Sweet Reason with a dose of Common Sense
RAISING CHILDREN, and leading people, isn’t easy. In many ways, leadership is similar to raising a child. The goal is to have people who are self-reliant and self-sufficient, but the trick is knowing just how much help to give along the way — and when you might actually be giving too much. Although it seems to
HERE’S A MANAGEMENT TRUISM you can’t avoid: You learn more from a bad boss than you do from a good one. I was struck by this when I came across an old Corner Office” column in The New York Times. It was a Q&A with Dawn Lepore, the now-former chairwoman and CEO of Drugstore.com, and
If you read a lot of business coverage, you know this to be true: The last thing we need is yet another list touting the “best” companies. As my PR friend Robin Hardman points out, “Each year you see them — shouting from business journals, websites, magazine covers… “Best Companies to Work For” lists are everywhere: there are
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY as I was watching the Rose Bowl, I saw a hard-working woman who was mistreated by a self-centered boss who didn’t appreciate her. So, she quit and left the clueless jerk to go work for herself. Who knew? It’s amazing what can happen in 30 seconds during a big college football
SOMETIMES, IT’S THE LITTLEST things that seem to stick with me. So it was Sunday morning at church when our final hymn was one that even people who don’t go to church probably know — Amazing Grace. It’s a great hymn that is memorable for a great many reasons, but whenever I hear Amazing Grace,
IT’S BEEN NEARLY 20 years since I’ve been in Hawaii, but the moment I arrived back in Honolulu last January, it felt like I had never left. My connection with the Aloha State goes back a long way. Not only did my wife and I honeymoon on Waikiki, but we lived on Oahu for three years in
LAST SEPTEMBER, Fast Company published a story that intrigued me just as it should intrigue anyone who has navigated the day-to-day rants and mutterings of co-workers on the job. The title said it all: Do You Have a F*cking Problem With Swearing at Work? The article was filled with a boatload of statistics about how
I’VE WORKED with a lot of leaders over the years, and I could go on all day about the various qualities that separated the good from the bad, the great from the awful. But as a story in the Harvard Business Review recently reminded me, there is one critical question that all good leaders get around to asking,
HOW DO LEADERS truly earn the trust of their teams? It’s an interesting question that gets debated over and over, but the formula is not all that hard for any leader embrace. All it takes is a basic focus on treating people the way people want to be treated — and doing the right thing.
WHY DO SO MANY people think that companies only focus on building strong, positive workplace cultures? The fact is, organizations are ALWAYS building their culture — whether they mean to or not. You know what I’m talking about: Those kinds of businesses where workers spend more time yakking about all the bad management and terrible decision making going on
