Is your leadership blind spot tripping you up?

by Bob Kantor

A recent article in the WSJ demonstrates how common it is for executives to have blind spots that severely limit their career progression and success. It points out how difficult it can be to get reliable feedback on our performance, which reinforces these blind spots. Read it Here.

It's my experience that this does not apply to just to senior execs as discussed in the article. I encourage most of my business coaching clients to conduct informal 360's on a regular basis, regardless of their levels in their organizations. I suggest they ask a good mix of their stakeholders the following three questions:
1. What am I doing that I should keep doing?
2. What am I doing that I should stop doing?
3. What am I not doing that I should start doing?

I recommend that they use email to request a 10 minute face to face or phone meeting to discuss the answers to those three questions. I suggest they include the questions in that email to help their colleague think ahead for the conversation, but also request that they not reply via email.

By asking each of their stakeholders to give them one or two ideas for each question, leaders can keep the conversations brief and focused. They gain actionable insight from this exercise. And it also usually helps deepen their relationships with the people they ask for input.

If you have any questions on how to best use this technique or work with your blind spots, please leave me a question on our Ask Bob page.

Manage your focus, not your time

by Bob Kantor

As all my business coaching clients know, I believe that most issues with "time management" are really about our focus and prioritization. The blog post at the link below offers solid advice on both, and is consistent with my "3 & 20 List" tool and my recent blog post titled, "Increase Your Productivity 400% in 15 Minutes per Day".

The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review:
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/03/the-magic-of-doing-one-thing-a.html#.T2ue5cRaZy4.email

Increase Your Productivity 400% in 15 Minutes per Day

Good prioritization can increase your effectiveness by 400%! That’s improving the value you deliver by four times what you may be delivering today – without working any harder or longer. In fact, the approach we describe below can reduce the time you spend and the stress you feel at the same time that in ramps [...]

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The Power of a Self-Coaching Plan

Very often with my clients, as we get towards the end of our coaching time together, I invite them to create a self-coaching plan. The reason that we do this is because, just like any other project that we try to execute, we are much more likely to be successful when we have a written [...]

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Leadership Comes from Within – Part 2 of 2

The second line in the book the book, Once a Runner, by John L. Parker, Jr., that truly resonated with me, in terms of the importance of leadership and leading from within, was, “And fate, of course, swings to and fro on tiny hinges.” The idea that even when we are doing the best we [...]

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Leadership Comes from Within – Part 1 of 2

I just finished reading the book, Once a Runner, by John L. Parker, Jr., a story about long distance running and the physical and mental discipline required to succeed in that venue. It reminded me quite a bit of the coaching conversations that I have with clients about the importance of leadership coming from who [...]

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Change ‘I have to’ into ‘I choose to’ for better results

I’ve gone against the grain of conventional wisdom for years by saying that people do NOT resist change. I’ve believed and said many times that what people actually resist is “being changed”. In other words, change that we choose to make we are fully committed to. Vs. change that someone else tries to impose on [...]

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Just One Reason Why Leaders Must Engage Employees

A recent article at Bloomberg.com reports that, “About one-third of U.S. workers are considering leaving their jobs, with younger workers most likely to quit…” We all know the value of actively managing retention, and also know many of the levers we can pull to keep our talent. However, we sometimes underestimate the importance that leadership [...]

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Leadership Intuition

The June 1st issue of CIO Magazine included an article by a former CIO and CFO of Coca-Cola. The title was “Leader’s Intuition”, and the subtitle read, “Many highly educated people have had their intuitive leadership abilities trained out of them.” He goes on to assert that “…effective leadership is fairly straightforward”, and presents “four [...]

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How to get past “I don’t know”

One of the most common obstacles to success I experience in leadership development coaching is the phrase, “I don’t know.” My clients tell of scenarios where their team members don’t engage in problem solving and idea creation, and instead respond with multiple, “I don’t knows.” And often when I ask them what other approaches they [...]

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