Author: Eric Douglas Blog

Eric Douglas is the senior partner and founder of Leading Resources Inc., a consulting firm that focuses on developing high-performing organizations. For more than 20 years, Eric has successfully helped a wide array of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporations achieve breakthroughs in performance. His new book The Leadership Equation helps leaders achieve strategic clarity, manage change effectively, and build a leadership culture.

The Six Stages of Individual Development

This tool provides a snapshot of the individual development process. It shows the six evolutionary steps in how individuals feel about change. By figuring out where you are in this cycle, you can envision what you need to do next in order to make progress. Say you’re thinking about improving your marketing skills, but feel …

Decision Making Process – A Guide to Flawless Decisions

This tool provides a simple, straightforward checklist for an effective decision making process. Leaders can use this tool to clarify decision making steps for defining roles and responsibilities – and training people to make better decisions. It includes brief definitions of the five types of decisions (our “Five Types of Decisions” tool contains detailed explanations …

Effective Meeting Management

This invaluable tool helps managers with effective meeting management. It describes the five types of meetings, how to put together an effective agenda, and the roles of the meeting leader. Introduction Most people would rather not meet for lengthy periods. They prefer that communication somehow occur without sitting down to talk. But the reality is, …

The 20 Leadership Qualities

This tool defines the 20 leadership qualities that researchers have identified as common to virtually all organizations. It can be used to identify the leadership qualities people value most within their organization. It can also be used to help an individual leader assess his or her own leadership skills. Suggested Exercise: A manager can ask …

Empowering Employees to Innovate

This handy tool provides a way for employees to suggest ideas for improvement (a new market to go into, a new product to sell, or a new way of doing business). Using a simple template, it asks for five pieces of information that are important in evaluating whether the idea has merit. Leaders can tell …

10 Ways to Encourage Innovation

This tool lists 10 ways to encourage innovation. 1. Create a corporate venture fund, establish clear criteria for picking projects, and seed the fund with enough money to make people pay attention. Then promote it and see what happens. 2. Put together in-house teams to track the competition, with each team focusing on one product …

Four Key Factors of New Product Development

This tool describes four key factors of new product development. First, if a new program or product isn’t to your liking, think twice before imposing your critical judgment on it. If people believe it will work, then you’ve got to embrace it until they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. It’s easy to say you …

Business Crisis Management: How to Prepare

This tool explains how to prepare for a business crisis that you hope will never happen. We can all think of examples of leaders who failed to react well when a crisis hit. Think about Watergate. Think about Arthur Anderson and the Enron scandal. Think about Ford Motor Company’s failure to replace faulty tires on …

Leadership in Times of Crisis

This tool explains the skills of effective crisis leadership. It is inevitable at some point in your career you will face a situation that requires extraordinary courage under fire. More than at any other time, you will feel a lack of control. This is a frightening feeling. In a crisis: Events are unfolding more quickly …

Aligning Behaviors with Corporate Core Values

Once you’ve defined your corporate core values, you can reinforce them by incorporating them into your performance appraisals and organizational assessments. In order to do that, you need to identify the specific behaviors associated with each core value. For example, “being flexible and adapting to changes in customers’ needs” might be a core behavior associated …

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