Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Former Verizon Wireless CEO, Denny F. Strigl offers these tips for how to be a good coach to an employee. He explains that good coaches help performers by: Keeping them focused.Giving them objective, helpful feedback.Acting as a sounding board for new approaches.Identifying blind spots that may be holding the performer back.Reinforcing key values, principles, and behaviors that improve performance.Recognizing positive behavior and performance.Providing encouragement after setbacks and failuresSetting "stretch" goals.Acting as an accountability partner.Strigl believes that some managers fail in their coaching roles because they: View coaching as babysitting.See coaching as only correcting performance.Don't spend enough time with their employees.Are reluctant to criticize.Have social relationships with their employees.Have a "sink-or-swim" philosophy.Believe coaching is not helpful or meaningful."Coaching may actually save time by preventing extensive retraini…

Eric Harvey and Al Lucia wrote a booklet called, 144 Ways To Walk The Talk. They provide the following great advice about giving feedback:
1. Make it timely -- give your feedback as soon as possible to the performance.
2. Make it individualized -- tailor your feedback to the feedback receiver.
3. Make it productive -- focus your feedback on the performance and not the performer.
4. Make is specific -- pinpoint for the receiver observable actions and behaviors.

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." -- Andre Gide

Jack H. Llewellyn, PhD is a sports psychology consultant who has helped a major league baseball pitcher become a Cy Young Award winner, A NASCAR driver go from number six overall to number one and with the Winston Cup Series Championship, and countless leaders at Fortune 500 companies. Now, he’s written the book, Commonsense Leadership: No-Nonsense Rules for Improving Your MentalGame and Increasing Your Team’s Performance.
This is an excellent book for leaders at any stage in their leadership career. It’s a results-driven guidebook that teaches you how to recover quickly from adversity, thrive on stress, preform on the emotional edge, and create a motivating environment (instead of trying to motivate people).
My favorite chapter is the one titled, Winning versus Surviving. In it, Llewellyn outlines the life factors that can fuel your everyday success. Some of those factors include:
No. 1 – Winners expect to win every day. Your plan as a leader should be based on what you expect to gain i…

You can't lead if your employees, team or followers don't trust you.
Building trust takes energy, effort and constant attention to how you act.
To help build trust, follow these 16 tips, recommended by author Susan H. Shearouse: Be honestKeep commitments and keep your wordAvoid surprisesBe consistent with your moodBe your bestDemonstrate respectListenCommunicateSpeak with a positive intentAdmit mistakesBe willing to hear feedbackMaintain confidencesGet to know othersPractice empathySeek input from othersSay "thank you"

In his book, The Responsible Leader, Tim Richardson explains that to create a high-performance culture, you need to plan and prepare for the following moments to ensure the conversations surrounding them are both meaningful and intentional: recruitment and induction of new team membersperformance management discussionspromotion interviews and talent management discussionscoaching discussionscustomer sales presentationshandling customer complaints and problemsbriefings to the press, analysts and wider marketsenior leaders' contact with, and briefings to, teams across the organizationinternal presentations with executive committeesteam meetings and management meetingsRichardson's advice to improve the quality of these conversations is to consider: How clear is the principal message for the conversation? How can you ensure that the content of the discussion is focused on the key message(s)?How can you ensure the quality of the listening by all parties?How can you set a pace that is…