Top 12 Development Goals for Leaders

Another post by Dan McCarthy

I help a lot of leaders create individual development plans using some variation of this process. This time of year (January) is always especially busy.

Although every leader I work with is unique, it seems like the development goals end up being somewhat common from year to year.

To help you get a head start on your 2010 leadership development plan, here’s a list of development goals that may apply to you too. I’d recommend picking no more than one and really working at it for at least 6 months. Do not attempt to work on all 12, just because there are 12 months in a year. (-:

 I’d like to improve my:

Great Leadership's Best Leader Contest

There's a lot of boss bashing going on these days.

Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, holds a "bad boss" contest every year in which people tell their bad-boss stories. The three best (worst?) just got published published. Take a look at the "winners".

There's a site called "badbossology", kind of a resouce for strategies on how to cope with a difficult boss, and there's "bigbadboss.com, with more of the same.
And when I first started this blog, I piled on with my list of the "Worst Leaders of All Time".
Being a manager makes you an easy target.

Read Further

Promoted Or Fired

I came across Dan McCarthy’s blog recently. Dan is a practitioner in the field of leadership development for over 20 years and is currently the Manager of Leadership and Management Development at a Fortune "Great Place to Work", "Training Top 125", and "High Impact Learning" (HILO 80) company. He has a great blog on leadership .

Dan wrote a great post Head’s Up – You are About to be Promoted or Fired where he shares why you might get promoted or fired. I think there’s also a third script: the status quo script. While you may not be fired for things you do (or don’t do), you may not get promoted either. Here’s what the script might be why you are not getting promoted:

Status Quo script:

I have some good news - you are keeping your job. Unfortunately we aren’t promoting you. Here’s why:

7 Ways to get your boss promoted

Your success is heavily tied to the success of your manager. In most cases, when your manager wins, so do you. When your manager is failing, it’s like being on a sinking ship without a lifeboat.

Think back over your own career, and about some of the managers you’ve worked for. I’ll bet when you worked for a successful manager you had:









- More resources
- More credibility
- More meaningful, value-added work
- More development and career opportunities
- A bigger slice of the merit increase, bonus, or commission pie

Now think about when you worked for a failing manager.