You know the saying, “It’s better to be safe than sorry?” You know what’s better than being safe? Being extraordinary. People often make the mistake of thinking that doing all the tasks in their job description makes them excellent, even exceptional. But the job description is the starting point, not the destination. Great leaders (and top performers) are relentless in assessing current conditions and taking decisive, future-focused action. They don’t wait for someone else to tell them what to do; … →

What is your mission statement? How many people in your organization have read it? Understand it? Remember it? BELIEVE IT? And, how many of those who remain after answering those questions have actually adopted it? Management books universally extol the importance of a mission statement. I have both suffered through mission development exercises as a staff member and been hired to facilitate these sessions. The process goes something like this: a group of senior administrators lock themselves in a room … →

Lost amidst stories about Farmville and Anthony Weiner’s inappropriate tweets is the tremendous potential for digital leadership. The platform, whether LinkedIn, Twitter or Pinterest, doesn’t matter. Today’s most progressive leaders are recognizing and leveraging the benefits of social media. For those who dismiss digital initiatives as a distraction, it’s time to stop making excuses, learn enough to make informed decisions, and focus on the future. Social media serves to humanize leaders and reveal authenticity in a way that a biography … →

People underestimate the power of a good presentation. I’ve delivered public speaking and electronic presentation training to corporate executives, college students, and colleagues for two decades. People have told me they’ve gained business accounts, aced classes, nailed conference presentations, received awards, and landed jobs using presentations that benefitted from the simple, yet powerful, lessons of my training. Presentations matter, and great presentations help distinguish you and serve as

Every leader needs to surround him/herself with people who will give honest feedback. When a leader heads down a questionable path, when his idea is unrealistic, or when she’s deaf to the pulse of what’s happening, someone needs to fearlessly point out that “the emperor has no clothes.” Sadly, this kind of intervention rarely occurs, and leaders are largely to blame. As critical as assessment is to developing leadership competency, those in positions of power don’t ask for much of … →

Most higher education professionals haven’t had very diverse experiences. They move steadily from an undergraduate degree to Master’s and PhD and settle into a career without ever leaving the sanctity and homogeneity of an institutional setting. As professionals, they travel to conferences, attend educational workshops, and read journals and books, all focused SPECIFICALLY in their discipline. Advancement and praise are afforded to those who further divide the proverbial pie of theories and research relative to their expertise into smaller bits … →

Have you ever looked at a situation and asked why something was done a certain way and been met with the stern reply, “Because that’s the way we do things around here” or some variation? Most of us have, and there’s research that sheds some light on the issue. Harry Harlow was an American psychologist best cheap viagra online known for his controversial social experiments on Rhesus monkeys. In one of his experiments, he placed five monkeys into a cage … →