Moments
With
Marty

I often hear leaders talk about their stakeholders, but I don’t always get the sense that they have clarity around who their stakeholders are and, more importantly, what each of them expects. This is why it’s critical to map your stakeholders… you need to know who they are, and what drives each of them. For […]

There are lots of different schools of thought on which competencies are most useful to help you achieve your career ambitions. I’ve thought about this a lot over my 40 years in businesses…  … working my way up from the bottom of the food chain to the top, and more recently, getting a window into […]

We talk a lot about resilience. These days, just mustering up the capacity to cope with the pressures of everyday life is getting harder. For leaders though, the challenge is even tougher. You need to manage your own physical and mental state – sure – but you also have to model self-mastery for your team.  […]

It’s easy to reduce the process of learning from your mistakes to a few pithy sayings: “Failure is another stepping stone to greatness” “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we also give ourselves permission to excel.” “Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly!” “I never fail — I either succeed, or I […]

Who are your high performers? I’m going to ask you that same question in a few minutes’ time, and see if you get the same answer! It’s surprisingly difficult to identify your high performers. Let me explain this with an example. I once had a client say to me, “Marty, I’ve got this high performer […]

If you want to be successful in any organization, you have to have a ticket to the dance. By that, I mean that there are certain prerequisites you have to meet… these might be in the form of qualifications, or capabilities, or experience. Once you have your ticket to the dance, you have to work […]

One of the most common reasons that people give for resigning from their job, is that they can’t work for their boss.  We know, from our personal experience, that there isn’t an oversupply of great leaders out there… so, rather than job-hopping every 6 months, we settle for the boss we’ve got, and try to […]

In a world where we have ready access to a mountain of information on pretty much everything, decision-making processes in many companies have become more and more about data analytics. Relying more on facts, and less on opinions is a good thing, right?! But, in my experience, the best decisions strike a balance between quantitative […]

You may have heard me talk about the leadership myth that “happy workers are productive workers”…  … conventional wisdom says that, if you want a team to perform, just keep your people happy! This, in turn will increase their engagement… which in turn will motivate them to perform. Bulls!t… Let’s look at this from the […]

A lot of people seem to think that the most certain way to build job security is to make themselves indispensable. But indispensability isn’t always a good thing.  It comes in two flavors, each of which are completely different. The first form of indispensability, which is generally desirable, is when you’re seen as someone who […]