by Michael Holland Reading well-written biographies provides a great opportunity to place myself in the life and times of the focus of the book. Recently I read Jon Meacham’s Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, a tremendous, deep dive into Jefferson’s use of all his talents. Jefferson was exceptional at knowing how to distill complexity [...]
by Michael Holland The Wright Brothers were successful in inventing and building the first successful controlled airplane even though they were neither as wealthy nor as educated as their rivals (neither brother received a high school diploma). But what they did have was a clear vision, an undying belief, and the capability to [...]
by Michael Holland Historically analyzing transformational change allows us to see the moments in time when leaders have articulated profoundly simple visions, and the resulting behavioral change that occurred over time within an organization or group after the proclamation. JFK’s “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth” speech [...]
By Michael Holland Uproar, controversy, and disbelief. The business world and thousands of bloggers wonder how golden girl Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo , could make such a horrible decision regarding remote employees. How could this high-tech executive—the 20th employee at Google, the builder of the successful teams that launched Gmail, Google Maps, and iGoogle, [...]
By Michael Holland My favorite NFL football team, the Baltimore Ravens, will play in the Super Bowl this Sunday. The team is catching their perfect wave at exactly the right point in time. The head coach, the coaching staff, the influential leaders, and all the players are positioned to follow their playbooks [...]
By Michael Holland So you’re telling me your boss just isn’t the best leader. He has weaknesses and struggles and just isn’t as effective as you really need him to be. Maybe it’s time for you to help him become a better boss. Here are three ways you can invest in your [...]
By Michael Holland Have you ever had an employee come to you with a complaint about someone else on the team? What do you do? Do you take the problem on, go talk with the other employee, having created a triangle? The Bermuda Triangle of Employee Enablement – or “triangulation” for short [...]
By Michael Holland Listening is one of those skills we learned early in life. We’ve “refined” the skill over time, but maybe the refinement has been more of filter management than enhancement of skills. Here are some possible reasons as to why we’re not good listeners. It’s difficult to put aside our own [...]
By Michael Holland The Fiscal Cliff mantra of late 2012 brought tremendous, terrifying images to mind for many people. Who wants to go over a cliff? A good friend of mine adjusted the lens looking at the forthcoming events as a Fiscal Ditch which was quite refreshing. We can traverse a ditch. [...]
by Michael Holland Do you have 3 minutes? A tremendous array of leadership education materials can be accessed on the Wall Street Journal website for simply the price of the online edition and the investment of a few minutes. The WSJ’s Lessons in Leadership series contains step-by-step how-to’s, WSJ stories and video interviews [...]
