There are distinct differences between leadership and management. Sometimes you are able to keep them separate, and sometimes you must act as both manager and leader. Here are the differences between leadership and management, as well as some tips on integrating the two.
Leadership and management are two different concepts and actions. In many organizations, leaders and managers are the same people. The difference is in how you, as a leader and manager, separate the tasks of the two realms – and try to find a way to integrate them at …

Change is a constant. It’s always been with us, it always will be, and it’s never easy. That’s something that doesn’t change.
But the challenge of dealing with it is greater today because the pace of that change is accelerating. Only fifty years ago, we had decades to adjust to significant changes. Today we often have only a year or two. Science, technology, transportation, and communications are advancing so rapidly that all of life seems to be in constant transition.
That means that at times you may have to be ready and …

These days change is a constant, there is always something changing somewhere for some reason. It is almost impossible to work anywhere without going through some type of change. Change isn’t a bad thing and in today’s business world change is necessary to survive. However, if not executed properly change can be damaging to a company, it can negatively impact employee morale as well as disrupting productivity. No matter how big or small the change is, employees will have some type of reaction to it and often it is the …

With the rapid changes in technology and globalization the past decade has seen organizations of all types undergo change more than ever before. The experiences of other organizations that have undergone change initiatives large and small serve to teach us about what works and what doesn’t work when trying to introduce and implement change. Though varying sources stress competing factors as critical to the success or failure of these initiatives, certain underlying themes are common among theories. In this case, we examine the “don’ts” of implementing change in an organization. …

Introducing change can be a pretty messy affair, and may well open a Pandora’s Box of never ending problems. The main resistance to change is people, for people are creatures of habit, and tend to prefer staying within their comfort zone, the status quo. As such, it is pertinent that as leaders and managers, we carefully manage the introduction of change in a way that can produce maximum effects for our team.
In this leadership lesson, we shall look at five principles that we can follow as we set out to …

When moving on to head new teams, it is often tempting to dive in to find similarities between the new team and the previous team. Indeed, for some of us our previous team may be our only reference point for us to base any decisions or comparisons on. While it is certainly effective to find similarities between teams to guide our actions and decisions, more importantly it is crucial to note the differences between the teams that may potentially make the difference.
We have previously discussed the fatal mistake a leader …

It is often tempting to seek a ‘perfect’ leadership model, and use stick to it religiously. Such a model certainly has its appeal, as it would mean a strategy that would work 100 percent of the time, and this would certainly prevent much unnecessary failure and setbacks.
However, we must realise that such a ‘perfect’ model simply does not exist, for leadership is certainly not a straightforward process that may be carried out by robots. Leadership is a delicate process involving the leader, his team, the work the team does and …

As Michael Watkins depicted in his book, The First 90 Days, leadership transitions can often be a sink-or-swim event for leaders and managers. Indeed, this is not without a good reason. Many times, by after being promoted based on their good performance, leaders and managers falsely assuming that the strategy that has got them there will take them on in their leadership journey.
This group of leaders falls into the trap of wrongly generalizing the nature of their work, and the skills demanded of them in each position. By being promoted …

Through my leadership journey, I’ve had the misfortune of sitting through numerous failed meetings. Some were downright unproductive, some were agonizingly long, and most yielded no decent results. Here we shall discuss a particular instance of a failed meeting which many may identify with, and may we all draw precious insights from this valuable leadership lesson.
Margaret, the head of the security department in a departmental store, was the chairperson for the meeting. While the meeting was set to start at three in the afternoon, Margaret was still talking on the …

I’m sure we all have had experiences of never ending meetings, those that start early in the day and end when the sky is dark. What’s more, many of these meetings often yield no results, and we come out of such meetings, wondering what we had talked about that took the entire day! Evidently, without proper time management, meetings can loose its purpose and effectiveness.
Let us first explore three reasons why time management in meetings is so important.
1. It allows us to avoid spending unnecessary time. In the corporate world, …