Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Conversations, highlights in a Harvard Business Review article four ways to best prepare for a tough conversation. The first way is to “get your motives right.” The stress of a tough conversation has a way of surfacing selfish motives even more than usual. Grenny recommends that our first step should be to reset our motives.  […]

Tough conversations are a part of leadership. Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Conversations, has studied this subject for 30 years and has concluded that the way we deal with difficult conversations impacts many areas of life. Grenny claims the way we handle tough conversations predicts the magnitude of our influence, the health of our teams, the consistency of innovation, the […]

A common business strategy is to focus the team toward tackling the “low hanging fruit,” pursuing quick wins instead of the larger, more difficult challenges. An article by The Balanced Career warns, “True rewards often come from climbing higher and stretching for the real treasure in the higher branches.” The high hanging fruit represents the more difficult challenges. These challenges will […]

Hiring for the short term is a trap into which business leaders can easily fall. Faced with an emergency shortage of people, the task of hiring can become a fire drill. Hiring for the short term is ineffective for long term company growth. Making hasty hiring decisions is reactive and causes many possible consequences. Hiring slowly in times of emergency […]

In 1892, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick defeated their Iron and Steel Workers union. In a violent management vs. union struggle, it can be argued that Carnegie’s worldview resulted in ten people’s death. Andrew Carnegie was a devotee to “the survival of the fittest” philosophy. Social Darwinism gave Carnegie justification for ruthless business practices. Even though Carnegie’s workers were working […]

In a Harvard Business Review article, Mike Erwin identified six reasons that can lead to poor decisions. Our final reason is analysis paralysis. In today’s Information Age, we don’t lack for information. More information typically leads to many taking longer to make decisions, especially if you want to have all the facts before making decisions. Since one Google search can […]

In a Harvard Business Review article, Mike Erwin identified six reasons that can lead to poor decisions. The fifth reason is emotions. As a young trainee in banking, I was presenting loan requests to the bank’s CEO. When I realized that he was in a foul mood, I moved my toughest loan request from the top of my stack to […]

Mike Erwin, CEO of Character and Leadership Center, tackled decision-making in a Harvard Business Review article. We’ve been discussing his six reasons that can lead to poor decisions. The fourth is multi-tasking. Due to the rapid pace of business these days, most jobs require some level of multi-tasking. However, research reveals that performance suffers by up to 40% when we […]

Mike Erwin, CEO of Character and Leadership Center, tackled decision-making in a Harvard Business Review article. He identified six reasons that can lead to poor decisions. Mr. Erwin’s third reason is lack of input. The Kellogg School found that, in a typical meeting, an average of three people do 70% of the talking. Unfortunately, the ones you probably need to […]

Mike Erwin, CEO of Character and Leadership Center, tackled decision-making in a Harvard Business Review article. He identified six reasons that can lead to poor decisions. The second reason for our discussion is a steady state of distraction. Our information load has become quite heavy. Researchers estimate that our brains process five times as much information today as in 1986!  […]