Motivate your team with self-esteem, which makes them feel better, and self-actualization, which encourages them to try harder.
When the missing skill is leadership mentoring, leaders can stall even if when they and their teams are high performing. Leadership mentoring is an essential leadership skill, one that often gets short shrift in busy organizations when everyone seems to be stretched to their limit. Ironically, even in great organizations, leaders can plateau when they have built something that’s working exceptionally well. In fact, I’ve spoken to several team leaders who have passed up a chance at promotion because they…
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Senior leadership readiness is about understanding how your presence, decisions, and relationships shape your impact. As senior leadership readiness becomes the differentiator, many capable leaders hit a confusing plateau. What makes this moment so unsettling is that nothing is obviously wrong. Leadership still looks successful on the surface—but it starts to feel harder to generate momentum. They’re doing a lot right.They’re respected, deliver results, and have earned real trust and responsibility. And yet, progress slows.Opportunities don’t materialize.Influence feels harder to…
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Inadvertently, leaders create resistance when they focus too much on the work and not enough on the people doing the work. When leaders create resistance, upper management gets worried. For example, a CFO I worked with was referred to me by her CEO because employee satisfaction on her team was low and the error rate was too high. In our first conversation, she explained that she had spent the last two years improving processes: creating documentation, better record keeping, clarifying…
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When stepping into managing other leaders, most people notice that leadership starts to feel very different. Instead of managing a front line of people with less experience, you start managing other leaders who are peers or former peers. Key Takeaways for This Leadership Transition What was working before with junior personnel stops working. When leading other leaders, people feel freer to question your authority and ideas. They get offended when they feel you want to take away their autonomy. Recovering…
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The Value of Strong Leadership Shows Up in Results The value of strong leadership isn’t abstract or theoretical. It shows up in faster execution, fewer mistakes, lower turnover, and teams that solve problems before they escalate. In most organizations, managers at the same level are judged on similar criteria: results. Everyone is busy. Everyone has their own work to deliver. What separates effective leaders from struggling ones is not effort or authority—it’s how well their teams perform. Organizations don’t just…
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Leadership Self-Reflection Questions Matter More Than New Year’s Resolutions Every New Year, leaders are encouraged to set bigger goals, move faster, and aim higher. And every year, many of those resolutions quietly fade by February. It’s not because leaders lack ambition. It’s because leadership growth doesn’t come from ambition alone. It comes from honest reflection—especially about moments we’d rather move past quickly. That’s why leadership self-reflection questions are often more powerful than any goal list. They don’t add pressure. They…
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