I was recently watching high school wrestling, and I got really curious about how different coaches worked with their wrestlers. One coach was very directive. While the match was in progress, he’d shout instructions to his wrestlers. “Break his grip! Get your belly off the mat! Go for his leg!” Then, after each match, he’d…
I know firsthand how exhausting the pace of change has been over the last few years. As leaders, we’ve guided our teams through uncertainty at every turn. And it’s not just change from one angle. The Pandemic opened up new ways to work and sell. Our employees have changed their expectations and keep asking for…
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir mens’ blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die but, long after we are gone, will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency….
This week, we will experience the shortest day of the year (for those in the Northern Hemisphere). Here in Chicago, we’ll have about 9 hours of daylight. Starting next week, the days will begin to get longer. At first, only by a little bit. But believe me, every minute counts in the dead of winter….
If you want to be influential and lead others, there is one thing you can do that will have an outsized impact on your leadership. Get a good night’s sleep. Before you sign up for an expensive leadership development program or read another book about leadership, pay attention to the basics. Things like sleep, nutrition,…
One of my clients is planning to spend time thinking about her plans and creating a forecast for next year, and she asked me if there were any questions she should think through to prepare for that exercise. Here’s what I sent her: But I know you are all a lot of smart business leaders,…
In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up. The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise one leader’s performance than to raise the performance of a whole mass. ~ Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive Leaders I…
The #1 addiction on the planet is the addiction to being in control. ~ Dr. Mary Hulnick Thanksgiving is a big holiday for us here at Anchor Advisors. We’ve always sent out Thanksgiving cards instead of Christmas or New Year’s cards, partly because we wanted to stand out from the end-of-year rush and also because…
The effective executive knows that to get strength, one has to put up with weaknesses. ~ Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive Kicking off an assignment with a new client, I casually ask, “Tell me about your team…” What comes back is a string of complaints. “They rarely come to a meeting prepared; I don’t…
Founders of creative service firms and other agencies have built a platform that’s created leverage for them. They have a team. They’re leading an organization from a positional sense. However, the team doesn’t always do what they expect, and sometimes team members act in puzzling ways that contradict the direction they have set. To gain…