Assessment | Life Back West

February 4, 2010December 9, 2024

[Tips for Leaders] How to Face Your Critics AND Give – and Get – Great Feedback

John Baldoni recently blogged on the best way to handle your critics, using President Obama’s recent session with Republican Congress members as an example. Baldoni’s post at the Harvard Business Review – How to Face Your Critics – suggests the following steps:

Show up.
Be cool.
Acknowledge your shortcomings.
Criticize gently.
Smile frequently.
Leave them asking for more.

Beyond facing your critics, a key foundational pillar for you to be a good manager and an even better leader is your ability to give and get great feedback.… Read the rest

January 31, 2010December 9, 2024

[Tips for Teams & Talent] What’s “Glee” Got to Do With It?

: Image via Wikipedia

Glee, the Fox TV show in its first season that just garnered a Golden Globe for best comedy television series, has something for everybody: jocks, nerds, deceivers, beauty queens, and true believers.

The regular glee, a choir activity in which people both sing and dance – like the TV show – provides a great illustration of what makes good groups click, and bad groups stumble.… Read the rest

January 30, 2010December 9, 2024

[Tips for Women Entrepreneurs ] “I Can Do That”

I hope to have coffee soon with a friend I’ll call “Margie.” While it won’t be Wizard of Oz dialogue (Cowardly Lion: “What makes a king out of a slave? Courage!”), there will some similarities.

And those similarities will have a lesson for entrepreneurs who are female.

For starters, the impact and power and roles models is well understood and well researched.… Read the rest

January 27, 2010February 1, 2019

[Life Back West] Leadership & Boards of Directors: Proof of the Pudding is in the Performance

The best adage I know for good cooking is captured in the phrase “Proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

For teams, the perfect saying might as well be “Proof of the team is in the performance.” And while we’ll hear a lot about good and bad teams over the next couple of months – from the Super Bowl, to the Winter Olympics, to the US men’s and women’s collegiate basketball tournament known as “March Madness” – the fact of the matter is that the best teams are teams that perform well when called on.… Read the rest

January 19, 2010May 16, 2019

[Tips for Company Founders] Paging Betty Crocker: Culture is not a Cake Mix

A chuckle was the first reaction when I saw Ann Handley’s (@marketingprofs) retweet of Ted Minnini’s post – For Sale: Business Culture – on the retailing of the Zappos culture. Zappos founder and CEO Tony Hseih – whose company was recently sold to Amazon – has been offering 2 days seminars for people to learn how to replicate the Zappos (success) story.… Read the rest

January 9, 2010December 9, 2024

[Coaching Tips] Ask “What,” Not “Why”

As a king of curiousity, there are lots of ways to get information: some are just much better than others.

But in the land of curiosity and getting information, some ways of asking questions are better than others – and the case of Why versus What, one is considerably more effective.

All this came to mind courtesy Dan Martell‘s tweet “I ask ‘Why?’… Read the rest