It was Grace Margaret Hopper, the first woman to achieve the rank of Rear Admiral in the US Navy - who noted that "We don't manage people, we manage things. We lead people." In short, people cannot be effectively managed. Leadership is a practiced balance of getting the right things to happen - and getting [...]
Why Your Most Talented Employees Aren’t Your Best Performers - And One Thing CEOs Need to Look For To Cultivate High-Performance By Phil Liebman, Founder & CEO ALPS Leadership We must stop placing such a high premium on talent when cultivating a high-performance workplace, and instead evaluate the potential value of our people’s contributions to [...]
by Philip Liebman, Founder/CEO The answer is: unvarnished truth. As a CEO you are ultimately solely responsible for the performance of your organization – and that means the quality of the decisions that are made – by yourself – and by those who you lead. The success of failure of any organization hangs in [...]
By Phil Liebman, CEO ALPSLeadership What comes to mind when you think about leadership? People who dream of one day ascending to a leadership role often think about power and the privilege of being looked up to. Others, generally more accurately see responsibility and service. But regardless of the source of your drive, if you [...]
By —Phil Liebman, CEO and Founder, ALPS Leadership Voltaire wrote, "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." Great questions empower people to think, learn and grow. The strength of any good leader can be measured in the quality of the questions they ask. Powerful questions can lead people to explore, expand [...]
I used to believe that aiming for the middle was a good strategy for success. It may be so for playing darts - but not for winning at life or at leadership. In 2004 I attended a conference in Washington DC - of what would be my future colleagues. I had never been more impressed [...]
Being principled, humanistic, idealistic or even altruistic in how you perform your role as a leader is all good, provided you are also competent and effective in accomplishing what you must accomplish. But are we distorting the value of these traits and overlooking what really makes for competent leadership? A leader's competence is hardly a [...]
Innovation and entrepreneurship are the bedrock of modern civilization. We depend on those willing to take the necessary risks, who dream big and who dare to challenge the status quo in order to change the world. In the US over the past forty or so years, the driving force behind the greatest innovations have occurred [...]
It has essentially become conventional wisdom that happy people are our most productive workers. Clearly we do not want unhappy employees. But it is equally undesirable to encourage or even allow people to get too comfortable in their routines or in their environment. In our attempts to entice, reward or lubricate human activity, we find [...]
There is a romanticized image of The Authentic Leader, teaming with empathy, vulnerability and conviction. Like action heroes, they have superpowers that will build an invincible company or perhaps save humankind. An entire industry of coaches and consultants has adopted the war-cry, "be authentic and prosper!" So, why do authentic leaders fail as much as [...]
