Leadership Perspectives

The Leadership Book we most often recommend

Marie Peeler

Every once in a while a book comes along that packs a lot of value into a quick read. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box is just such a book and it’s one that we find ourselves recommending to clients frequently. I’m skeptical when reviewers claim that books are “transformative.” Transformation happens more […]

3 ways to become smarter in 2016

Marie Peeler
Do you want to be a smarter leader? Don’t we all? In addition to the conventional ways that leaders try to learn and expand their thinking capacity, there are lots of other ways that you can add to your knowledge and stimulate your creative thinking. Here are just three. 1-  Share what you learn. Years [...]

5 ways to maximize the value of assessments

Marie Peeler

Assessments are extremely popular and, when used correctly, they can provide a wealth of information to increase a leader’s self-awareness, highlight important strengths, and point to developmental opportunities. Assessments ask a series of questions about an individual or a team.  Respondents answer the questions about themselves, or sometimes about others as when using 360 assessments, […]

To improve things, you have to measure them

Marie Peeler

Ever since college girls starting doing Cosmo quizzes, people have been curious about self-tests – or assessment tools, as practitioners prefer to call them.  Just about every week my Facebook friends offer me enticing opportunities to learn about myself by completing online questionnaires to determine “How military are you?”, “What’s the Nationality of your soul?” […]

Overwhelming workload

Coping with overwhelm? Keep learning.

Ever watch what happens as the workload keeps building, complexity keeps increasing, and leaders try to cope by working harder and faster? Work hours extend and anxiety levels rise, but productivity does not necessarily increase as leaders frantically attempt to simply keep up. Hard work is not a bad thing. Sometimes we need to work […]

My day at the museum: Coaching leaders to see with a different lens

Marie Peeler

I’m in the UK and I had the most wonderful day yesterday. I met and spent time with a most generous colleague who not only told me about his work but allowed me to experience it firsthand. Given that so much of my work is about helping leaders see things with a different lens, it […]

Leadership Development

Uncovering what leaders know: What coaches do

Marie Peeler

The most successful coaching engagements start with a successful leader who, as a person, is healthy, whole, and resourceful. Leaders who are confident but humble, and smart but willing to learn, come to coaching with an open mind, so that another person, skilled in the tools of coaching, can help them find answers that are […]

Benefits of delegation and why leaders don’t delegate

As leaders, we know that we should delegate so that we can spend our time more efficiently and give others in our organizations the opportunity to learn.  We also know that we don’t delegate nearly as much as we should.   We even know that there are negative consequences associated with not delegating more and we […]

Leaders need to keep learning

Sometimes, in the attempt to deal with the increasing volume and complexity of everything coming at us, we cope by trying to work harder and do more.  We can become myopic in our attempt to simply manage our environments. How’s that working for you? Probably not great because it’s exhausting and not a great strategy.  […]

It’s about taking responsibility

Karen was a conscientious hard worker who cared deeply about the welfare of her staff and her clients.  A generally optimistic person, she was feeling miserable about “political” battles she was experiencing in her organization.  Besides distracting her and making her unhappy, the fighting was threatening to derail her career.  She’d tried everything to fight […]