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Frequently, I speak and write about how important values are to strong organizations, and the impact that a values-driven culture has on worker engagement, customer devotion, and business achievement. Any leader interested in a strong ROI must make values...
If you ask me, striving for “success” above all else is not the most highly advisable goal for those in leadership. We’ve all heard the old saying, “Nothing breeds failure quite like success!” And it’s true. What are the reasons for this “success-breeds-failure”...
The lion’s share of business opinion about the “soft side” of leadership – the people side, the values and integrity side, the character side – is that these softer issues are nice and certainly worth some attention, from time to time. However, the fact...
Lawrence J. Peter, co-author of the 1969 book, The Peter Principle, famously stated that, “Employees tend to get promoted to their level of incompetence.” Reflecting on this over the years has led me to the conclusion that Dr. Peter was both right and...
I’ve had the privilege of holding many titles over a lifetime, and each title has brought me insights, opportunities, and, as is true about everything in life, challenges. I was, first of all, “son,” and then became “student” and in my early teens, “...
Early-20th-century philosopher and poet, George Santayana, said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” With that in mind, here’s a quick look back at seven world-changing events from 2016 and leadership lessons we can learn...
Without mistake, the Advent and Christmas season holds profound lessons on humility and leadership. Writers and painters and composers have highlighted these themes of humility for two thousand years—the lowly manger, the poor and dispossessed young couple...
Throughout the course of the year, I have the privilege of working with extraordinary men and women who are committed to serve others and to serve a calling greater than themselves. Such men and women – leaders who chose to serve, or “serving leaders”...
Stanford professor of organizational behavior, Robert Sutton, says, “The gap between knowing and doing is larger than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.” I can’t verify Sutton’s observation empirically, but experience seems to bear this out.
At the heart of Serving Leadership is a non-negotiable premise: people are your organization’s greatest treasure. This point of view requires a change in leaders accustomed to thinking of people as a tool, function, or cost.
There’s a famous quote that is just, plain wrong. Those who can, do; and those who can’t, teach. We’ve all had the misfortune of bumping into a couple of blowhards who can neither do nor teach. While they’re “teaching,” it’s apparent they don’t know what...
When I was a boy, I was a dreamer. Starting this blog with that sentence makes it sound like I’m not a dreamer anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth, so allow me to write that first sentence more to my point: When I was a boy, my mother worried...
In our early study of and writing about Serving Leaders, I often swapped stories with my co-author, Ken Jennings, on a finding that we both seemed to encounter, time and again, in our various workplace engagements. The finding was simply this: The first...
