Leadership Development

Align4Profit Leadership Development Blog

Helanie ScottLeadership development may be the most important activity in any organization. In my quest to helping men and women become more and more effective leaders, I share weekly articles that are a quick read with a promise to give your leaders actionable tips they can implement immediately.

It’s my goal to share my experience together with candid and pragmatic advice founded on deep research.

Read and enjoy! To make sure you don’t miss any updates, let me send you a weekly article to your email.

January 21, 2013

One Goal vs. Many Obstacles Leadership Coaching Style

The last two things you ever want to see are the eyes of a lion focused on you. That’s because, should you ever see such a sight, there’s a good […]
January 14, 2013

Coaching with Courage

I’m sure you’ve heard your share of quotes advising you how to deal with fear. One of the most famous, of course, comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He reminded a […]
January 7, 2013

Going for the Green is great Leadership Coaching

Leadership Intimacy encourages extraordinary performance. And that encouragement begins at a very basic, even animal level. You learned in the previous post, that the human body interprets unfriendly human interactions […]
December 17, 2012

Running in the Red is poor Leadership Coaching

As exceptional as we humans are, compared to our cousin mammals, we are still heavily influenced by our animal nature. And while human culture has changed dramatically over the past […]
December 12, 2012

What leadership must KNOW, and must AVOID

Experience the Power of Coaching Could poor coaching be restricting the potential of your people and compromising performance? When handled effectively, coaching will drive High Commitment and High Performance. Join […]
December 3, 2012

4 Dimensions of Leadership Coaching Excellence

We live in 4 dimensions—three dimensions of space and one of time. It should be no surprise then that coaching has as many dimensions. Whatever goals you pursue, if you […]
November 19, 2012

Quick! Check your blind spot.

Certainly you’re familiar with the blind spot on either side of your car when you’re driving. As illustrated below, if you were driving the blue car you could not see […]
November 14, 2012

Coaching can Springboard Your Leadership to the Next Level

Could poor coaching be restricting the potential of your people and compromising performance? When handled effectively, coaching will drive High Commitment and High Performance. Join the team-based program and develop […]
November 5, 2012

A Seven-Point Definition of Coaching

Think back to any college 101 course you’ve ever taken. I’ll bet it began with definitions. The reason: many words have more than one meaning. Often a word means something […]
October 22, 2012

Feedback—the Breakfast of Champions

There may be no better model for excellence in leadership than the coach model, because no group of people works more effectively than a well coached sports team. Watching a […]
October 8, 2012

Feel. Think. Act. Talk. like a Coach

Feel. Think. Act. Talk. like a Coach You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that in many ways, people act out the roles they play as professionals. At the risk of encouraging stereotypes, […]
August 20, 2012

You Can’t Be Blindsided If You Don’t Have a Blind Side

The four-eyed fish can see above and below water at the same time. Mother nature gave this perceptive creature bifocal lenses. The bottom half of each eye sees clearly underwater, […]
July 23, 2012

Sustainable Change. Isn’t that a Contradiction?

Sustain means to maintain a steady course, while change means just about the opposite. Yet sustainable change is not a contradiction. It’s part of what you need to keep your […]
July 9, 2012

Leadership Intimacy. It’s All About You.

Leadership springs from what you believe, how you act, how you learn, and how you improve. But you and your success are just the beginning. To leverage your ability, your […]
June 11, 2012

Good News/Bad News for HR Executives

First the bad news: Research says corporations spend between 2 and 10 percent of employee compensation on leadership development and get mediocre results. Another study says that only 35 percent […]
January 4, 2016

Three Ways to Beat Anxiety with Optimism in 2016

Late last year researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign established a relationship between optimism and anxiety. Common sense would suggest, of course, that optimistic people suffer less anxiety, […]
December 21, 2015

Girl’s Christmas Question Prompts Lesson for Leaders

The most popular and most often reprinted newspaper editorial of all time, “Is There a Santa Claus?” appeared in The New York Sun in September of 1897. Written by Francis […]
December 7, 2015

How to Achieve Leadership Balance of Power

We all come to leadership loaded with qualities and shortcomings. We call this unique combination of pluses and minuses personality. On a level we cannot always discern, personality determines whether […]
November 23, 2015

Thanksgiving for Leaders

It’s no secret that many leaders, especially women, push themselves too hard these days. We drive ourselves to the brink before we step back to breathe. Many of us fail […]
November 16, 2015

How Tomatoes Can Save You Time and Money

In the late 1980s, Francesco Cirillio developed and introduced a technique named after the tomato. Despite the playful name, his time-management discipline can help leaders like you be more productive […]
November 2, 2015

Emotional Intelligence: Why Relationships Always Trump Skills.

Here’s a fact that should be obvious, but some leaders tend to overlook it and fail to address it. Humans are emotionally driven. There’s no getting around it. When deciding […]