The Blog
Delegation Doesn’t Make You a Bad Person
You’ve worked your entire career to be able to deliver at the highest level. Clients love you. You’re respected in the office. Younger people want to learn from you. And now you’ve been told that to grow as a leader, you need to delegate more. In other words, let go...
Wanted: Soft and Hard Skills
The construction business is a hard world, filled with danger and risk: saws that can take off your arm, buildings that can fall over, multimillion-dollar budgets that can result in messy lawsuits. Project managers need to be direct and clear in their communication,...
Guest Post: Finding Emotionally Aware Leaders
When I accepted the role of Chief Operating Officer of a $700 million Northwest paper and packaging company, I was inheriting an organization that had been part of a patriarchal family culture for over 90 years. As in many long-term family-run companies, the focus had...
Will your business live on?
Host Pat Vitucci asks me on his radio show Your Financial Life: What happens to a business when the hard charging founder leaves. Will it live on with new owners? [video width="1920" height="1080"...
Emerging Leader Intensive
Download full event and cost info here: Emerging Leader Intensive
Humility in Leadership
When you think about what makes a strong leader, does humility make your top ten list? I’ve been reflecting on the importance of humility and what it means in leadership. Many of my clients want their emerging leaders to assert themselves more, to find their voice,...
Learning Empathy: Take an Interest
Pete Miller, a civil engineer, used to draw a hard line between work and personal life. “I thought of employees as resources. I valued them for how much they could produce and the quality of their plans,” he says. That strategy served him as a manager but not as an...
Can People Learn Empathy?
I just finished talking with twenty-five firm owners about what they want to develop in their future leaders. Lots of things came up: follow-through on projects, accountability to profitability and client satisfaction, initiative to suggest an idea rather than be...
Learning to Lead with Amy Friendy
Amy Friendy, principal at BRIC architecture, has learned a lot about how to navigate the challenges of leadership. I interviewed her recently for the Daily Journal of Commerce Women of Vision issue: While it felt good to be needed by staff to help solve problems,...
Hold on to Good People
With good people in short supply, companies can't afford to lose people. Join me for a workshop next Tuesday, “How to be an Internal Coach,” in which I teach two critical conversations that can keep good employees engaged and supported. Portland Human Resources...
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