Moments
With
Marty

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, […]

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 […]

There are literally thousands of articles and posts written every week about the attributes of great leaders. Humility, Transparency, Fallibility, Integrity. Although it’s fun and interesting to muse on these attributes, they lack clarity.  If you actually decided that you wanted to take action to develop one of these attributes, where would you start? What […]

If you’re in it for yourself, your people will never be in it for you. Ever.  I observed this throughout my corporate career, and came to see it as a fundamental truism of leadership. Self-seeking leaders can’t get the best out of their people, because it’s almost impossible to rally them to a higher purpose.  […]

We generally talk about stress like it’s a bad thing. Putting people under stress is something that many leaders try to avoid. Why? Well, if you put people under stress, then maybe they’ll feel bad and won’t like you anymore. And because of our natural conflict aversion, we want our people to like us. We […]

Your formal qualifications are your ticket to the dance. You can’t practice as a lawyer, a doctor, or an electrician unless you’ve been accredited by a reputable academic institution, as having successfully navigated a process learning and critical assessment. It tells potential employers two things: the first is that you’ve managed to achieve a basic […]

There are many ways to end up in the C-suite. Probably the most common, and the most reliable, is to join a company where you start in a technical role as say, an accountant, lawyer, or analyst etc. and work your way up.  So you just work hard, and wait for your promotions.  In larger […]

Some people really don’t want to lead. But they don’t necessarily know that they don’t want to lead. How do you identify them? Well, they’ll tell you somehow, if you’re paying attention.  The most obvious sign is the constant bargaining. You’ll see them going through it every day. Should I do this? Can I justify […]