Do you sometimes just get ideas popping into your head? Good ideas? Explore those! Working with a client about a year ago, I was thinking about how to help leaders keep track of what’s going on with their team members. Suddenly, the idea for a new tool came to me. I taught this to people in my leadership classes and refined it even more to be usable and helpful. Let me share this with you and you can see how it might be helpful. Feel free to try it out if it makes sense. This “People Leader...

Sometimes, technical leaders get good at people leadership and lose touch with the technology. Not often, maybe, but it’s a risk that increases as they advance through leadership levels. One of the technical leadership success factors is “Tech Savvy.” But the nature of Tech Savvy changes as you go up the ladder of responsibility. You can’t ignore it, because that is the domain or context in which you are leading people. It is key to your functional credibility. It's what enables you to help...

Not long ago I conducted a leadership survey for one of my clients. For the most part, employees and leaders both agreed on the leadership development needs for their organization. But there was one area where leaders’ and employees’ views on the same thing were way off: Encouragement and recognition. This wasn’t a surprise. Image credit Etienne Girardet on Unsplash As employees, we always want more reassurance that we’re on the right track, that we’re not missing anything important, that our...