At The Center for Leadership Studies, we define leadership as an attempt to influence…and power as influence potential. In that regard, “leading” is the art/act of exercising/leveraging power. Historically the most significant research on organizational power was conducted by French & Raven in the 1950’s. In essence, they identified 5 “bases of organizational power.” Coercive […]
It is not uncommon to hear Situational Leadership® referred to as “organized common sense.” As a matter of fact, that is how our founder, Dr. Paul Hersey, used to describe it himself. The Situational Leadership® Model, which he dedicated the majority of his career to developing and refining, reduces the overwhelming number of leadership considerations […]
There is nothing more gratifying as a facilitator of a soft-skills workshop than the moment “the light bulbs turn on” for your learners. If you have been there and done that, you know exactly of what I speak! It’s like a cascading “a-ha” moment. In the case of training Situational Leadership®, that moment usually occurs […]
Most of us are familiar with the phrase, “The ends justify the means.” Typically, we offer it up (in one form or another) when we attempt to justify an otherwise undefendable influence strategy we put in motion to produce an end result. It’s a defensive remark really, primarily intended to shine a light on what […]
Common “returns” organizations seek when considering a commitment to leadership training are improved productivity and increased levels of employee engagement. And, while those outcomes are admittedly a function of many things, few (if any) are more consequential than the personalized investment good leaders make with those they attempt to influence. In short, effective leaders find […]
I truly hope every person everywhere has grown up in a family with an authentic matriarch or patriarch. This would be the person that everyone in your family could agree had lived life to its fullest. They had truly “gone for it!” Made it happen! Pulled it off! Did the family proud! When you have […]
It was longer ago than I care to admit but, at the same time, it’s something I remember like it was yesterday. I was on “life support” in a calculus class that I had to take my freshman year of college and found myself in a one-on-one, after-school session with my professor. He had painstakingly […]
Good managers figure out a way to consistently assist the members of their teams to operate at high levels of commitment while delivering the outcomes the team signed up to deliver. Sounds easy, but as we all know, it is anything but.
Think about the best person to whom you have ever reported. If you are like most, two things just happened: An image (or two) almost immediately came to mind. A smile found its way to your face almost just as fast.
Sometimes it seems like Marshall Goldsmith is everywhere. He is authoring books, providing stewardship to the most powerful leaders on the planet, headlining prime-time conferences, producing a YouTube video every seven minutes, etc., etc., etc.!
For those of you that struggled through your probability and statistics courses in school (like several of us, by the way) we’d like to begin this blog with a brief refresher of a key term: Correlation – “A statistical technique that demonstrates whether (and how strongly) pairs of variables are related”
“How does Situational Leadership® fit in with Happiness?” This is a question we have been receiving on a recurring basis since Shawn Achor’s “happiness wave” hit the beach. And to be completely candid, that “happiness wave” is more like a “happiness tsunami.” On the off chance that you have not heard about (or investigated) Happiness, […]
