Executive Coaching & Leadership Development Articles

Joel helped me identify a tangible, relevant and influential role within my company. We created a compelling case for this brand new position to senior management and I was able to land it. Thanks to Joel, I have become a more mature leader; self-assured and polished in how I present myself. I now have the tools to effectively manage my career and professional image.

Katherine Maraschin, Sr. Director, Office of the COO,Symantec Corporation

Articles for All Leaders on Leadership Development

If you’re new to this site, you might be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of business articles available. To make it easy for you to get started, we’ve provided this top-10 list of our most popular executive coaching articles to help you develop stronger leadership skills and boost your career to new levels of success.

Joel Garfinkle, a nationally-recognized executive coach, has provided the following articles on leadership qualities to give you the information you need to achieve new heights in your career. Feel free to forward any of the leadership development articles on this site to your friends, co-workers, bosses, and employees. These articles can be reprinted freely as long as the contact information, copyright notice, and links (if published online) remain intact.

Top Leadership Articles Show the Best Qualities of Leaders

1. Ten Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Your most important asset is your personnel, especially those who shine in their positions. If they’re not happy, they’ll eventually find a position that better fulfills their needs. To keep your star employees right where they belong — with your company — follow the 10 tips outlined in this leadership development article.
2. Why Talent Development in Business Matters Superstars are more often made than born. Learn the key principles of talent development and you will give your future leaders the tools and motivation they need to succeed.
3. Building Positive Relationships at Work Building positive workplace relationships is vital for career success. Relationships can positively or negatively affect your satisfaction with the job, and your ability to advance and gain recognition for your achievements. In this executive coaching article you’ll learn 10 pointers for improving interactions with your boss, team members, project managers, senior management, vendors, clients, customers, direct reports and administrators.
4. Increase Your Job Security by Increasing Your Visibility As more and more companies resort to layoffs, now is the time to stand out and be noticed. Increasing your visibility is more important than ever! Learn some ways to increase your visibility and to get credit for the work you do.
5. Six Traps That Destroy Collaboration Collaboration encourages new ideas and keeps companies from falling into the pattern of doing things a certain way just because that’s how they have always been done. You can encourage collaboration by checking for roadblocks that might stand in the way of your team getting together to share ideas. This article provides six examples.
6. Ten Ways to Provide Quality Feedback Most managers feel uncomfortable delivering feedback, especially when it involves a problem or concern. But providing feedback that gets results isn’t as difficult or painful as you think.
7. 6 Strategies to building a stronger team In business, the main focus is often on the bottom line, and things like relationships get pushed to the back burner. But relationships are important in business, whether you are talking about relationships with your customers, your team members, or even yourself. Here are six strategies to help you build stronger team and intrapersonal relationships among your employees.

8. How to Get A Promotion Imagine your boss, your boss’s boss and other key executives in your company sitting around a table discussing YOU. They’re talking about your character, your leadership qualities, the projects you manage, the people you oversee, the results you achieve and your overall performance for the past year. This panel will be making a very important decision — do we promote you or not?
9. Fourteen Ways to Increase Productivity By taking a little time to plan and prepare, you can find extra hours in your day to complete the work you want to do and still have fun. Victor Hugo says, “He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.” Read this executive coaching article and learn how proper planning and efficient preparation can help you combat the everyday stresses of work-life.
10. Bring Your Work and Life Into Balance Whether you’ve been promoted or are just trying to cope with the relentless pressures of the modern work environment, learning new ways to handle it all will help you achieve that important balance. The place to start is with yourself and the way you think about the demands on you. This leadership development article contains four ideas for bringing your work and life into balance by changing your attitudes about what you can, and should, accomplish at work.
11. 10 Ways to Increase Visibility in Meetings The benefits of becoming more visible in meetings include increasing your knowledge capital, developing more (and deeper) relationships, and enhancing your visibility with colleagues and executives in the company.
12. 7 Steps to Career Success These seven tips offer a good place to start in achieving the career success you’ve always wanted. Used separately, each can give your career a boost, but if you want to really accelerate your forward momentum, address all seven. Read this article on leadership qualities and learn how becoming a strong leader within your organization is paramount to your career success.
13. The No. 1 way to retain great employees: Stay interviews Don’t wait until an employee leaves to have an exit interview. Instead, keep your workers with a “stay” interview. This easy, inexpensive interview is a key employee-retention strategy. The “stay” interview will help you reduce employee turnover and keep your top talent satisfied.
14. 360 Assessment Tools Measuring Executive Presence This 360 assessment tool will be measuring executive presence. You’ll learn about the 5 key qualities you need in a 360 tool.