5 Paths to Becoming a Better Executive — and Why they Might Not Be Enough

There’s no shortage of assistance for overworked and underappreciated executives. Seminars, coaches, counselors and churches all have a role to play. But they might not get you across the finish line. That’s because there’s no finish line in authentic self-development. To become a better leader, you have to look beyond other people’s strategies and start […]

Is Emotional Hard-Wiring Undermining Your Leadership Brand?

For nearly all leaders, the need to be and feel in control is a driving force. But what happens when your actions, reactions and decisions come from a place other than your rational thought processes? These moments happen more often than most leaders care to admit, and can dramatically impact their leadership brand, style, tone […]

Self-Awareness Leads to Extraordinary Leadership

What is the reason high-performing employees quit their job? Well, if you ask that employee why he’s leaving, you are probably not going to get the real answer. Career advice taught from day one at the beginning of their career is to “never burn a bridge.” Thus, you will get the cliché answer, “I just […]

Two Critical Ways To Increase Self-Awareness

Leadership development programs designed to increase emotional intelligence have matured during the last 15 years. However, in my experience, I am not seeing a big change in the way executives relate to one other. Despite reading books and articles, taking assessments and attending seminars, leaders still lean toward old habits and can benefit from a better […]

How Others Can Help Increase Our Self-Awareness

How well do you receive feedback from others? Do you seek it out and learn from it, or do you ignore or even resent it? This is the final post in our three-part series on self-awareness. Along with assessing our behavioral hardwiring and our belief systems, we must learn to seek out (and really listen […]

Self-Knowledge and the Four Agreements

How well do you know yourself? In last month’s blog on self-awareness, we discussed using assessments to gauge your behavioral hardwiring—those aspects of our personalities and character that were encoded in us before birth or during our early, formative years. Having that information is the first step to knowing more about yourself. The next step […]

How Self-Aware Are You?

Warren Buffett once said, “I look for three things when hiring people. The first is personal integrity. The second is intelligence. The third is high energy levels. If you don’t have the first one, the other two will kill you.” This idea of personal integrity is worth breaking down, because it’s a concept we usually […]

Vulnerabilities and Culture in Evolutionary vs. Intentional Organizations

Because the opportunistic leader is so wide open, he is much more vulnerable to distraction. The laser-like focus of the intentional leader can mean his vulnerability is to missing good opportunities because he’s got his head down. As always, moving toward the middle can bring benefit for both kinds of organizations. For opportunistic/evolutionary businesses, start […]

Evolutionary vs. Intentional Organizations

What is the core motivation, in your heart, that is driving your business forward? That’s the source of what you put into your business, and it’s a crucial, and usually overlooked, concept to consider. I’m going to shed more light on this concept by talking about two extremes of the motivational spectrum. I’ve worked with […]

Cultivating Humility

Leading with humility isn’t a skill or a competency. It’s a virtue. Think of compassion, kindness, courage, patience. How do they come to be strong elements of a person’s character? Very simply, they come directly from the practice of being awake to life and what’s happening in the present moment. You can orient yourself to […]