News
Which Pivotal Decisions Can Make (Or Break) Your Career?
FORBES – LEADERSHIP March 4, 2014
Julia Tang Peters Interview with Rodger Dean Duncan
Leadership, it’s been said, is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
Of course that assumes a willingness to make decisions. Not just any decisions, but the kind that make a positive and lasting difference.
Leadership consultant and coach Julia Tang Peters has made a career of studying such decisions. Her clients range from global corporations to entrepreneurial companies. In her practice, she doesn’t focus only on “the management stuff,” although her degree from the Kellogg School of Management and decades in business certainly qualify her to do so. She focuses on what makes leaders “tick,” informed by her background in clinical psychology. In particular, she focuses on specific behaviors that produce successful leadership.
These 5 Decisions Define You as an Entrepreneur
Huffington Post – June 1, 2014
by Marty Zwillig
Most aspiring entrepreneurs are convinced that the strength of their initial idea somehow defines them as a leader, as well as the success potential of their derivative business. In my experience, it’s a lot more complicated than that. It takes leadership ability, as well as a good idea, to make a successful entrepreneur, and great leaders evolve from key leadership decisions along the way.
Fortunately, basic leadership and entrepreneurial skills can be acquired from experience and training. If you don’t have the entrepreneur leadership attribute or interest, but want to be an “idea person” or inventor, then I recommend that you find a partner with the requisite skills to implement and run the business from your idea.
Yet we all know that there is a big gap between good entrepreneurs and a great business leaders. Great leaders seem to make the right pivotal decisions at every critical point along the way. I’ve never been able to clearly define those key points, and what separates the good from the great at these points.
So I was happy to see Julia Tang Peters, in her new book PIVOTS POINTS tackle this issue.
Pivot Points: Five Decisions Every Successful Leader Must Make
Publishers Weekly – May 19, 2014
Leadership and management consultant Peters offers a breath of fresh air on the common topic of leadership strategies by focusing on decision-making. Interviewing five successful leaders—including Bud Frankel of Frankel & Company, Glen Tullman at 7wire Ventures, and Dale Dawson of Bridge2Rwanda—she discovers that each made exactly five decisions that turned their careers into leadership-building journeys. After providing a framework for thinking about leadership and the titular pivot points, she dedicates chapters to each of these leaders (who also include John Rogers of Ariel Investments and Al Golin of GolinHarris), showing how decisions shape a leader over the course of a career.