I’d like to share with you a proven model for leadership development—a model that I’ve used to coach leaders, build teams, and help people around the world become more effective in both their professional and personal lives. This model works because it’s rooted in behavior. It’s not about theory or inspirational slogans—it’s about what you actually do, day in and day out, with the people you work with and care about.

The key to successful coaching is having great clients. If they don’t care, don’t waste your time. They’re not going to get better at anything they don’t care about changing.

As a leadership coach, I've seen firsthand how difficult it can be for people to receive feedback that challenges their self-perception. It can be tempting to dismiss the feedback, argue with the person giving it, or simply ignore it. But if you want to grow and develop as a leader, it's important to be able to handle feedback in a constructive way.

Dissenting opinions and disagreements are inevitable in any group or organization. Whether it's a disagreement about strategy, tactics, or simply a difference in perspective, it's important to be able to handle these situations effectively.

Active listening is the cornerstone of effective leadership. When you actively listen to your team members, you build trust, create a more collaborative environment, and get better results.

When you focus on what you can control, engagement becomes a personal choice—not something dictated by your environment.

Many qualities of effective leadership were seen as being important for yesterday, today and tomorrow. Characteristics like vision, integrity, focus on results and ensuring customer satisfaction were seen as factors that were critical in the past and will be so in the future.

One of the most powerful leadership tools is positive recognition—and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time or effort to be effective.

Every day before I go to work, I do one thing — I tell myself it’s showtime.

As we go through each day, we unconsciously weigh the risks and rewards of our additions. We may decide to order the dessert, weighing the risk of eating too much against the joy of eating a lemon tart. We may weigh the reward of taking a shortcut to work against the risk of the traffic jams that can snarl that route sometimes. 

Winning too much is the #1 challenge for most people, because it underlies nearly every other behavioral problem.

Teaching Leaders What to Stop — Do You Begin Every Sentence with No, But or However? An easy habit for people who like to win to fall...

Leaders often fall into the trap that they “need to delegate” more. For some reason, they’ve been led to believe that delegation is always a good thing. It’s not!

Power is an interesting concept when leading and working within organizations. Power is not always just as it appears on the...

The ever-increasing presence of knowledge workers (people who know more about what they are doing than their boss does) presents...

Most of us have difficulty articulating our struggles in a public forum, especially in the presence of our boss and peers. This probably...

Every leader has to start somewhere. This is just the fact of the matter. And, another fact? Not every leader, even some of the greatest...

There is simply no excuse for making excuses at work – or anyplace else for that matter. When you’re late to an appointment and you hear...

Many of today’s leaders face a dilemma: as the need to build effective teams is increasing, the time available to build these teams is...

I behave this way. I am successful. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way. Wrong! The higher we move up the organizational ladder, the more our employees let us know how wonderful we are! Our behavior is often followed by positive reinforcement, even when this behavior makes absolutely no sense.