Best Practices
Leadership Skills: 5 Key Ingredients of Courageous Leaders
A great leader knows how to get the best out of their people. Through strong, clear guidance, they enable others to walk tall and achieve success in many ways. Courageous leaders are inspirational. That isn’t…
Oprah and Sheryl Sandberg’s Secrets to Success
When you think of a highly successful woman, who comes to mind? Oprah Winfrey? She’s usually pretty high up on the list of successful women, and she fought hard to get there, overcoming childhood poverty…
What Army Training Taught Me About Great Leaders
Generally speaking I’ve worked with 3 types of leaders in my life. Interestingly, I met the prototypes of each of them when I went in Army basic training. When I went through basic training at…
What the Best Leaders Learn from Hate and Hypocrisy
A few years ago, I was on an executive retreat with 10 friends, all of whom run successful businesses. The idea was that we would learn from one another about how to grow our companies…
4 Important Keys to Being a Powerful Business Leader
Leadership is one of the most critically important roles and skills in business. But it’s also somewhat difficult to define exactly what makes a good, powerful business leader. Fortunately, there are some generally agreed-upon traits,…
4 Ways to Cope with the Pressures of Leadership
The freedom of being a leader comes with hidden shackles: the ties you feel to your investors, supporters, employees and all of the other people you don’t want to let down. As a business leader…
3 Ways to Beat Small Business Owner Isolation
“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do…” Harry Nilsson wrote that lyric and Three Dog Night had a major hit with it in 1969. I think it’s a lyric that speaks strongly to…
Why Every Small Business Owner Should Have a Mentor
There’s one essential item you’re missing that’s key to your continued success. No, it’s not your business plan, mission statement or investors (though the latter may be necessary!). No matter where you are in your…
Test Your Leadership with These Two Questions
Are you running a business, or an organization, or a team? For a quick rating of your own leadership, ask yourself these questions about bad news: How quickly do you get the bad news? A real…
One Way to Kill Bad Habits One Small Step at a Time
Every entrepreneur I know has a few bad habits they intended to overcome a long time ago, such as micromanaging, or failure to get enough rest and relaxation. As a result, both their business and…
