now is the time to establish your plan to begin the new year on a strong note. Here are three tips for leading your team into a new year of goals.
Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital, a part of Northwestern Medicine, is an elite performing healthcare organization in terms of patient satisfaction, employee engagement and financial performance. Marianjoy is composed of a network of 500 inpatient medical acute/sub-acute beds and outpatient rehabilitation services delivering a full range of multispecialty services to adults and children in the greater Chicagoland area. More than 50,000 patients receive care within the Marianjoy service network annually.
Marianjoy is led by Kathleen Yosko, its president and CEO. A life-long learner, Ms. Yosko, in addition to being a nurse by background, has earned M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Ms. Yosko is a source of inspiration to the people she leads. She is an example of a leader who communicates an inspiring vision and lives it, as can be seen throughout her remarkable career.
