It’s often said that a leader and manager are different. The leader provides vision, sets goals, and motivates people to fully engage in the pursuit of a common purpose. The manager creates and maintains the process for people to consistently meet those goals. Leaders fire people up and set direction; managers show them how to forge ahead and deliver.

The act of leading and the act of managing are different but they’re co-dependent. It’s hard to excel at either if you don’t excel at both. How effective is a leader who brings people together with a common vision but can’t harness them to reach it? How effective is a manager who runs a tight ship but can’t guide it with a clear, mutually held vision?

Leading and managing are two sides of the same coin to meet different moments. You inspire, motivate, and empower people when vision is needed. You plan, organize the team to execute, and manage the conditions that drive their performance when process is needed. I work with leadership teams to cultivate the mindsets and skillsets they need to excel at and balance both sides of the coin and successfully manage the paradoxes of leadership. Employee engagement and productivity depend on it.

Click here to see how The Paradoxes of Leadership Mimic Life

Your team is your village. And because it always “takes a village”, it always “takes a team”. The team needs measurable management tools to fully function, including a mutually understood purpose, end-goals, directions, division of tasks, guidance and oversight, rewards and incentives.

They also need a leader with an employee-centric mindset who knows and prioritizes the inner work life needs of each member of the team so they can exceed expectations. I work with leaders and their teams to be in conversation about all the team’s needs and how to address them. In so doing, we build a culture of mutual trust and respect. That’s what bonds a team together more effectively than anything else. In the process we create a learning environment, where a willingness to be vulnerable, have hard conversations, provide timely feedback, and value psychological safety lead to a sense of belonging, shared connection and the likelihood of exceeding expectations.

Click here to learn about the four essential Leadership Team Roles

At various points in time you may wonder, "Are we performing at our best?  Are we positioned to take advantage of future opportunities? Are we on track to achieve our goals?”. These are questions of strategic planning: a process of comparing the present to the ideal state of the company, department, or agency, and creating a living roadmap to get there. It’s done through shared visioning, opportunity mining and goal setting – all of which are tied to measurable outcomes. I work with leadership on a carefully planned process that builds organization-wide commitment and accountability for “getting, doing and running” the business, with elasticity for the unknown. My approach is highly focused and engaging so teams collaborate, innovate, and execute. The process is designed to fit the issues, culture, size, and timing needs of the organization. 

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Aligning an organization to meet its mission is like tuning a car to perform at its peak. Teams know when an organization is off and not running on all cylinders. The degree of adjustment and re-alignment will vary but the risk of skipping the checkup and service is under performance and dysfunction. I assess organizational effectiveness to determine where company goals, performance standards and operating efficiency may be impeded by a disconnect among its vision, structure, process, people, and workplace environment. Together, we align all the components of the organization to promote a learning environment, increase constructive conflict, and build mutual trust and respect so the organization can operate like a high performance car.

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Process can be the difference between performance and paralysis. At its best, process facilitates collaboration, accountability and excellence. Process becomes a welcomed and embedded part of the workplace. When it’s cumbersome, ill-defined, overly analytical, or blindly followed, it thwarts initiative and produces complacency. Missed targets tied to schedule, budget or quality are likely signs of process weakness. My approach to process improvement starts with a systematic examination of the systems, tools, and steps in place for product and service delivery and the checks and balances used along the way. The goal is for process to continually be improved by critical thinking and effective communication and serve as a reliable roadmap for problem-solving and decision-making - without losing the flexibility for teams to quickly respond to changing and unforeseen conditions that can impact results.

Click here to see a meter for Communication Effectiveness

“A house divided against itself cannot stand”. While Abraham Lincoln’s words in 1858 may have cost him his first bid for the US Senate, they ring as true today as they did then. Every team is only as strong as its weakest relationships. How well teams collaborate, inspire, solve problems, make decisions, and learn from mistakes depends on the strength of their internal relationships.  I help teams identify and anticipate conflict and use it to strengthen relationships, building on the principles of thought leaders like Diane McClain Smith’s Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength. I work with leaders to map dysfunctional patterns of interaction and focus on ways to help disrupt them, shift perspectives, and reset the foundation of the relationship so that the change sticks.

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Change is inevitable. An organization’s readiness for change is not. Change management bridges gaps between the two by addressing the people-side of change - to create an environment where change is embraced and resistance to process, technology, and organizational shifts is reduced and managed. The goal is to plan for change to succeed by avoiding the loss of valued employees and minimizing negative impacts on productivity, relationships and customers. My approach comes from success at Sun Microsystems as an early developer of the change management process from private offices to office hoteling. I focus on maximizing the acceptance of change through a systematic process of readiness assessments, ongoing communication, executive sponsorship, coaching and training for the change agents, feedback, corrective action, and acknowledgment of success. 

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It’s a privilege to be a coach, to be a client’s partner in expanding their capabilities and confidence to lead, manage and make decisions. Coaching is an opportunity for personal growth and transformation through a one-on-one relationship that is non-judgmental, focused on achieving goals, and built on trust, respect and truthfulness. I help my clients to listen actively, question effectively and communicate clearly. I provide them with tools to deepen their self-awareness to help broaden their perspective and better integrate reason and intuition across a range of business and organizational issues so they can make appropriate decisions and take timely action. My goal is to develop my client’s ability to self-coach.

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As a facilitator, I provide guidance in systematic thinking – organizing complexity into a coherent picture that clarifies problems and their causes, shapes priorities, captures opportunities, and leads the way to strategies and solutions that last. I help leaders and teams see the forest and the trees, develop shared understanding and purpose, sharpen their ability to focus on what’s important, and build common ground.  My approach to facilitating stems from principles in Peter M. Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. I help groups balance inquiry and advocacy and understand and manage their mental models about how things work and how people and organizations act so that they can be open, creative and pragmatic about what’s possible and arrive at consensus.

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