Practical Leadership - What Really Works
ByWelcome to the Practical Leader.
My intent is to share some of what I have learned about leadership, with a strong emphasis on practical skills that can be PROVEN to work. You will find three major types of posts:
- EXAMPLES of successes and failures drawn from current events.
- EXAMPLES drawn from my life’s work.
- Practical learnings from the emerging SCIENCE of leadership: based on research into organizations, groups and neuroscience.
Practical means we will split off the research into a separate “science” post - and you can choose to whether to dig in deep or not.
My interest in leadership began over 30 years ago and has grown continuously through my work at all organizational levels within 70 corporations. I felt compelled to study business administration and switch to management consulting while in my twenties, even though I began my professional life as an engineer. Faced with my organization spanning two continents and growing over 100% per year, I studied coaching to lead and develop my team more effectively. My Masters studies in Organization Management and Development increased my passion even more for helping executives become truly proficient at leadership so their teams and companies can thrive in all business climates.
Personally, I have never accepted much of the literature I have read on leadership. So many of the popular books I have read present leadership as being an all-or-nothing philosophy of “carrot and stick” or “touchy-feely”. In fact, my reading is that many of these books never discuss leadership at all. Instead, their focus is on limited – and often mediocre – forms of management.
In this blog, I hope to cut through the pop fiction of leadership and present very practical and valuable ideas that are emerging from the work of scholars. I invite your comments. Let me know what you agree or disagree with. Share your experience; I’d love to read about it.
Enough said! On to the blogging!
