CYGNUS Perspectives: Recent Episodes
Scott Borland
Taking the 'safe' route when crafting strategy can create unforeseen and undesirable outcomes. While it may seem intuitive to take advantage of emerging opportunities while minimizing risks, it may 'cost' much more to a company's vitality and health.
To improve and grow, leaders must actively seek out relevant feedback from others as to how they’re 'showing up’ and performing. But far too often, leaders hand out lots of feedback to others while getting little or no feedback themselves. In this episode, Scott highlights six key steps to remedy this situation.
Without executive presence, aspiring mid-level leaders will find their route to bigger roles severely limited. Several key qualities define this elusive attribute - but the good news is that they can be developed.
Navigating situations when you, or your employee, has two (or more) bosses is challenging - to say the least! Whether it's a formal arrangement or something tied to a specific project or activity - there are five key things you can do to ensure success.
As a leader, there are two powerful questions you can consistently ask to improve your team and group events. Discover how these surprisingly simple questions can make a big difference to your team meetings, planning sessions or brainstorming events.
We all know the importance of your work group's effectiveness to overall team performance and company success. But what do you do when high performing individuals on your team create turbulence? Here are five key actions to help smooth the way.
Using your natural talents comes naturally but the overplay of these same gifts, as a leader, can create unintended consequences. Here are some suggestions to better leverage your natural talents.
While knowledge and competence are indeed critical to business success, it's wisdom that enables you to advance your agenda much more effectively - with greater impact and success.
Too often, strategy conversations fail to realize their full potential. It's not enough to bring your team together for the dialogue - you'll need to 'set the table', in advance, to realize success. This episode reveals six key suggestions to get more out of your strategy refresh efforts.
While a strengths-based approach to professional growth has real value, leaders can gain big advantages by acknowledging and improving their 'soft spots'. This episode explores how to best leverage feedback that you receive regarding both your strengths and weaknesses.
Research shows that leaders who consistently demonstrate humility listen better, inspire more effective teamwork and realize greater success than leaders who don't score high on this attribute. Here are some suggestions to strengthen your leadership humility.
If you’re an experienced leader, the most common temptation is to directly overlay your expertise into a new context. While bringing your ‘A game’ to the table is important, it’s critical to suspend your assumptions about how best to apply that same expertise in new situations. To be truly effective, you need to ask a few key questions before diving right into the opportunity or challenge.
Senior leaders usually demonstrate a consistent style of leadership during their team's interactions and conversations. While this consistency is both essential and helpful, in specific situations it can be a major hinderance. What's needed is a critical look at the dynamics taking place within the team and for the senior leader to tailer their style to the subject under discussion.
Ensuring accountability needs to be a key focus of all leaders - particularly those in higher profile roles. Whether staff or board member, the consequences of weak accountability can be significant - from diminished reputation and constraints on career progression to actual job security or board tenure.
Each of us have unique abilities or competencies that tap into who we are and what we’re particularly good at - our 'secret sauces'. As leader, it’s critical to leverage your unique ‘secret sauce’ to realize real success for yourself, your team and your organization.