Leadership Perspectives

Have you done your personal SWOT analysis?

By: Marie Peeler

Organizations frequently do SWOT analyses because they are effective tools for reflection and planning. Individual leaders can and should gain the same benefits. While there are many tools and processes to engage during the creation of a strategic plan, none is so time honored as the SWOT analysis. The classic SWOT analysis examines the Strengths, […]

4 ways to work more sustainably

Last week I wrote about working sustainably and the magic of pausing.  Here are some additional ways that leaders can work more sustainably. 1.  Examine your systems and fix ones that are inefficient Do you know exactly what you need to do and where to find the paperwork, tools, or other resources that you need […]

Working sustainably: The magic of pausing

When someone refers to a sustainable workplace, do you think of environmental initiatives; installing blue bins for recycling, replacing disposable water bottles with water bubblers, or retrofitting lower wattage light fixtures?  If so, you are not alone. On a bigger scale, perhaps you think of sustainability as it is discussed on the world stage, in […]

Getting teams to talk about what matters: Six ways to create a culture of reflection and dialogue

In my last post, I talked about the difficulty leaders run into when they treat strategic planning as a discrete event instead of the culmination of an ongoing process of reflection and dialogue.  When leaders bring team members together once a year for official strategic planning discussions, they often find that their people don’t know […]

How to make strategic planning more meaningful

Despite what the calendar says, late summer, when kids go back to school, the nights get crisper, and the days get shorter, always feels more like the start of the new year than January 1st does, to me.  Anticipation is in the air as we shake off “summer casual” attitudes and start thinking seriously about […]

To communicate better, rewrite your conversations

Have you ever had a conversation and then wished you could have a do-over?  Perhaps you struggled to succinctly express your point, observed that your words did not have the impact that you intended, or left a conversation feeling dissatisfied? This happens to leaders all the time.  Many leaders who are extroverts find out what […]

Seven things you can do to achieve your intentions

Now that we are more than a month into the New Year, I have to ask:  How many of you made New Year’s resolutions?  I don’t know the statistics but anecdotal evidence would suggest that very few people bother to make these annual pledges to themselves any more.  It seems that a lot of people […]

Downtime is essential for leadership effectiveness

Some of a leader’s best thinking and learning occurs in that space in-between when all is still.  It’s known as the creative pause, a term probably coined by the best-selling author Edward de Bono, and it refers to the increasingly rare downtime that leaders have to rest and to quietly reflect. Between the ultra-connected world […]

More debate: Are women better leaders than men?

In the last two weeks, much has been made of a study that claims that women are better leaders than men.  In a Harvard Business Review blog post on March 15, 2012, the authors of the study, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, wrote that women outperformed men in 12 of 16 leadership competencies, according to […]

Can Leadership Be Learned?

During the Q & A portion of a recent after-dinner speaking engagement, someone asked me the classic question.  It was the quintessential question – the one that I am almost always asked.  “Marie, do you believe that a person can learn leadership skills?  Or is it something that some people are just born with?” It’s […]