Insights
An exploration of leadership and performance
Insights
Decision Making: Closing the Gap Between Theory and Practice
One of the most famous studies of decision making gone awry is a simulation run by MIT for decades. In the simulation, a retailer, warehouse, and brewery are tasked with submitting and filling orders when there’s an abrupt yet steady increase in demand for an obscure...
read moreExpect To Go Backwards Before Going Forward
Expect to go backwards and you will go forward more quickly – a mindset to accelerate your growth and development. Imagine you have golfed using one grip for your entire life, and now you learn, after a lesson with a fancy golf pro, that to get to the next level you...
read moreWhy Your Leadership Growth Shouldn’t Be a Solo Endeavor
When it comes to improving our leadership skill, most of us go about creating and executing our performance plans and goals in secret. This turns out to be suboptimal because leadership is inherently social, and cannot be developed in isolation. Involving others in...
read moreThe Future of Performance Management
Performance management and compensation are challenging areas to get right. Many common practices seen in companies either go against the research or have mixed research supporting them. On top of that, many companies are unsatisfied with their current system. The evolution of performance management is based on a number of practices aimed to support employees and help them grow. This yields greater motivation, engagement, performance, growth, and enjoyment at work.
read moreGuide to Holding Effective One-on-Ones
One-on-ones are a key communication practice to establish a strong and productive working relationship. Here are some of the principles and topics we share with our clients.
read moreActive Ingredients of an Effective Leadership Development Program
Growing leadership capacity unlocks major gains in organizational effectiveness. With so many different approaches to leadership development out there, we thought we would put together a set of what we have found to be the key elements of an effective leadership development process. We’ve found that an integrated model for change and transformation has the greatest impact.
read moreTriggers by Marshall Goldsmith
The core premise of the book is that we are more beholden to our environment than we might realize. These triggers can lead to us behaving in ways we don’t intend—we always find ourselves interrupting the same colleague, or we get defensive when challenged on certain things but not others. This presents an ultimatum—if we don’t create and control our environment, it will create and control us.
read morePraise & Recognition: A foundational leadership capacity
Praise and recognition can have a powerful impact, but most teams don’t praise each other enough. Research on the ratio of praise to critical feedback suggests the highest performing teams give close to six comments of praise for every critical remark.
read moreThe Art of Listening: From mirror to thought partner
If you can listen to someone and repeat back everything they said, are you an excellent listener? Effective listening is about more than being a passive mirror—it’s about being a thought partner and actively supporting the other person.
read moreCrucial Conversations
Conversations are important—a single conversation could change the trajectory of a relationship or career. Crucial Conversations, written by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, recognizes a tendency many of us have to avoid difficult conversations
read moreDecision Making: Closing the Gap Between Theory and Practice
One of the most famous studies of decision making gone awry is a simulation run by MIT for decades. In the simulation, a retailer, warehouse, and brewery are tasked with submitting and filling orders when there’s an abrupt yet steady increase in demand for an obscure...
read moreExpect To Go Backwards Before Going Forward
Expect to go backwards and you will go forward more quickly – a mindset to accelerate your growth and development. Imagine you have golfed using one grip for your entire life, and now you learn, after a lesson with a fancy golf pro, that to get to the next level you...
read moreWhy Your Leadership Growth Shouldn’t Be a Solo Endeavor
When it comes to improving our leadership skill, most of us go about creating and executing our performance plans and goals in secret. This turns out to be suboptimal because leadership is inherently social, and cannot be developed in isolation. Involving others in...
read moreThe Future of Performance Management
Performance management and compensation are challenging areas to get right. Many common practices seen in companies either go against the research or have mixed research supporting them. On top of that, many companies are unsatisfied with their current system. The evolution of performance management is based on a number of practices aimed to support employees and help them grow. This yields greater motivation, engagement, performance, growth, and enjoyment at work.
read moreGuide to Holding Effective One-on-Ones
One-on-ones are a key communication practice to establish a strong and productive working relationship. Here are some of the principles and topics we share with our clients.
read moreActive Ingredients of an Effective Leadership Development Program
Growing leadership capacity unlocks major gains in organizational effectiveness. With so many different approaches to leadership development out there, we thought we would put together a set of what we have found to be the key elements of an effective leadership development process. We’ve found that an integrated model for change and transformation has the greatest impact.
read moreTriggers by Marshall Goldsmith
The core premise of the book is that we are more beholden to our environment than we might realize. These triggers can lead to us behaving in ways we don’t intend—we always find ourselves interrupting the same colleague, or we get defensive when challenged on certain things but not others. This presents an ultimatum—if we don’t create and control our environment, it will create and control us.
read morePraise & Recognition: A foundational leadership capacity
Praise and recognition can have a powerful impact, but most teams don’t praise each other enough. Research on the ratio of praise to critical feedback suggests the highest performing teams give close to six comments of praise for every critical remark.
read moreThe Art of Listening: From mirror to thought partner
If you can listen to someone and repeat back everything they said, are you an excellent listener? Effective listening is about more than being a passive mirror—it’s about being a thought partner and actively supporting the other person.
read moreCrucial Conversations
Conversations are important—a single conversation could change the trajectory of a relationship or career. Crucial Conversations, written by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, recognizes a tendency many of us have to avoid difficult conversations
read more