A prospective client recently approached me about working with “Ted,” an operations leader at one of the company’s facilities. For years, Ted had been the target of a consistent stream of complaints from his team and their efforts to remove him. We discovered that the problem was that Ted would...

Much has been written about the increasing importance of soft skills in the workplace. But one is foundational to all others. It’s the source of competitive advantage, the differentiator for the executive, the employee and the organization. It’s communications, the spoken and written word. The pandemic-forced mass migration of business...

Few will dispute that these chaotic and calamitous times mean corporate executives face some of the toughest challenges of their careers. More companies are recognizing and developing an often-overlooked in-house resource—their boards of directors—to help address new and emerging threats. With the interconnectedness of today’s world and the global events...

“Our bias against working from home has been completely exploded,” Dan Spaulding, chief people officer of online real estate portal Zillow, recently told researchers studying the global work-from-home phenomenon triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Pre-Covid-19 research documented a slow but steady uptick in the number of people working remotely at...

History will be the final judge of how U.S. President Donald Trump handled the global COVID-19 pandemic, but an array of elected and appointed officials and political observers have found his leadership and communications lacking in the face of the worst crisis faced in at least a generation. Even more...

I recently sat in on a team meeting with the senior lieutenants of a key function for a professional services company. Not knowing any of them, it occurred to me that there were no visual, outward signs to suggest who might be the leader. For decades, it was easy to...

Never before have so many new words entered the English lexicon at such rapid speed. Inspired largely by the never-ending proliferation of technology in our lives and a rash of national political and social movements, we now have "political words of the year," "digital words of the year," and even...

The allegations, recriminations and public spectacle have subsided after the messiest Supreme Court nomination proceedings in more than a quarter-century, and the court has seated a new justice, Brett Kavanaugh. But with Democrats potentially poised to take the U.S House of Representatives in the Nov. 6 midterm elections, and multiple...

A Cautionary Tale for Business Leaders On the Value of Credibility & Empathy. From the size of his hands to the size of his first “State of the Union” TV audience,  President Donald Trump has spent the two-and-a-half years of his candidacy and presidency getting caught in outright lies, maligning...

Although consumers have grudgingly grown accustomed to providing their own customer service—whether at the bank, gas stations, grocery stores, public transit systems, airports and now even at restaurants, post offices and hospitals—there’s mounting evidence that this trend isn’t as good for business as many organizations bargained for. More than two...