I speak about courageous communication so often that I have people start conversations by telling me that’s what they are about to do. I love it when they do it because that means we are learning to communicate at a more significant level. I read an article recently by leadership guru Ken Blanchard. He described why leaders fail to lead. He listed a number of reasons: “They are concerned they will be criticized unfairly. They

Last week I wrote a note about the power of asking questions. A blogger I follow, Michael Hyatt, recently shared seven suggestions for asking more powerful questions. I wanted to share them with you: Ask open-ended questions. Questions that can be answered “yes” or “no” are closed-ended questions. They don’t generate discussion and they rarely yield any insight. By asking open-ended questions, you get far more interesting insights. For example, instead of asking, “Are you

One area where we can continually improve is communication. I’ve spent a few days recently on an improvement venture in a plant and I was struck, again, with how important communication is and how important it is to maintain a discipline of sharing information and ideas amongst the team. As a leader/manager, it is easy to get into the habit of filtering information. I can do it for a couple of reasons: It doesn’t concern