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, […]

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 […]

It’s important to understand that the object of the exercise, at any level, and in any organization, is to get the best results you can with the resources you’ve been given (money, assets, people, time). And, at each new leadership level that you’re promoted to, the term best results is defined differently. In broad terms, […]

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 […]

Have you ever questioned your boss about a particular task, and at the end of a brief exchange, he simply says: “Look, just do it, OK?”  I call these leaders “Nike bosses”, for obvious reasons. Although I’m sure no one sets out to become a Nike boss, sometimes it’s simply the product of a leader […]

It can be a little daunting to take on a new role, especially when it’s at a higher level than the roles you’ve previously held.  And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been promoted internally, or you’ve been appointed from outside the company: you need to set strong expectations right from the get go. It’s really […]

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 […]

They say that the best disinfectant is sunlight, and I’m a huge believer in that principle. If my direct reports in corporate heard it once they heard it a thousand times: transparency is everything.  When there’s any bad behavior behind closed doors, bringing it into the light and dealing with it appropriately is critical to […]