See my interview with David Asman below and let me know what you think!!

Great leaders are remarkably objective. They are almost always in Adult mode, seeking new information and insights and telling the troops what the latest conclusions and resulting plans are, the thinking behind them, and indicating a willingness to modify if additional information suggests that is appropriate.

One thing I learned at Microsoft within the first week of arriving there from 26 years at Procter & Gamble was that lowlights were what was discussed in business reviews. The highlights slide was the last slide in the PowerPoint deck. That was a rule Bill Gates instituted early in the life of the company and is was sacred!

If you are managing an organization, be it small or large, you need to realize that what you say is listened to more carefully than you think. Hence, you better be objective. Also, any communication is an opportunity to create enthusiasm for your vision and the plans for achieving it.

Great leaders set the expectation that the organization will do exciting things and execute with excellence.

The recent announcement that RIM, the parent company of the BlackBerry, was lowering the price of its tablet, called the PlayBook, to $199 is a clear indication that the company is beginning to realize how late it was to the tablet market and how pedestrian the product is.

Nobody is irreplaceable – we may think our contributions are huge, but there are a lot of talented people out there.

2011 proved to be a very challenging business year, but, as with most years, there were some great examples of gutsy leadership and some of the reverse … Here are my picks for best and worst of 2011!

Did you ever have a boss whose span of control consisted of only 2 or 3 direct reports? It is very frustrating. He or she is just not busy enough, so they meddle, wasting a lot of people’s time and preventing the direct reports from having full authority and responsibility. Narrow spans of control typically mean more bosses which leads to excessive layers which fosters bureaucracy.

In Nokia’s 3rd quarter investor conference call in October, 2007, the CFO was immensely proud that they posted record revenue and profit by achieving record sales of their low end phones. Also, he enthusiastically noted that even though the average price of those phones dropped 10%, they retained the same profit margin. The stock price [...]