Moments
With
Marty

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is often summarized as: the survival of the fittest. But, in fact, Darwin’s conclusion was that those who survive aren’t necessarily the fittest – they are the most adaptable. As a leader, one of your most valuable characteristics is your capacity for change. Change is constant. But many of us […]

We talk a lot as leaders about how to give feedback, and it takes many years of experience to actually get good at it. What we don’t talk about nearly as much is what to do when we’re on the other side of the table!  Receiving good quality, helpful, accurate feedback is essential if you […]

Being right Isn’t everything – it’s just a good start. I came up with this expression many years ago when I worked with an incredibly intelligent executive who struggled to get the outcomes she should have been able to easily achieve. She just couldn’t get buy-in from the people she led. Many leaders like to […]

Everyone thinks they know how to negotiate. Let’s face it, our negotiating skills are honed from birth, as we tussle with our parents to try to convince them to do what we want them to. We learn from a position of low power how to influence someone with greater power. Despite this, I learned a […]

More and more leaders are telling me that they’re totally burnt out. The factors behind the increasing levels of work stress are many and varied – burnout is a complex issue, and it’s become a really hot topic in the last couple of years. I’m pretty confident, though, that if you apply a couple of […]

Whatever you try to achieve as a leader relies, at least to some extent, on your credibility. If you have strong personal credibility, it makes everything you do inordinately easier. Credibility galvanizes your team… it instills confidence in the people above you… and it ultimately becomes an integral part of your leadership brand. Without it, […]

We’ve all sat in meeting rooms where we’ve been subjected to death by PPT. For every leader, the ability to present information in a compelling, interesting way is your basic table stakes: it should be a vital element of your core leadership competencies. The good news is, it’s never been easier to put together a […]

Many young leaders who have to manage older, more experienced workers find the whole process quite intimidating. Equally, older leaders who may have gotten by in their careers using a more directive leadership style, are confounded by their inability to lead millennials to do what they want them to do! If you’re a leader, you […]

There are fundamentally two types of people in the world: lifters and leaners. Lifters carry the burden for themselves and others… they take on more accountability than the average person, and they don’t rely on anyone else to make things happen. And leaners? Well they’re happy to let the lifters do the work! My observation […]

One of the things that characterizes a high-performing team is the ability to withstand and harness the value that lies in healthy disagreement. A few weeks ago, my TED talk was released, where I spoke about The Surprising Power of Constructive Conflict. It’s definitely worth 11:33 of your time to watch this. In the absence […]