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Organizational Effectiveness

Grow Your Leadership Team

When we began researching the best practices of High Performance Organizations, we were not surprised to discover the best leaders, when attempting to build great organizations, did not work alone. They built strong leadership teams. Leaders need capacity; leadership teams not only provide capacity, they increase results. Randy Gravitt and I wrote about this in the Chess Not Checkers Field Guide. The following is an excerpt on this critical practice.

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Grow Personal Effectiveness Today's Challenge

Today's Challenge: What Are You Doing To Grow?

Personal growth should be the leader’s highest priority. I’ve described it before like the admonition when flying: In the event of an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first. Recently, after talking about how important it is for leaders to grow, someone asked, “What are YOU doing to grow?”

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Leadership

You're Not Crazy… Leadership Is Hard

Leadership is hard! You may read these words and think: “Is this supposed to be news?” It was to me. As a young leader, I had the misplaced belief that if I learned to lead well, it would be easy. What I’ve discovered – if I learn to lead well, I’ll be more effective and have greater impact, but it still won’t be easy.

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Leadership Personal Effectiveness Workplace Culture

I Was a Lousy Student

I met my wife in 11th grade; we were in Trigonometry together. I’m glad I was there; however, I shouldn’t have been. It became obvious fairly quickly that I was in over my head. Our first ever conversation occurred while looking at the results of our first test. I made a 16… Donna made a 96! She asked me how I got a 16 – I said, “I think they gave me points for getting my name right.”