High Performing Leaders Replace Fears With Purpose

In our work with CEOs and executives, we have found that leaders who actively start to replace their fears — or just give more importance to their higher purpose and goals — increase their effectiveness. For example, I had one client ...

The Challenges of Being a Collaborative Team

  LaL executive coach Carole Levy has a secret passion: capturing the foibles of leaders and teams with her unique, artistic vision. Here are her latest observations about the challenges of being a collaborative team. Watch it at ...

The Evolution of a Changed Behavior

Last week, Brandon Black, CEO of Encore Capital Group, shared his insights in giving feedback, and the importance of separating content from judgment when delivering a difficult message. Brandon’s evolution with this leadership ...

Feedback: Separating Content from Judgment

Brandon Black is CEO of Encore Capital Group. He first attended Learning as Leadership’s 4-Mastery program with his executive team in 2005-2006. Since then, he has leveraged LaL to lead a multi-year culture change initiative in his ...

Getting Beneath Anger With Self-Awareness

In my last blog post on the brain and its impact on our behavior, I highlighted the gap that exists between what is happening and how we can perceive that as a threat. In this post, I want to focus on the power that awareness has to ...

The CEO and The Journalist

I was recently on site consulting with the CEO of a large, publicly traded firm when a request came in from a journalist to speak with him. I was in his office at the time, so he took the call and put her on speakerphone so I could ...

The Six Lies Leaders Tell Themselves to Avoid Giving Feedback

As a leadership coach and trainer, I hear tons of reasons why people don’t give direct feedback. What we don’t realize is the cost of NOT providing honest feedback to the people who work for us. Like the 55-year-old ...

Is your Hero’s Journey guiding your Leadership Development?

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Joseph Campbell As I watched the documentary, Finding Joe, in the theatre Saturday evening, swirling emotions gripped me. A sense ...

Better Stupid than Lazy…

Or is it better lazy than stupid? Seth Godin prefers stupid to lazy, but what he is really describing is a trade-off our ego makes. Depending on our norms, we make different trade-offs. In short, we are willing to admit one negative ...

The Brain Chemistry of Perceived Threats

In my last post on the brain, I covered three important parts of our brain and the various roles they play in our responses to sensory input. In this post, I want to look at how perceived threats impact our behavior. I was coaching an ...