leadership
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The Leadership Lessons You Can Learn from Failure
- June 24, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business
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We’re told we learn the most by making mistakes, and as a leader, sometimes the mistakes you’re going to learn from are going to be some real doozies. One mistake I had to learn is that you have to trust people until they prove they can’t be trusted. I learned that one the hard way.
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How to Lead Multigenerational Ownership Companies
- June 17, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
It can be hard to run a company when you’re dealing with the third and fourth generation of ownership. I’m talking about the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the founder. When someone founds a company, they put everything into it. Late nights, missed vacations, missed weekends. A lot of sacrifices go into starting and running a
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How Emotional Intelligence Can Improve Leadership Effectiveness
- June 10, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
Emotional intelligence (EI) can make or break your effectiveness as a leader. Technical skills alone won’t cut it. In fact, according to the Peter Principle — that’s where you’re promoted to your level of incompetence — there is a very good chance you won’t be effective as a leader anyway. But it’s not your fault.
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Emotional Intelligence: The Leadership Skill Nobody Teaches
- June 3, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
I’ve worked in manufacturing long enough to see the same story play out over and over. A company has a great employee. Maybe it’s the best machinist in the plant. Maybe it’s the engineer everyone calls when a machine goes down. Or it’s the maintenance tech who can hear a strange noise in a gearbox
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Why Great Leaders Prioritize Work-Life Balance for Themselves and Others
- May 27, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
“Work-life balance” is one of those phrases that sounds good until you think about what it really means. Companies talk about it, employees ask for it, and consultants build entire presentations around it. The reality is that no one can give you a work-life balance. It’s something you have to create for yourself. You have
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Sustaining Momentum: It Isn’t Something Someone Gives You
- May 6, 2026
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
People ask me how I’ve managed to sustain momentum as a leader over the years. How do I keep going, and how do I keep fresh on all the new developments and changes in leadership? They assume there’s some leadership trick or motivational technique that keeps me going when things aren’t working. There isn’t. It’s
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Manufacturing in 2030: Five Manufacturing Trends Leaders Can’t Afford to Ignore
- April 16, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Innovation, Leadership, Manufacturing
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my time in leading manufacturing organizations, it’s that the industry never stands still. From the automation boom of the 20th century to lights-out warehouses and robotics to AI-driven factories, every decade has brought seismic shifts. Yet the changes in the next five years may be the most
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Developing Executive Presence: What Sets Great Leaders Apart
- March 26, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
Great leaders are great communicators. They don’t just spew all the leadership bon mots that they memorized from the leadership course they went on last week, and they had better not get their inspiration from those damn posters! Instead, you need something of a personality, and you need to be really, truly interested in the
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Manage Upward: How to Influence Those Above You in the Org Chart
- March 19, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
A lot of leadership blogs all talk about the same thing: How do you motivate your staff? How do you get them to buy into your vision? How do you make them do what you want them to do? But how do you influence those people who are above you in the organizational chart? How
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How to Identify and Nurture Future Leaders Within Your Organization?
- March 12, 2025
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
Some of the best leaders for your company are the ones who started as fresh-faced newbies a few years ago and had trouble navigating their way around the office. Now, they’re one of the people that everyone turns to when they need help with a project or advice on something bothering them. They’re the team