Archive for July, 2008
The One Nanosecond Leader: Knowing What Matters Most
How might your leadership improve if you could:
- Understand others’ motives
- Accurately outline the moves of key players and stakeholders several steps ahead
- Gain influence for your cause by appealing to what people care about most
Rapid access to such information is a critical asset for leaders. Empathy enables an intimate intuitive understanding of others. It is also an innate human capability but is ... Read more »
Empathy Improves Team Performance
Michael is a sales manager in a high tech company. He is very task focused and finds it difficult to simultaneously drive goals and attend to relationships. During a 360 interview one of his direct reports provides the following feedback. “Michael takes the wind right out of my sails. When he called the other day, I was telling him about progress my guys were making on a ... Read more »
Empathy, Product Design and Increased Sales
Imagine you are the V.P. of small-mid-size trucks and SUV division for a U.S. automaker. While visiting a dealership you see a woman get into her new truck which has just undergone a routine 5000 mile maintenance check. She carries a laptop and purse on one arm and her one year old child in the other. She reaches awkwardly across her body to retrieve keys from her purse ... Read more »
Leading Like Lincoln
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, an enormously readable biography of Abraham Lincoln, is also a seminal treatise on leadership and a must-read for all who lead or aspire to do so. By way of numerous examples the book highlights four essential leadership characteristics: a balance of confidence and humility; a CEO for the ego; an intuitive and intimate understanding of others; and the ability to engage ... Read more »