Three Simple Steps for Building Growth Opportunities Into Everyday Work Life
Those who know Ken well, know that he has a passion for on-going learning. He distinctly remembers a scenario more than 20 years ago that solidified this stance. He was at a company that offered all employees a $1,500 training and learning investment each...
Why Killing Content Matters As Much As Creating It
At Corporate Path Leadership, we spend a significant amount of time with smart marketing teams. We are constantly astounded at the volume of quality content that these teams can create on a monthly basis. We also are surprised at the volume of time that...
5 Steps to Knock Out Those Backburner Projects on Your List
Although January represents a new opportunity for planning and evolution, it also is a reminder of taking time for self-improvement and tackling items that we have been putting off for months (or years). I personally have been noticing drawers, closets,...
Three Easy-to-Implement Ways to Bring Your Team Together in 2024
The start of the new year is the perfect time to shift some focus and ensure your team not only works together more efficiently, but thrives together. Here are three ideas to help you get started.
The 5 Things Successful Mentors Do
There is no doubt that mentoring programs are a successful tool in business. Consider some of the following 2023 statistics that support this stance from...
4 Ways to Adapt Your Leadership Style as You Move up the Career Ladder
A recent Harvard Business Review article by Giulia Neri titled “The Leadership Odyssey” dives into the challenge of leaders rising through the ranks. To summarize: while moving up, leaders often find a more hands-on, directive leadership style is most...
You Don’t Don’t Need Tarot Cards to Plan and Adapt Your Business Plan for the Future
Corporate Path Leadership frequently works with clients on Generative Thinking projects. This approach combines wearing a strategic planning “hat” with a futurist “hat” to make existing Strategic Plans more nimble. We find this to be a beneficial way to guide planning...
Are Your Employees Working Hard or Working Hard at Looking Busy? Tips for Combating a Busyness Culture.
A recent Harvard Business Review article 2023 titled “Beware a culture of busyness” captured our attention. The author provided a term social scientists call “time poverty” that refers to employees being increasingly focused on, and rewarded by, being...
Two Quick Things You Can Do Each Morning to Stay Focused and On-Task
2023 is starting out like a mad dash. If you are anything like us, then you are flooded with new project ideas, a sea of new emails, and a big question of how this will all be completed. Two key things however, might be missing for you right now: Priority...
How a Pepsi Ad Can Help Us Learn Not to Get Lost in the “Content Weeds”
Whether in web, digital collateral, or social media form, having many assets that showcase your brand/company products in an effective way is critical. As marketers know all too well that there is often a mad dash to get new content created and published...
Follow These 6 Steps to Identify Your Career Legacy
The average person can expect to spend 90,000 hours or more working during their career — which is a staggering number when you stop to think about it. A bigger question though is, “What do you have to show for it when you hit that final mark?” As a number...
How to Identify What Makes Your Customers Happy
A recent web search for the topic of Customer Satisfaction Strategy yielded over a billion results. That’s mind blowing - and yet indicative of the importance of a happy customer when building a successful business. While there are many processes, books...
Four Ways to Help Overwhelmed Employees Manage Their Time and Priorities
A recently overheard leadership story grabbed our attention. It started out as a normal tale of business challenges and “fire drills” taking up everyone’s attention and time. However, as the story kept going, the focus from the leader was to place blame on...
Assess What Makes You Happy At Work, and Do More of It
Here’s a sobering statistic: On average, Americans spend 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime. That equates to approximately ⅓ of the average person’s life. With so much time spent at work, it isn’t a surprise that people are constantly frustrated and...
Is Your Decision-Making Style Creating Challenges for Finding the Best Business Results?
As a leader, making decisions is an important part of the job, and it is expected on a daily/weekly basis. Your decisions not only impact you and your career path specifically. The ripple effects impact all of your team members, and many times other...
7 Tips to Boost Employee Acquisition and Retention
The pressure to attract, keep, and inspire talent today is no joke. We hear every week about team leaders that are struggling with talent acquisition and retention and hear many of the same complaints over and over: “Our salary ranges are not keeping up...
Gain Back Your Work-Life Balance by Saying “No” in a Positive Way
The word “no” has an extremely negative connotation. It is often associated with difficult colleagues - people who aren’t “team players” and participants who aren’t dedicated to the cause. But what if “no” was an empowering word and a chance to get your work-life...
Think You Don’t Have Access to Quality Research? Four Simple Sources for Insights to Support Your Strategic Thinking
Your next business task has landed: build a compelling story to help guide a change in current strategy, that is based on third-party sources and research. For many small- and medium-sized businesses, this can be a big challenge. Without business research...
Creating a Collaborative Environment That Encourages Idea Sharing
Dan Pink is a favorite business author of ours here at Corporate Path Leadership. His new book explores a touchy topic – Regret. As we wait for the book to arrive, we stumbled upon an interview with Dan Pink that stuck with us. It comes from Forbes, and...
Why Every Leader Needs To Be A Good Storyteller When Presenting
A new year means new plans, new goals, new action items – and for many – a new business focus. Now that all of the “newness” has been created, how are you, as a leader, going to help bring your team into 2022 and make sure everyone is focused and ready to execute?...
Shine a Light on Your Good and Bad Traits Now So You Can Improve In 2022
A recent Business News Daily article on politics in the workplace discussed how it affects, and can even destroy your business. That got us thinking. What if people don’t realize that they are part of politics in the office? What if we see our good traits,...
Avoid the Job Rut. Take These Three Steps to Evaluate and Improve Your Situation.
Last month, Harvard Business Review profiled the reasons behind “The Great Resignation,” and zeroed in on industries like healthcare and tech, and age groups like those 30-45 who were more likely than their counterparts to leave current positions. The...
Why Organized And Clear Direction Is Paramount For Your Team Success
Corporate Path Leadership ends up facilitating, consulting and participating in over 100 team projects and programs each year. And each year we see stellar successes, and spectacular failures. The key difference in outcome? Clear and organized team...
Balancing Act: Using the Right Mix of Monologue and Dialogue In Your Communications
Corporate Path Leadership stumbled upon a good article in Wharton Business Daily on great leaders. The article was covering a new book, “The Edge” — which profiled 10 CEOs and their leadership lessons. What intrigued CPL was a section of the article about...
Lean Into Your Leadership Role to Rebuild Uncertain Office and Team Dynamics Post Covid-19
Scan any publication today and you’ll find stories on the post-pandemic office environment. This Daily Buzz article is a good example. Much of the focus is on what percentage of employees are coming back to offices vs. quitting, how office environments...
Five “Must Have” Leadership Planning Stages to Keep Even the Most Fast-Tracked Projects on Task
One of our favorite stories of a business initiative gone awry is now over 10 years old. It involves a fast-track, yet high-profile creative project that required use of a third-party advertising agency. There were whispers that the project was going off...
Bringing in short-term, outside resources to augment your team’s capacity and skill sets
A recent article by McKinsey profiled an interview with Leena Nair who is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Unilever. Nair discussed how their massive global organization of 150,000 employees was navigating the pandemic and emerging from it. What struck...
Avoid Falling Into the Blame Game Trap by Building Fundamentals in Two Key Areas
As we near the end of the first quarter, you can start to smell the fear sinking in. Audacious goals and revenue targets have been set, but only two months into the year there are some cracks showing that the goals may not be as achievable as originally...
Kickoff 2021 Planning With These Four Steps for Cultivating Your Leaders
The beginning of a new year brings new daunting goals and challenges for corporate teams of all sizes. With the rollout of these ambitious goals, Executive Teams often look to their trusted leaders to jump in and take the reins to figure out specific...
Three Simple Behavior Changes to Go From Being a Solo Hero to a Team Leader
A recent article in Chief Executive caught our eye. The premise is much like the title: “Leaders Need to Get Comfortable Asking for Help.” Too often leaders feel like they need to do everything themselves if actions are going to be done correctly. This...
Overcome the Uncertainty of 2021 with an Agile Approach to Strategic Planning
As we approach the end of the year, we are all hoping for a more predictable and stable 2021. 2020 has been a nightmare for many businesses -- especially those that are not used to dramatic change in a short period of time. While we anticipate the...
Keep Your Meetings From Straying Down a Rabbit Hole with Relevant Visuals
We’ve all been in “that meeting.” The one where the conversation has gone down the rabbit hole and participants are cringing, trying to figure how to get back out. In the past month, we’ve noticed several instances of this rabbit hole scenario -- but also...
Three Tips to Build Engagement and Motivate People in a Virtual World
A recent Forbes article on virtual offsite events for building teams just caught our eye. The author talked about the different value elements that in-person offsites provide team members, including social aspects of being together -- even outside of the...
How to Help Your Team Transition Through Turbulent Times: PART TWO
Last month, we spent time discussing how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all facets of business around the globe. We took a look at a simple, but great business book by William Bridges called Managing Transitions. This concept of managing transitions...
How to Help Your Team Transition Through Turbulent Times: PART ONE
The current COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all facets of business around the globe. While businesses were first focused on how to operate in a socially-distanced work environment, they are now trying to figure out how to transition back into a more...
Build Team Relationships with These Ten Simple Questions
Think of the last time you started a meeting with more than five people. Now think specifically about the conversation that started the meeting. Did you get right to an agenda or business, or was there room for small talk at the beginning? At Corporate...
Gain First Mover Advantage Post-COVID-19 by Adapting Your Business Plan Today
For good reason, companies are focused on ensuring their employees are safely working remotely and adapting business practices to a new abnormal environment. Everyone wants to know when the pandemic will come to an end and business can start up again,...
Turn Your Virtual Meetings Into a Team Building Device
As business anxiety is setting in over the Coronavirus, more companies are asking their employees to work remotely. As someone who has worked remotely for years, this may not seem like a new concept. However, for those employees who are used to working in...
Two Ways to Ensure Employee Goals Map to Your Company Goals
As we approach the end of February, for some leaders, anxiety is starting to set in. The year’s plans have been crafted, and in many companies, there have been January meetings to launch the new plans with the rest of the employee base. Many leaders are...
Building a Leadership Skillset to Match New Role Expectations
A recent Forbes article, 5 Required Skills For Leading Change, made a big impact on Corporate Path Leadership. The synopsis was that Senior Leaders need to be skilled at leading change efforts, or at least seen as experts in change. Yet, normally there...
Three Ways To Make Your 2020 Planning Conversations More Compelling
The new year is right around the corner. Is your department really ready? Or what we think of as ready for the unveiling of new strategic plans and a flurry of shared PowerPoint slides, that possibly re-hash what you did last year? Stop right there. Before...
A Simple Change That Delivers Honest And Open Feedback On Ideas
A recent Strategy + Business article caused us to think about the fact that sometimes voices are not heard before decisions are made -- and there can be significant consequences because of that fact. In today’s fast paced business world, generating new...
Why Speed Wins Out Over Perfection
A recent article from McKinsey & Company highlights survey results that separate growth leaders from other leaders. That article, plus a number of client meetings, have us here at Corporate Path Leadership thinking about productivity, and specifically...
Four Ways to Add Inspiration to Your Team Routine
When was the last time you were truly inspired by someone that you worked with? It’s an important question that requires a bit of reflection. At Corporate Path Leadership, we find that people are frequently inspired by an article or book they have read, a...
Shake Off that Summer Slump! Three Actions to Revive Your Strategic Plan
As a child, summer was a wonderful time. Days were long and formal plans were scarce. The primary goal was to make sure to do whatever you want, and laze for as long as possible. At some point though, the dream of summer turned into a crash of the end of...
Don’t Let “Being Agile” Become an Excuse for Not Clearly Outlining Direction
Agile is a proven framework in the world of development. The agile process helps development teams provide rapid responses and feedback to their projects, and it opens up opportunities to assess the project’s direction in the middle of the development...
Two Meetings in Two Weeks: Break Your Team Out of an Innovation Drought
One topic that comes up repeatedly for us at Corporate Path Leadership is lack of innovation. Complaints arise about an organization not being nimble enough, not having leaders that take risks, or ideas being killed before given a fair chance. The...
Five Actions That Empower Employees to Satisfy Customers Without Sacrificing Operational Efficiency
A recent headline about fixing a toxic work culture from MIT Sloan School of Management grabbed our attention. The advice for leaders about listening to their workforce and enabling them to make good customer decisions was spot on. However, it made us...
Get the Most From Your Next Brainstorming Session
Brainstorming ideas with a team can be a rewarding way to generate new ideas and stimulate energy for the entire group. On the flip side, if not done productively, it also can be a colossal waste of time and drain their energy. What’s the difference in...
How To Avoid Being The Villain In Your Own Office Story
When you go see a movie, there is usually a hero and a villain. The arc of the story shows the hero overcoming obstacles, fighting the odds, and the villain, to eventually win the day. The movie wraps up with the the villain defeated, and all is right with...
Four Actions That Will Rally Employees Behind Your Next Change Initiative
Implementing big change in an organization can be hard. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 employees or 5,000 employees. Changing an individual’s way of approaching work requires them to believe in the change, understand how to address the change and make...
Three Changes You Can Implement for More Effective Performance Feedback
An excellent article from Harvard Business Review titled “The Feedback Fallacy” captured our attention this month! It is a thorough argument about how traditional feedback models are flawed, and it immediately surfaced conversations about how we have all...
Improve Your Meeting Facilitation Skills with These Three Tips
Corporate Path Leadership strongly believes in challenging ourselves with mastering new skills and putting them to the test. Today we’ll focus on meeting facilitation. We’ve all experienced too many meetings (both big and small) where the leader doesn’t...
Five Tips for Successfully Leading Remote Teams
Corporate Path Leadership finds examples of remote teams everywhere. This is not just in start-ups or cutting-edge progressive companies. In today’s competitive marketplace, it can be challenging to find an employee that is the right fit, and who is...
4 Ways to Turn Age Gaps Into a Collaborative Team Success
Corporate Path Leadership is hearing more stories about challenges between generations in the workplace. Whether it is a younger manager struggling to understand and see the value of an older worker, or a middle-aged manager struggling with the work ethic...
5 Ways to Help Employees Rally Behind Changes
So your company is staring down 2019, and whether you are rapidly growing or struggling, the need to address change in this new year is inevitable. What is your plan to address change? Will your current employees be ready for the change? What are your...
8 Ways to Make Your Meetings More Productive
A recent article from Psychology Today focused on meetings and why they so often fail. Corporate Path Leadership agrees with most of the points in the article -- and appreciates the fact that the focus of the article was how to make meetings more...
Does Your Leadership Style Include These 4 Pillars?
A recent article by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania profiling John Chambers and his new book on leadership captured our attention. Chambers led Cisco from a $70 million company to an over $48 billion company in his tenure as Cisco CEO....
4 Steps to Make Business Conflict Work
A recent article on “How to avoid a culture war in business” got us here at Corporate Path Leadership thinking a bit more about conflict in general. Conflict is inherent wherever we are. Especially in the workplace. The author for this article recognized...
The importance of diverse teams (and where to find them)
We recently came across this Business Insider article focused on how Reddit overhauled its team and reputation by looking outside of traditional sources to find a diverse team. CPL understands the importance of diverse teams. We’ve directly experienced...
Should you ditch the to-do list? Two ways to rethink it.
Productivity and a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day are important aspects of job satisfaction. But what’s the best way to stay focused so you are not sideswiped by fire drills or inconsequential things throughout the day? While our earlier...
Why Putting Yourself First Can End Up Making You Last
Does this situation sound familiar to you? You work with someone who is exhausting. From the moment a conversation starts to the moment it ends, the focus is 90% on them. Their issues, their frustrations, their needs. I have experienced this over and...
A Simple Plan To Avoid Becoming The Next Blockbuster Or Borders This Year
In January, Corporate Path Leadership was thrilled to earn a Foresight Certification from the University of Houston. The program focuses on planning for the future and helping corporate and public entities determine the factors that might shape their...
2018 Resolution Twist: Don’t Seek A New Job, Find Meaning In Your Current Job
At the end of a year, it is natural to reflect on the past twelve months and think about accomplishments vs. goals. At Corporate Path Leadership, we hear similar stories of new hope and vision for the upcoming year – and often time that hope accompanies...
Getting Along vs. Getting Work Done
How To Assess Team Dynamics To Determine The Right Balance Everyone’s dream at work is the perfect team where there is mutual respect, perfect and clear division of responsibilities, a dose of strategy for every dose of execution and accomplishment and...
Is Your Strategy Really Solid — Before Rolling Out Your 2018 Plan?
The pressure is on!! 2018 plans have been created and everyone is now meeting to determine how they will implement activities to reach the lofty goals that have been set. The bigger concern is if the plans are even realistic to implement. Have all facets...
Are You A Highly Emotional Intelligent Person At Work?
Travis Bradberry, co-founder of TalentSmart and author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 identified eight habits that people with high emotional intelligence use in the workplace. The results are based on research with over one million people and show how...
Does Your Email Control You — Or Do You Control It?
There is no doubt that email in the workplace has vastly sped up the flow of communication. Most see this a progress and ability to make decisions and move projects forward faster. But what is the individual impact of these tools directly on you? Likely...
Building a “True Self” Team that Builds Strong Relationships
We live in a world of social connections. 100s of friends on Facebook and many more connections on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. But how well do we really know with people who matter? Vivek Murthy wrote an excellent article in the...
Contact Us Today
We make it easy to jump start success. Simply contact us and share your current team challenge or need, and we’ll respond with program ideas to innovate your team performance.