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…
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 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…
“I wanted to ask, ‘Why did you let this happen?’ but that was blasphemy. You never ask why. It was not a question for you to ask.” ~ Nnedi Okorafor, Binti As I have worked to grow my own leadership, one superpower is self-awareness. If I can see myself the way others see me and become more…
We have two products, one we sell to our customers (HubSpot’s CRM) and one we sell to our employees (HubSpot’s culture). Like your product, you need your culture to be unique relative to the competition (for talent) and you want your culture to be very valuable. Like your product, when it is unique and valuable,…
One of the great privileges of my role is that I am invited to listen to 10 – 12 clients every week. During the hour or so I spend with them, my whole job is to listen. In the process of doing that, I’ve discovered something amazing. When I give someone my full attention, their…
A few years ago, I read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. It’s an excellent book about end-of-life issues and I highly recommend it, but the idea that most stuck with me is summarized in this quote: “We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for…