When I work with leaders they come from all kinds of industries and functions.  They may be experts in finance, operations, mining, transportation, or any number of other fascinating subject areas.  When we begin our work together, I always start with one statement, “once you become a leader your subject matter expertise will only account for 50% or less of your job.  The other half of your work will be in leadership.”  When I say this, most leaders don’t believe me, and to be honest, most leaders don’t operate that way.  Many still rely on their subject matter expertise (SME), thinking that it will lead them to success, but this actually has the opposite effect.  Relying too heavily on SME is perhaps the most common mistake as a people leader...

Empowerment.  We throw this word around a lot and it’s used in many organizations all over the world – we should empower our people -  but what does empowerment really mean?  Well, we can’t talk about empowerment without talking about power.

As much as we use the word empowerment, I don’t hear a lot of conversations about power in our world. Who has it, how it gets used and even how we interpret power.  It’s one of those subjects, like religion or money, that we’ve been trained to avoid.  We’ve all felt power dynamics, often damaging ones, but we just don’t talk about it...

When you picture a leader what shows up in your mind?  Chances are you will see someone talking, maybe standing, in command of their domain.  We all learned that to add value as leaders we need to contribute, share our perspective, and show the way.  The issue is, where does that leave our people?  Because as much as our intent might be to be of service, the result of that kind of leadership is it’s still all about you...

We hear a lot these days about the challenges of an inter-generational, diverse workforce and I certainly see this in my own leadership consulting work with organizations. Leaders are struggling to reconcile how they learned to lead, with how their diverse workforce wants to be led. The consequences of not figuring that out can range from frustration and miscommunication to having a disengaged team or employee base......