Brian Tolle

With every significant organizational change effort, there comes a time, usually about six months into the initiative, when the full weight of what is required to make the change happen is painfully apparent to the change agents. The stress of doing two full-time jobs (keeping the business running while changing...

For those of us who consider ourselves introverts, the world of work can be highly stressful for one simple reason: we never have uninterrupted time to do our work. Meetings, phone calls, manager check-ins all come at us and the expectation is that we stop our work and respond. No...

I help executives at all levels who are frustrated with their managers acting more like babysitters than business leaders. And yet, I end up not being able to do much for 70 percent of the people who come my way. In baseball, with that sort of average, I would be...

It pains me to say this but at some point in every organizational change initiative, you need to call upon the firstborns in the organization to step up and do what's responsible. It pains me because I am a lastborn and it was tough living up to the standards my...

A wise man once told me:

It is no disgrace to be a follower. On the other hand, it is no credit to remain a follower. Most great leaders began in the capacity of followers. They became great leaders because they were intelligent followers. With few exceptions, the man who cannot...

The longer I'm in the business world, the more comical the term sales and marketing seems to me. These two disciplines couldn't be more different. And since I've had to wear both hats as a business owner, what each role demands of me is mind-boggling. When I'm the marketer, I've...

One of the biggest traps that leaders of companies fall into is believing that every employee's opinion counts. This is particularly true when the company is going through significant change. Leaders mistakenly believe that it is necessary to solicit and take seriously everyone's opinions and feelings about how the change...

It wasn't until I went through intense sales training that I learned about the difference between my self-identity as a person and my role as a sales professional. The greater my healthy self-identity, the greater my ability to handle challenging circumstances in the sales process.

As I saw myself more...

Ever received an email like this one from your boss?

Please send me two to three innovative ideas by close of business tomorrow.

By the way, you open the email at 8:30 p.m. after putting your kids to bed.

OK, so your first reaction is, "what the... " (This...

I got some great feedback about my blog from two weeks ago about what to pack on the journey to raising your game. Enough so that it got me thinking about those four items in a different way.

My previous blog would make it sound like the four items (sense...

Another insight into what it takes to create a company worth $500 billion comes from Adam Lashinsky's new book, Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired - and Secretive - Company Really Works. It is a truly investigative work -- given the title -- worthy of any Kremlin watcher during the...

I was working with a client last week that is two months into an organizational effort to "raise their game." The leadership team is working on setting a clear vision for the five-year plan; holding people accountable to higher performance and new roles; and focusing its effort on a limited...

I actually mean post-mortems but funeral seemed a bit more eye-catching. Now that that's out of the way, here's my point. You could be undermining your credibility and trustworthiness by how you take part in post-mortems.

Refresher: post-mortems are those project reviews with the full cross-functional team after a...

This constantly happens to me. I am talking with one of my coaching clients about an employee of theirs whose performance is not up to par. I point out to the manager that he or she will need to give this person feedback if the performance is going to improve....

I was with one of my Fortune 500 clients last week, working with a few of the managers who recently got a new VP. This VP is the person who brought me in to help build the leadership capability of these managers. On more than one occasion, the manager asked...

Innovative leaders are ferocious time managers. This may be the one insight to help you see what's holding you back from experiencing progress.

When I describe the work I do -- helping individuals make an impact through innovation -- a certain type of person gets all jazzed up. "That's...

A number of articles appeared in 2011 that focused on events at Twitter, the start-up company that gave us a new platform for breaking news, social interaction and information gathering.

The articles make it sound like the company is dysfunctional: Turf battles, favoritism and alpha posturing, to name some of...