The Board’s Role in Strengthening Trust During Leadership Succession
Effective boards recognize they have only one employee. When a Board focuses on its governance role, it delegates operational responsibility to the organization’s CEO or Executive Director (or whatever the first-chair title is). When a Board prudently trusts its CEO/ED, overall efficacy increases. When trust erodes, something eventually fails that then becomes extremely difficult, if not […]
Succession Planning and Knowing What You Mean
Welcome to the first in a series of blogs on successful succession planning. This one starts it off with some thoughts on the language of succession planning and how it shapes our mindsets around the purpose and process. All of which significantly influences the success of a succession plan. (This is not an exhaustive approach, […]
Team Development: Pains and Gains
Remember when your team began? They were so excited. They seemed nice, fun, agreeable, and really seemed to appreciate your leadership. Things have likely changed since then. It might feel like disagreements surround almost every decision. Maybe they push back on your leadership decisions or style and sometimes it seems like you don’t quite fit […]
Executive Coaching Skills are Transferable
The Hook As the adage wisely states, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” To better understand how what you receive from executive coaching can transfer to other areas of your life, let’s explore two dimensions that make […]
5 1/2 Powerful Questions Used by Executive Coaches
The essence of executive coaching is to raise awareness and deepen one’s sense of response-ability. Quite often we become preoccupied with the issues right in front of us – the tree instead of the forest (which is how we sometimes find ourselves “barking up the wrong tree”, even if it’s just in our own head), […]
Great Managers Do Things Differently
Companies often fall into the “promotion” trap—promoting an employee because they excel at their job. What they often fail to detect is if that individual has management skills or the company fails to provide management training.
A “World Cup” Team
People are diverse, complicated, and often challenging to manage. So how do you take talent, skill, and personality to create a winning team?
Credibility Doesn’t Transfer
Your leadership credibility does not follow you from one company to another.
The Dangers of Leading a Turnaround
Acceptance There is an old Samurai tradition that admonishes warriors that, before battle, they must “accept their own death.” Only in this acceptance can they be fully present for the battle. Accepting the reality that one might die makes that warrior fearless and thus more likely to survive. The same is true for the would-be […]
TW Leadership Profile: David Cavazos, City Manager of Santa Ana, CA
Teaching Leadership Is it possible to inherit the leadership traits needed to manage a city from your parents? David Cavazos believes so. “I learned confidence from my father,” says David, “and self-reliance from my mother.” And those two traits have brought him a long way. With almost three decades of public management experience, David’s journey […]