
How Best To Manage Communication With, Through And Around The CEO, C-Suite And Board
The CEO should be in the loop for all communication between executives and board members – both ways

How To Leverage Virtual Meeting Tells In Influencing Others
One of the downsides of virtual meetings is that they make it harder to read people. Before COVID you could get a sense for how people were going to engage, now you have to use a different set of tells.

How To Play The Best Supporting Role In Meetings
the one thing you must do to keep your organization from becoming a soap opera is to keep your focus on your most important external mission – the problem you solve in the world.

Why The Critical Choice In Corporate Triage Is What To Stop Doing
Stop trying to fix the unfixable whether they are projects, programs, businesses, or people. In general, triage involves sorting victims into those that don’t need help now, do need help now, and can’t be helped. The critical choice is between those needing...

Why New Leaders Must Not Let Their Predecessors Distract Them
Pay attention. It’s an essential choice for an executive onboarding into a new role – what you and others pay attention to. Focusing on your predecessor’s mistakes is a distraction from your call to action and is especially painful for your predecessor’s supporters....

The Merger & Acquisition Leader’s Sub-Playbook #7 – Change Management
Per our earlier article on A Merger & Acquisition Leader’s Playbook For Success, avoid the traps of 1) poor strategic focus, 2) poor cultural integration and/or 3) poor delivery of synergies by leveraging the full playbook and its seven...

Why Letting Others Win Arguments Is So Empowering
Letting others win arguments is empowering because it positively reinforces what you’ve asked them to do. It all goes back to the ABC’s of behavior modification – Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence. It’s easy to tell people you want to hear their perspective...

Why The Right Level Of Customer Service Is A Strategic Choice
While different organizations provide different levels of service—from dismissive to reluctant to systematic to reactive to anticipatory—the most effective do it by choice. They understand the return on their service investment and invest appropriately. For those...

When And How To Tell, Co-Create Or Delegate
First, understand the difference between the three. Then, tell for compliance. Co-create for commitment. Delegate for accountability. Tell In Bryan Smith’s Tell – Sell – Test – Consult – Co-create framework for persuading others, Telling is one-way...

Why Leading With Positives Improves 360-Degree Feedback
360-degree feedback is a simple tool that can make an amazing difference. It both depersonalizes feedback and personalizes it at the same time.
At its core, it’s a way to gather feedback on an individual in all directions: up, across and down. It provides the “What” in a “What? So what? Now what?” approach to feedback.
It depersonalized feedback by enabling a reviewer to downplay their own personal views. It personalizes it by bringing in the personal views of others. Done wrong it can “shred the fabric of trust in an organization.” Done right, it’s a valuable tool as part of a comprehensive talent assessment and development system.