Returning from a global leadership intensive with participants from Africa, Asia and the U.S, I couldn’t help but notice how challenging it can be to invest adequate time reflecting on our current role, what has contributed to it the most, and what continues to shape the way we make decisions, set goals, and mobilize others.
By doing this we often overlook the significance of key conne...
You make thousands of decisions every day—ranging from smaller insignificant ones, to those of great importance. But have you ever stopped to think about how you make decisions?
Why is it that some leaders find it easier to make certain decisions than you do? When you are confronted with a difficult decision, do you go with your instinct or do you seek consensus or approval from others...
“Egos drive people in every occupation.”[i] But when humility is absent, leaders lose the ability to listen and focus on what is important.
Jim Collins describes the resulting behaviors as “arrogant neglect”. When these behaviors exist, organizations enter the first stage of organizational decline.[ii]
In his research comparing ‘good to great’ compani...
In 2007, Robert Eckert, the CEO of Mattel Toys, chose not to recall millions of toys he learned had contained excessive lead. Instead of taking responsibility for the products and their failure to comply with safety standards, he blamed the Chinese manufacturers.
While some might argue Eckert was brave to resist a global product recall with huge financial implications for his company, others...
When working as an executive in the U.S, I experienced the early, unsettling days of the Global Financial Crisis that began in 2008/09.
I saw the collapse of the housing market, severe falls on Wall Street, companies letting go thousands of employees, and many major financial institutions filing for bankruptcy or being acquired by those in a stronger position. Headlines were dominated by the...
In the 2018 LCP Global Leadership Survey, we asked 134 Board Chairs, CEOs, executives and senior leaders to respond to a short survey exploring their thoughts on this topic.
Apart from my own leadership experiences in seeing the importance of this relationship over the last 25 years, I have extensively researched this topic since 2010 and am still amazed that many do not believe there is a l...
While 95 percent of the eighty Board Chairs, CEOs, executives and senior leaders who responded to LCP's 2018 Global Leadership Survey agreed there is a link between character and performance, we asked them how they responded when there was a conflict between their own personal values and those of the organization?
They are grouped into three dominant themes:
1. Resignation
27 perce...
All of us, at some point, have been frustrated at the ineptitude of some leaders, especially when their actions reveal an attitude of ‘what’s in it for me?’, or when self-preservation is clearly the goal no matter how it affects others.
A discussion on character, or values, may not be as riveting as the latest sales techniques, marketing strategies, or innovative product id...
Recently, I was in a meeting with a CEO who expressed concern that he no longer had time to read. “I’ve read more books on leadership than most, and they all say the same thing.” However, I discovered that the reason he had no time to read, was that it simply wasn’t a priority.
While it’s impossible to remember everything you read, there are nearly always insigh...
In a series of studies on narcissism, Professor Alex Frino, Dean of the Macquarie School of Management, concluded that “there was a clear correlation between the level of CEO narcissism and the company’s use of ‘earnings management’ – a technique which takes advantage of the flexibility in accounting rules to inflate profit figures” (Frino, 2014)[i].
The ...
