How should we think about the importance of diversity, and how best to understand and value cultural differences? Diversity, the misunderstood child of the Age of Aquarius and Political Correctness, is an incredibly powerful tool for an organization. Diversity brings...
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Minimizing the Risks of Leadership
A leader can be brought down by a single follower's actions. How can a leader reduce the risk? We dream great dreams and set goals so huge we need organizations to achieve them. Where people organize, leaders emerge. We want to be those leaders. Leaders become...
Titles Don't Make Leaders
All of the talk about "leadership" often ignores the fact that leadership is powerful at any and all levels—and that you do not need to be heading up an organization to be an effective leader. Some of the most effective business people that I know are in roles that...
The "Pull Leadership" Manifesto
Eighteen months after starting this column, business leadership still hasn't reached perfection. Haven't they been reading? Why is good leadership still so rare? Maybe it's because we use a whacked-out definition of leadership. "Leader" has become code for "rich guy...
The Leadership Attitude
Most people are not in official positions of leadership and yet we wish to do all we can to help the organization succeed. Bringing leadership skills to the table would benefit all. Since we aren't responsible for setting the "vision" for the company, where do we fit...
The Keys to Building Trust
Which comes first: truth or transparency? Uh, oh. Is that politics in the air? I'm guessing you either want to trust someone else or you want them to trust you. Either way, transparency plays a powerful role. It's just part of the Trust Equation, though. So let's...
Defeating Overwhelm
My name is Stever Robbins, and I'm here to confess: I'm an overwhelm wimp. Give me more than three things to handle at once and pop, my head explodes. It's not just me—everyone seems to be suffering from daily overwhelm. At best, we flounder. At worst, we shut down...
Prepare Your Own Succession
Most founders of a successful family business sell their business to an outside third party. The 39 percent of family businesses passed to a second generation fail. Why don't these owners plan better for one of the most important events of their lives? If only it were...
Truth and Trust: They Go Together
We've lost trust. How do I regain the trust of my employees after six rounds of layoffs? How does my organization regain the trust of the community after we dumped toxic waste and covered it up? How does my management team regain trust of each other after a nasty...
The Path to Critical Thinking
Can you write a refresher on critical thinking? We business leaders so like to believe that we can think well, but we don't. Only one in seven even reaches the top 10 percent of quality thinkers.1 The rest of us haven't even read a book on critical thinking, much less...