Are You Maximizing Your Competitive Advantage?
By Randy Hain. Living a connected life leads one to take a different view. Life is less a quest than a quilt. We find meaning, love, and prosperity through the process of stitching together our bold attempts to help others [...]
Thoughtfully Reassessing the Servant Leader Within You
By Randy Hain. "The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first." - Robert K. Greenleaf I have been preparing this week for an upcoming quarterly meeting of a non-profit [...]
Why You Need to Create More Margin in Your Life
By Randy Hain. I reflected this weekend on a late September conversation I recently had with a friend. In response to his question about how my year was going, I reflexively responded with “Busy! I can't believe it is almost [...]
Are Assumptions Holding You Back at Work?
By Randy Hain. One of the most rewarding personal practices I implemented several years ago is finding quiet time each week to thoughtfully reflect on my numerous daily conversations with other professionals through my coaching and consulting work. This reflection [...]
Helping Early Career Professionals Embrace the Virtue of Accountability
By Randy Hain. Responsibility is a grace you give yourself, not an obligation. - Dan Millman, author I will be forever grateful that my parents taught me to work hard and be responsible, and these and other priceless gifts they [...]
Could This Be Holding You Back as a Leader?
By Randy Hain. Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth. - Doc Rivers, NBA Coach & Former Player One of the most important elements of a [...]
Cultivating Career Advocates is a Journey, Not a Transaction
By Randy Hain An ideal career advocate is a leader (or leaders) who has gotten to know you, is invested in your growth, has faith in you and trusts you. They are willing to advocate for you in the rooms [...]
Best Practices to Better Prepare for the Inevitability of Career Transition
By Randy Hain I have had several coffee meetings this year with job seekers seeking their next opportunity. I am grateful for all of these conversations and have done my best to be as helpful as possible to these wonderful [...]
10 Practical Tips for Thriving in the Relationship Economy
By Randy Hain During my morning walk yesterday, I reflected on a question a podcast host asked me last week during our conversation on his show. He was curious about the most common mistakes I observe people in my network [...]
Helping the Next Generation Lead Well
Post by Randy Hain On one occasion I asked my father what he thought a good definition of leadership was. He said, “Leadership is communicating to another person their worth and potential so clearly they are inspired to see it [...]
Preserve Executive Presence By Avoiding These Two Derailers
Executive presence is one of those funny things that everybody is measured on at some point in their career, particularly when they get to the director level and above. It’s also one of those funny things that no one exactly knows [...]
Six Helpful Tips I Wish I Had Known Early in My Career
Post by Randy Hain My wife and I recently had a conversation about a profound life lesson we both experienced in different ways over the years and how we wished we could go back in time and share it with [...]
How to Run a Dysfunction-Free Meeting
John’s meetings were some of the most painful I had ever experienced. Every week John would call a meeting with his senior leadership team (and I use that term loosely) in an effort to keep them updated, aligned and focused [...]
Let’s Seize a Wonderful Opportunity
Post by Randy Hain While I made my living as a coach, I have lived my life to be a mentor-and to be mentored! . . . constantly. Everything in the world has been passed down. Every piece of [...]
How to Manage a Needy Direct Report
Sometimes dysfunction comes in the form of a Trojan horse. It doesn’t come straight at you like an abusive boss or nasty coworker. It sneaks in through the backdoor and once in, it rears its ugly head. Remember the story of [...]
Doing This One Thing Well Can Help You and Your Team Thrive
I have spent quite a bit of time over the last 13 years working with executives and leadership teams of all sizes in various industries. I always value simplicity, clarity and practical approaches when I think about solutions and different [...]
Doing This One Thing Well Can Help You and Your Team Thrive
By Randy Hain I have spent quite a bit of time over the last 13 years working with executives and leadership teams of all sizes in various industries. I always value simplicity, clarity and practical approaches when I think about [...]
Seven Best Practices for Reframing Your Thinking
I found myself advising a coaching client recently to reframe his thinking on a certain issue that challenged him. We went through a litany of possible approaches to help him see his issue from different perspectives that opened the aperture [...]
4 Crucial Conversations to Have with Your Team to Ensure Their Success & Yours
If you are like most leaders, time is your most precious resource and everything is urgent all the time. And, again, if you’re like most leaders, you’re probably spending most of your time feeling like a firefighter working in the business rather [...]
Inspiration Matters
By Randy Hain The Oxford Dictionary defines inspiration as “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.” I came across another reference from the Collins Dictionary that described inspiration as “a feeling [...]
The right way to say “Thank You”
There is perhaps no better antidote to negativity than healthy and regular doses of “thankfulness.” Seems too simple, huh? Let me explain. “People’s brains have a ‘negativity bias’” In recent WSJ article on smarter ways to discipline children, a quote from one [...]
What Leaders Can Do to Manage Urgency
The good news is that the antidote for leaders who haven’t been using urgency wisely is fairly simple. It just requires awareness and intentionality. For leaders to manage urgency properly and ensure the right amount of hot sauce is leaving [...]
Your Guide to Driving Clarity in Three Easy Steps: Boundaries, Communication & Prioritization
I often say the number one job of leaders is to “drive clarity.” One night at the dinner table, my family was having a “leadership” type conversation (yeah, we’re kind of nerds, I admit it) and I used the clarity [...]
Five Traits of a Thoughtful Leader
By Randy Hain Thoughtfulness is the intersection of deep reflection and broad concern for others. - Adam Grant My newest book, Becoming a More Thoughtful Leader, was never intended to be the defining gold standard for how leaders can be [...]
How to Deliver a “Dysfunction-Free” Performance Review
There is one time of year that dysfunction can be anticipated – performance review time. This season is particularly ripe with dysfunction, headaches, heartbreaks and generally heightened levels of anxiety and stress. Think of it as that season later in [...]
Overcoming Fear and Making Changes in Your Career (and Life)
“I’m afraid to make the changes in my career and life that I want to make.” Who can’t relate to the debilitating effects of fear? Our fears are always bigger in our minds than they really are. We give them [...]
Time Always Wins, So Change How You Engage With It
By Randy Hain "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." – C.S. Lewis I was chatting with a friend last week who was frustrated with his [...]
When Senior Management Doesn’t Trust
Trust is a powerful word. It just feels good to say it. Go ahead… say it. Don’t be shy. Ignore the guy in the cubicle next to you playing Temple Run on his phone. Trust is part of a list [...]
Leaders Who Coach are the Key to Driving Better Engagement
By Randy Hain I enjoy reflecting on the numerous conversations I have had over the years with clients and friends from my business network. One of the topics that has frequently been popping up is growing concern about how to [...]
Are You Communicating Your “Commander’s Intent”? How to Keep Your Team Moving Forward in a VUCA World
If you are like many of my coaching clients, you’ve probably hit that point in your career (and life) where you are feeling overwhelmed and realize that you need to move from working in the business to working on the business. In other words, [...]
Do You See Your Time as a Gift?
By Randy Hain Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. — Benjamin Franklin Time is a finite resource and we only have so much of it to harness and share. As [...]
The 3 Ways Leaders Misuse Hot Sauce
Specifically, there are three common traps that I see nearly all leadership teams falling into today. These traps are industry and regionally agnostic. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you live in the world. I see these traps [...]
What are You Afraid of? And What’s It Costing You?
The thing about fears is that we all have them, and they’re typically related to some story we’ve grown up telling ourselves, either as a result of our family of origin or some other monumental event in our lives. The [...]
Executive Presence: What is it and How do you get it?
Executive presence is one of those funny things that everybody is measured on at some point in their career, particularly when they get to the director level and above. It’s also one of those funny things that no one exactly [...]
A Timeless Approach to Addressing Workplace Disconnectedness
By Randy Hain One of the many things I admire about my father Steve is his consistent habit of complimenting good work, encouraging others and sincerely sharing gratitude. He is now 85 and over the course of his long life, [...]
Your Boss Knows What Your New Job Role Is — Do You?
You’ve done it. Congratulations are in order. You finally landed that job you were after and after an exhausting interview process, you have projects and work that you’re excited about. You’ve met your co-workers, gone through the company orientation, set [...]
Six Best Practices for Being More Patient with Others
By Randy Hain "The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another's defects, and the bearing of one another's burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions, [...]
Have you stopped networking at work? (QUIZ)
Have you stopped networking at work? Networking – there’s that word that we hear so often. It’s an incredibly important and vastly overused term. So what do we mean when we say “networking at work” and why does it matter to [...]
Essential Lessons for Better Business Relationships
By Randy Hain Living a connected life leads one to take a different view. Life is less a quest than a quilt. We find meaning, love, and prosperity through the process of stitching together our bold attempts to help others [...]
He Had a Great Career
By Randy Hain What you are about to read is a fable of sorts about a man who had it all, yet he wasn’t fulfilled. It’s a story of misplaced priorities, wasted opportunities, heartbreak, forgiveness, love, and ultimately, redemption. A [...]
4 Things Parents Can Teach Every Leader
Parenting is hard. And hard things teach lessons. Being a parent has taught me more about leadership than any leadership roles I’ve held or books that I’ve read. But before I dive into some of those lessons, let me open with [...]
Do You Have Too Many Influencers in Your Life?
By Randy Hain "Research suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act - and how we think [...]
“My Workplace is Negative”
I get it. The last several years have been tough. “Do more with less… there won’t be any raises this year… you are lucky to have a job… we may have to close our doors tomorrow…” Working day-in and day-out under [...]
How to Get the Feedback You Really Need
By Randy Hain Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth. -Doc Rivers, NBA Coach & Former Player When I was in the early years of my career, [...]
How Do I Deal with Having an Identity Crisis After Leaving My Old Job?
By Randy Hain I am often asked questions by my professional and personal networks on career, life and leadership topics. I have noticed patterns of intensity over the years regarding certain questions and I will be sharing my answers to [...]
Overcoming Fear and Stimulating Action in Your Team
“I’m afraid to make the changes in my career and life that I want to make.” But what if you are the boss? What can you do to help you and your team overcome fear and take action? Here’s a [...]
Turning Our Vulnerabilities into Something Positive
By Randy Hain If you are reading this post, you are human. You are imperfect, just like me and everyone else you know. I hope you will embrace the obvious truth of this, but also recognize how most of us [...]
Thoughts on Repairing Your Personal Brand
By Randy Hain Have you ever had a problem with your personal brand at work? Here is a true and somewhat genericized story (and a very common tale) I am sharing with permission. I was talking to a senior leader [...]
5 Things Confident People DON’T Do
For this post I will be taking off my therapist hat and snuggly putting on my executive coach hat. As any executive coach would tell you, a good executive coaching process will highlight what you should “start, stop and continue” [...]
Why Leaders Need to Love
Contrary to popular belief, LOVE is not a four-letter word in the workplace (I’m sure many of my HR friends are cringing right now, furiously composing a rebuttal). And yet, it is a rare workplace in which I encounter a leader comfortable [...]
The Journey from “Learning Jobs” to Doing Work We Love
By Randy Hain I have been reflecting on a recent conversation with a young professional I met who is eight months into his first post-college job. He is eager to grow his career and get started doing work he loves, but [...]
Two Simple “Investment” Challenges for the Coming Year
By Randy Hain I found myself in a reflective mood as I sipped coffee in my home office in the wee hours before dawn this New Year’s Eve. I always endeavor at the end of every year to recall the [...]
Changing Habits for the Better
By Randy Hain Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I averaged two daily coffee meetings and a lunch with my clients and business network five days a week, and I had done this for more than twenty-five years. I largely built my [...]
Getting Off to a Great Start: Best Practices for Leaders in New Roles
By Randy Hain “Transitions are periods of opportunity, a chance to start afresh and to make needed changes in an organization. But they are also periods of acute vulnerability, because you lack established working relationships and a detailed understanding of [...]
Are You Having the Right Accountability Conversations?
By Randy Hain In my professional work, I often look for interesting patterns of behavior and recurring themes. I was reflecting this morning on a conversation I had four months ago with a past senior executive coaching client who reached [...]
Let’s Talk More About “Opportunity”
By Randy Hain I was speaking with a senior executive friend recently about the challenges of attracting, motivating and retaining talent in her company. She described at great length the generous benefits and perks offered by her organization to future and [...]
Moving the Needle on Accountability
By Randy Hain A common and pervasive challenge with leaders I encounter each week is their frustration with the lack of consistent accountability from their teams. We acknowledge it is a problem, but we typically struggle to address it in practical and meaningful ways. Maybe [...]
The Best Business Relationship Advice I Ever Received
My first and greatest mentor in life was (and is) my father Steve. He was a master of building business relationships and was well-respected and trusted by all who knew him throughout his long career. I remember well the advice [...]
Vital Leadership Lessons from a Young Man with Autism
I have been leading people since I was a 16 year old in high school working at a restaurant in the small town where I grew up. Leadership has always been a passion for me and after years of study, reading [...]
Workspace Matters
I was thinking this morning about an email I received Friday from a former coaching client who I worked with in 2019. The email simply read: “I can't thank you enough for the helpful advice. I made a lot of the [...]
Making an Impact, Four Questions & a Different New Year’s Resolution
As I typically do at the end of every year, I spent some time early this morning thinking about 2022, lessons I learned and considering what I plan to focus on in 2023. I reflected on a broad range of experiences, [...]
The Attractiveness of Joy
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. - Edith Wharton, Pulitzer Prize-winning author I recently spoke with a senior leader in my business network on the topic of inspiring and encouraging employees [...]
Embracing a Once Treasured Practice Can Make You More Memorable
I was having coffee with three friends not long ago and we had an interesting discussion about the topic of gratitude and specifically, thank you notes. I shared with them that I had recently received a wonderful handwritten thank you note [...]
Fixing Dysfunctional Business Meetings
Meetings are notoriously one of organizational life’s most insufferable realities. U.S. companies spend more than $37 billion dollars a year on them. Employees in American companies spend more than one-third of their time in them. And 71% of senior managers view them as unproductive.” - Ron Carucci, Harvard [...]
The Power of Anointed Credibility
I was sipping coffee this morning and thinking about a facilitated town hall/Q&A session I did recently for leaders and aspiring leaders of a well-known Atlanta company on the content from my last book, Essential Wisdom for Leaders of Every Generation. I [...]
The Reason Vacations Aren’t Restful & Why You Need Good Friends to Be a Better Boss
If you’re returning from your Fourth of July vacation feeling a little exhausted and not exactly rested and renewed, I have some encouraging news: you’re doing it right. That’s because according to rest expert and author Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, vacations aren’t [...]
The (Often) Neglected Practice of Praise
I was reminiscing this morning, the day after Father’s Day, about the many gifts and life lessons my 83-year-old father Steve has shared with me over the years. He is quiet and humble in the way he carries himself, preferring to [...]
Living Life in Real Time (Advice for Busy Professionals)
Up until about 10 years ago, I would say that I maximized my days as well as anyone and was always comfortable juggling multiple projects and tasks. My business thrived, my books were selling well and I achieved a small [...]
Are You Working in a Dysfunctional Meeting Culture?
Before you read the rest of this post, I would like you to engage in a brief reflection exercise. Close your eyes and think about where you spent your time over the last two weeks at work. How much of your time [...]
The Courage to Live Courageously
This month on The Leadership Foundry Podcast we have been talking a lot about courage. We’ve explored having the “courage to lead,” the “courage to have difficult conversations” and soon the “courage to get curious.” Courage is a frequent topic of conversation [...]
How to Identify and Thwart Time Thieves (and Not Become One)
Picture in your mind a likely familiar crime scene: the calendar. Every hour of every day during a typical business week, others (with likely good intentions) are trying to steal our time. “Time thieves” often hide right under our nose, comfortably situated between us [...]
When Leaders Embrace the Abundance Mindset
I was thinking about my mother Sandi this morning, who passed away almost 13 years ago. One of the many things I loved and admired about my mother was her generous nature and desire to help everyone she met. What you may [...]
Paying Attention to the Normalization of Defects
We all likely remember (or have read about) the tragic explosions of the space shuttles Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) and the deaths of all crew members in both accidents. As you may recall, NASA’s investigation into both explosions uncovered [...]
Cultivating Curiosity as a Skill
The greatest compliment was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought and attended to my answer. – Henry David Thoreau Curiosity is one of my favorite skills and one I have worked hard to develop ever since [...]
What I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Listening
I have a huge confession to make: I don't read nearly as many books as I should. Lucky for me, I still learn a lot every day because the work I do allows me to talk (and listen!) to people [...]
Three Things All Leaders Should Be Doing Right Now
I was reflecting this morning about the countless conversations I have had with leaders in my network over the last few months and the consistent themes that have been present in most of them. Many leaders are feeling challenged to varying [...]
Curated Content: Leading Self Through Crisis, Your Style and Your Genius
We're continuing our focus on self-leadership and purpose this month with a curated episode from leaders Ken Keen, Associate Dean of Leadership Development at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, Ashley Freemen, Facilitator with Leadership Foundry and Darren Virassammy, Co-Founder of [...]
Want to Be a Better Leader in 2022? Practice the Three C’s
Who doesn’t want to become a better leader and improve their leadership skills in the year ahead? But, if you’re wondering just how to do it in the uncertain, unpredictable atmosphere of January 2022, you’re not alone. Nearly twenty-four months [...]
The Power of Self-Discipline, Intentionality & Routine for Leaders in 2022
Many of us may be wrestling this week over which priorities to concentrate our attention on in 2022. I wonder if our priority lists actually vary much from year to year or will they once again include a vague focus on [...]
Clarity Matters
As I sat down to write this latest blog post in the Simplify series, I once again pondered the conversations I have been having with clients and other business leaders over the last few months and was struck by a central theme [...]
4 Ways to Keep Your Team Motivated During Times of Uncertainty
If you lead a team, my guess is that one of your biggest challenges today is finding ways to keep your team motivated. Below is a list of easy-to-apply surefire ways to step up your motivation game today. Set Short-Term [...]
Doubling Down on Business Relationships
I was reflecting this morning on the numerous conversations I have had with senior business leaders over the last several months. When I ask questions about challenges they (and their teams) are experiencing at work, I often hear comments like [...]
4 Things You Can Do to Help Your Team if You Are a Boss with ADD Tendencies
Last year I was getting peppered with inquiries from readers and listeners on this particular topic: “My boss has ADD. How can I better manage and support her or him?” After doing a bit of crowd sourcing and gathering some [...]
The Ripple Effect of Our Actions
Post #2 in the “Simplify” blog post series. If you are like most of the busy professionals I know, you will be facing a large pile of work in the coming week with limited time to get it all done [...]
3 Signs That Your Virtual Team Isn’t Psychologically Safe
Over the last five years, the concept of promoting “psychological safety” in teams has become more and more commonplace. And for good reason. Psychological safety has been seen to directly correlate to high-performing teams. In Googles’ groundbreaking study of their [...]
Creating Space
Post #1 in the “Simplify” blog post series. Do you create space for yourself during a typical workday? When do you strategize, reflect, exercise, think, re-fuel or just catch your breath? Many of the leaders I work with find themselves [...]
Getting Others to Change: Cheer Them On
If you’ve been following the posts this month, we’re on a mission to get others to change. No easy task. We’ve already laid out the ways to get the urgency rate high and we’ve followed that up with a step-by-step action plan. So [...]
Living Life in Real Time (Advice for Busy Professionals)
Up until about eight years ago, I would say that I maximized my days as well as anyone and was always comfortable juggling multiple projects and tasks. My business thrived, my books were selling well and I achieved a small [...]
Getting Others to Change: Give Them a Plan
Our challenge this month is how do we to get others to change. In my previous post we focused on the first critical step in any change effort – establishing a compelling “why.” If you’ve successfully completed this first task, you probably [...]
Best Practices for Fixing Dysfunctional Business Meetings
“Meetings are notoriously one of organizational life’s most insufferable realities. U.S. companies spend more than $37 billion dollars a year on them. Employees in American companies spend more than one-third of their time in them. And 71% of senior managers view them as unproductive.” -Ron Carucci, Harvard [...]
Getting Others to Change: Start With a Compelling “Why”
Getting others to change is no easy task. Whether we are talking about one person or a whole organization, if we want to increase the probability of successful change we have to start the right way. John Kotter, a Harvard Business [...]
A Road Map to Candid Work Conversations
You are in a staff meeting listening to a work colleague drone on about his success on a recent project, but you know he is actually behind and over budget. What do you do? One of your direct reports has a few [...]
What Great Leaders Can Teach Parents About Culture
I’m a culture geek. I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m a pocket-protector-wearing culture nerd. While others think about stuff like who’s going to win the Super Bowl or the latest round of celebrity gossip, I think about culture. Disney [...]