Managing Up and Down at the Same Time
Managing up and down gets complicated when change starts a level or two above you. A new general manager arrives, or a new CEO. They aren’t your boss. They’re your boss’s boss, or higher. But their ideas don’t stay at the top. They cascade down through every level of the organization. As those changes cascade, […]
When Someone New Is Above You
When the leadership above you changes, your job changes, even if your title and day-to-day responsibilities remain the same. A new general manager arrives. Your boss gets a new boss. A new CEO starts asking why things are done the way they are. Or your own boss leaves, and the person who replaces them sees […]
From Expert to Leader: Empathy at Scale
The move from expert to leader starts when you stop being the one with the answers. That’s hard to hear when answers are what got you here. You knew how things worked. You fixed what was broken. People came to you. In a growing company, solving problems stops being enough. On Monday I wrote about […]
Why People Question Your Best Answers
People will question your best answers if they’re afraid you don’t understand their problems. Even when you have the best solutions, and you know exactly how to make things run right, people often resist. Nobody argues, exactly. They just get quiet. Side issues come up. So do excuses for delay. The meeting ends with “let’s […]
When Your Job Changes but Your Title Doesn’t
What do you do when your job changes and nobody announces it? When your company is in a growth phase, change happens organically. A team of 12 becomes a team of 40. The departments you used to walk over to are on another floor now, or in another time zone. Your title is the same. […]
Feedback You Can’t Shake: What It Means When You Keep Hearing the Same Thing
Getting the same feedback at work is one of the hardest things to shake. It shows up in your review. You work on it. A year later it’s back, in slightly different words. “Needs more executive presence.” “Could be more strategic.” “Needs to work on speaking up more.” “Needs to work on listening more.” You […]
Feedforward Instead of Feedback: A Better Way to Help Your Team Improve
Instead of feedback, try feedforward to get better results, even when the message itself is just as tough. Feedforward instead of feedback is one of the simplest shifts you can make as a leader, and one of the least used. Feedback looks backward — it tells someone what went wrong after it’s already happened. Feedforward […]
Five Moments That Tell You It’s Time to Get Help With Your Leadership
Signs you need a leadership coach often show up at the end of the year. Most leaders don’t look for help because things are falling apart. They look for help because something shifted: a new role, a new boss, a piece of feedback that won’t leave them alone. The way they’ve always led stopped working […]
Check Out My New Website at Lisadfostercoach.com
If you’ve visited lisadfostercoach.com recently, you may have noticed something different — I’ve just launched a new version of the site. Nothing about why I do this work has changed. What’s changed is how easy it is to actually find your way around it. The old site had grown the way most sites do after […]