Eliciting excellence in others is the essence of leadership, and one of the most effective means of eliciting excellence is to instill a sense of pride in those around us. Instilling pride has a myriad of benefits – quality of work and workmanship improves, creativity and innovation increases, collaboration is facilitated more easily, and people [...]
The Zen of Leadership
July 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
There are many aspects to leadership that parallel the philosophies, concepts, and perspectives of Zen Buddhism. I don’t profess to have a great depth of knowledge regarding Zen Buddhism, but from the insights I do have, I can see the application with respect to effective leadership. The parallel exists within the concept of leading without [...]
Most Companies Get Leadership Wrong
June 2, 2010 By 3 Comments
Most companies take a good approach to developing leaders, but generally miss the point. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on good decision making, effective communication, and team building. And all those are important, but don’t address what matters most. When you get right down to it, the essence of leadership – the thing that [...]
Stop Managing Your Agents
December 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment
I’ve seen it repeated over and over again. Sales managers managing their agents. Or more accurately, sales managers “trying” to manage their agents. And it never works. This is especially fruitless with respect to teams of independent sales agents. You see… people can’t be “managed”. Things get managed. People get led. It’s not simply a [...]
Three Stages of a Sales Agent
November 30, 2009 By 2 Comments
Sales agents and advisors have a life cycle, similar to that of the life cycle of a franchisee. There’s a beginning stage, an intermediate stage, and the final result stage. Most agents and advisors behave in a similar fashion during the first two stages, but their behavior can differ dramatically in the final result stage. [...]
How to Attract and Retain the Right People
August 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
If you’re one of the many executives struggling with finding and keeping the right people to propel your business forward, you’ll find these insights helpful. If you’re frustrated by trying to motivate people, work instead to develop a company where people are self-motivated – where they do things because they want to. When we’re inspired, [...]
Decisive Executives Have a Hard Time Being Effective
July 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Most of us have developed our leadership style by observing the leaders, executives and managers we worked with or for throughout our career. Of course, we inject our leadership style with our own take on the world including our values. However, these are usually modifications of the model we’ve observed and been a part of [...]
Dealing with Difficult People
June 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment
You know, this would be a great business if it weren’t for having to deal with people all the time… OK, so maybe I’ve exaggerated things a bit, but we’ve all certainly heard that saying before. Why does that sentiment ring true for so many folks? Obviously it’s because of all the people challenges we’re [...]
Leadership Finesse: The Art of Asking Questions
February 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Whenever I ask people what they feel the biggest leadership problem is, I always get the same answer. It’s not lack of integrity, poor decision making, or lack of vision (although that’s #2). Poor Communication is cited as the number one shortcoming of leaders. Poor communication is often the cause for unnecessary conflict, improperly done [...]
How to Retain Agents in a Tough Economy
December 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Finding good agents is always a challenge. It’s time-consuming and usually requires some financial investment as well. So it just makes sense – after going through all the effort to bring them on board – to invest a bit more time and money to retain them. Many organizations approach this task from the wrong perspective. [...]
