The Pope Shows That Sometimes Leadership is Addition by Subtraction

• By Scott Eblin
• February 12, 2013
• comments

As I write this, it’s the day after Pope Benedict XVI announced that he intends to resign the papacy at the end of this month. Considering that the last time a pope resigned was 600 years ago, his announcement qualifies as a pretty big story.

There’s been a lot of reporting and commentary about the impact of Benedict’s resignation. For example, The New York Times offers a nice analysis of the issues at hand in its article, Successor to Benedict Will Lead a Church at the Crossroads. My friend and colleague, John Baldoni, was very quick off the mark earlier today with a post for Forbes that offered three questions inspired by the Pope’s announcement that leaders should ask themselves.

I’ve read a lot of interesting things about the Pope and the Catholic Church today, but the one that really stood out for me was a letter to the editor of the New York Times from Daniel C. Maguire, a professor of moral theology at Marquette University. He opens the letter with these two sentences:

“The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI may be the most influential act of his papacy. It opens a window of ...

How to Lead in the Present (and Let Go of the Past)

• By Scott Eblin
• February 5, 2013
• comments

If you want to read a blogger who gives, gives, gives and never takes, check out Leadership Freak by Dan Rockwell. With his regular posts of 300 words or less, Dan has built a loyal following of tens of thousands of leaders in the past few years. As an example of his work, check out his recent post on “Ten Strategies for Starting Over.”

It’s a great post with ten simple, actionable tips for overcoming something that many of us do without even recognizing we do it – getting stuck in the past.

We tend to hang on to stuff that’s not doing us any good and that we need to let go of. There’s a simple way to check yourself on that. Over the course of a day or a week, notice which verb tenses you find yourself speaking in throughout the day. Your choices are past, present or future.

Great leaders spend most of their energy on the present and the future. One way to think about why that’s the case is explained in a story I read years ago in a book by Wayne Dyer. It goes something like this:

Imagine you’re on ...

What Happens When Bosses Freak Out

• By Scott Eblin
• January 24, 2013
• comments

So, the Super Bowl this year is guaranteed to have a winning coach named Harbaugh when John of the Baltimore Ravens and Jim of the San Francisco 49ers square off against each other. It’s the first time brothers have ever faced each other in the big game. It should be a good one and is bound to be entertaining if for no other reason than it will be fun to watch the contrasting styles of each Harbaugh. John is more of the quiet, lower key leader while Jim is unconstrained across the full range of emotion. And, as he proved in the NFC championship game, he is the master of the total freak out.

Late in the game when a challenged call did not go his team’s way, Jim Harbaugh reacted with a sideline tantrum that many have described as epic. He totally freaked out. It was pretty hilarious to watch. (See it here for yourself on a continuous loop which makes it even funnier.)

One of the things that makes the Harbaugh freak out funny is that it was this sudden eruption that was over as quickly as it started. It didn’t really have an impact ...

3 Ways to Cure Your Smartphone ADD

• By Scott Eblin
• January 23, 2013
• comments

Believe me, I don’t usually take pictures in restrooms but, in a “can’t believe what I’m seeing moment”, I had to snap the shot that accompanies this post. In case it’s not showing up as you’re reading this, it’s a sink faucet with a working video screen affixed to the top. I saw it today in the men’s room of a major conference center somewhere in America. Apparently, it’s come to this – faucets with screens for those who get bored while washing their hands:

As many others have observed, it’s hard not to conclude that the ever present screens in our life are changing the way we think. Without a doubt, they’re changing the way we interact. Last night, for example, I took my son to see Zero Dark Thirty (really thought provoking). We got there right before the previews started and sat in the back of the stadium style theatre. I’d guess about 70 percent of the heads in front of me were looking down at a smartphone screen. It’s not like most of the people in the theatre were there by themselves. There were plenty of ...

How to Run Better Staff Meetings

• By Scott Eblin
• January 22, 2013
• comments

One of my favorite things in our Next Level Leadership^® group coaching program is when the high potential participants come together in the fourth session to debrief each other on theirExecutive Shadow Days. Before they show up for a day of coaching on Organizational Presence, they spend a day shadowing a senior executive in their organization. During their shadow day they do whatever the executive does. They go to their meetings, sit in on their calls and attend their presentations. The debriefs are always full of interesting stories and insights.

In a recent session four debrief, I took a couple of pages of notes on executive best practices that our participants observed on their shadow days.  I’ll be writing a few posts on those notes in the weeks to come. Today’s topic is how to run a staff meeting.

When you’re a manager, staff meetings can be a tedious fact of life. Too often, they’re aimless, pointless and de-energizing.  Why? Because there’s often a lot of grand-standing, ass-covering and pontificating.

Here’s how one senior exec avoids all of that:

The conventional wisdom is that the senior exec should open the staff meeting with ...