Forcing up-and-coming leaders to sink or swim in the pool of real experience is a sure-fire method to drown some managers who have real potential. Investing in selected high-potential leaders is crucial. Read why this investment is so important and some steps you can take to upgrade your high-potential leaders.
Leveraging your leadership and contribution strategy to encourage charitable activities is a simple way to step up and do a bit more for the world around us.
When companies go through times of change—whether acquisition, divestiture, leadership change, sales slump or competitive shocks—employees worry, then react, often with little input from management. When change is impending, the CEO (or top-most leader) ought to pull the leadership team together to share the news, discuss what the employees’ concerns might be, then decide on the appropriate message to be conveyed.
Young leaders often have weak networks. Here’s how re-allocating some of your charitable donations can help build their networks and encourage philanthropy in the next generation of leaders.
Squeamish bosses who are uncomfortable with their authority are setting themselves up for failure. Leaders must embrace their role and set the expectation that everyone on their team is a subordinate who must deliver on their responsibilities.
As soon as we become managers, it’s not just our own performance that counts. Our team’s performance counts just as much, or more. So how do we get them focused on the right things and making the most of every minute they work? This article lays out one of the biggest, most important tools every manager must use.
Despite perpetual complaints about never having enough time in the day to do crucial work, many executives waste precious hours doing jobs that an executive assistant (EA) could do better, and for a fraction of the cost. Leaders who don’t delegate such tasks visibly show everyone around them they aren’t focused on leading. That erodes morale rapidly, especially when a company is in crisis. It also slows down executive career advancements.
Rob interviewed more than 100 business leaders in researching his newest book, and now the tables have been turned. In this latest issue of The CEO Insomnia Factor, Bob Morris interviews Rob in his inimitable get-deep personal style. We take a look under the hood at how the book came into being and discuss what’s different for CEOs today. We look at leadership, change-making, growth and the “7 Silent Growth Killers” that were synthesized from Rob’s research.
In 2011, Jeffrey Glazer was handed a rare opportunity: the chance to once again lead the company he had founded 26 years earlier. Like a parent whose wayward adult child moves back home, Glazer saw things he didn’t like.
Glazer decided he had to alter the culture fast, and he did so by rebuilding his senior leadership team, promoting talent inside the organization, putting his new team in charge of several dozen big accounts, and not expecting mindsets to change overnight.
Building leadership teams is most successful as a team sport. High-performance leadership teams don’t necessarily materialize after highly talented executives are recruited, and they don’t necessarily evolve as team members get to know one another. Instead, a great top team is designed, recruited, fine-tuned and upgraded.
Robert Sher is founding principal of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm of former chief executives that improves the leadership infrastructure of midsized companies seeking to accelerate their performance. He was chief executive of Bentley Publishing Group from 1984 to 2006 and steered the firm to become a leading player in its industry (decorative art publishing).