What makes an effective, inspiring leader? Most sources cite several characteristics: integrity, vision, interpersonal excellence, courage, compassion and motivation among them. Such virtues, demonstrated through skillful leadership, are desperately needed in today's economically volatile, integrity deficient, entrepreneurial, mercury-quick and merger-crazed world. Ivy Sea, Inc. can help you cultivate and strengthen those traits, or just inspire you along the way.

Our Inspired-Leadership Portal is organized to guide leaders of all levels of skillfulness directly to resources that will help build key traits and manage key issues.

New in November 2002

Ivy Sea's Leadership Archive Favorites — A to Z

6 great ways to recognize employees

8 things you can do right now for a visionary year

9 tips for fostering a respectful work environment

14 tips for taking your plan into action

Apollo 13 and a valuable lesson about failure

Are you a bad influence on your employees?

Authenticity: Are you feeding customers a line of bull?

Authenticity and leadership: What's the connection?

Business failures: What can you learn from them?

Change management: Ivy Sea's change portal

Chaos unveiled: What is it, how to benefit from it

Coaching strategies you can apply in the workplace

Company story: Has yours become "old shoe?"

Culture: Ivy Sea's organizational culture portal

Courage: Tap greater potential and thrive through challenges

Dynamic discussions: Tools for creative discussions

Employee motivation: Can you buy it?

Employee potential: How can you draw it out?

Ethics: What it is, what it means in your biz

Feedback that's more productive, less painful

Foster an employee's growth and get value in return

Layoffs, morale and right communication

Planning-tips series

Planning: Get an edge with contingency planning

Productivity: Revving up the "P" factor

Service: What's your "SQ" (service quotient)?

Spirit at work: What it is, and why it might matter to you

Strengths: Tip series for making more of your strengths

Surveys: Can they help you "delight" your customers?

Technology: Does it make us better communicators?

Tools for dynamic discussions and brainstorms

Tribes or Factions: How to unite on common ground

Visioning-tips series

There's more!
You'll find more articles and tip-sheets on organizational communication, culture, mindset management, ethics, change-management and entrepreneurship in Ivy Sea Online's main portals

Community and Dialogue
Organizational Communication
Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Wisdom, Inspiration and Mastery

...as well as in the Organizational Communication archive.


Purchase Ivy Sea Content for your training and
internal communication programs:
Ivy Sea content selections and kits are available as an easy, budget-friendly resource for your training, intranet, and internal communication programs, in handy PDF format. Purchasing from our PDF library — including a variety of PDF Tips Kits to support you with key organizational issues — is as easy as can be! Get more information about our PDF Content Library.

Ivy Sea Organizational Consulting, and Big-Vision Entrepreneur Coaching Services: We can help you: (1) discover how to define your "big-vision" or conscious-enterprise principles and vision, (2) make the most of your group or organizational strengths, (3) identify ways to "get there from here," including effectively communicating with key stakeholders, and (4) rise to greater levels of mastery, success and meaningfulness as an individual, group or organization.

Every leader needs support and inspiration along the way! How can we help you? Visit About Ivy Sea, or connect with us to discuss the possibilities! We welcome your call or email inquiry.

Celebrating Independent Spirit
Change and Communication
Community and Dialogue
Conflict and Communication
Corporate Culture and Communication
Ethics and Communication
Leadership: Leading Virtual Teams
Morale and Motivation

Renewal and Transformation

Right Relationships - Valuing People
Social Responsibility
Spirituality and the Workplace
Storytelling: Unleash the Power!
Strategy and Communication
Unity, Tolerance and Humanity Portal
Vision, Inspiration & Creativity

Featured links

CEO Refresher. A resource-rich site featuring a variety of articles directed toward mindful leadership. Highly recommended bookmark!

Edu-Leadership.com is a portal designed to foster inspired, mindful leadership among education leaders, particularly those in public highschools.


Some additional surf-worthy links

Alfie Kohn's articles on managing, parenting and teaching offer some well-researched reasons to rethink our assumptions about motivation.

Paths to Change is the consulting network of change- and organizational consultant Lawrence Ellis & Associates, an Ivy Sea Collaborator. Paths to Change emphasizes integrity, ethics, and right livelihood.

Emerging Leader. Resources to help improve your leadership skills, regardless of where you are in your development as a leader.

Business Summaries includes a small archive of free book summaries, including many on by books by popular management gurus. worth a look.

Enneagram Resources Start Here. Enneagram as a tool for more effective, rewarding interactions, from Out of the Box Coaching.

Goal Manager.com offers a nice roster of articles on motivating staff, improving retention and other management topics.

Inc.com. A sibling of Inc. Magazine, this site offers a wealth of traditional business information.

Leaders Direct. A nice collection of personal and leadership development resources.

Management General Supersite. A wide variety of content on manage-ment and leadership.

Renesch.com is the site of Author, Visionary and Futurist John Renesch. Subscribe to John's excellent (and free) electronic newsletter and read thought-provoking articles at his site.

Strategic Connections includes a terrific list of links to informative articles and resources on communication, culture and leadership.

Success Bits is a monthly newsletter, "devoted to organizational efficiency," that provides leadership tips for the real world.

Various studies confirm that people who are considered effective and successful — and who consider themselves effective — spend time reading and learning in areas outside of, as well as within, their particular areas of expertise. So much to read, so little time! What's a leader to do?

The answer is not in "speed reading" or "scanning" as much information as possible. Rather, a more effective approach is to focus on key topics and resources, and peruse them mindfully. Here are a few suggestions for good leader reads:

Ivy Sea book reviews

• 55% of what people perceive of others comes from body language and facial expressions;
• 38% comes from tone of voice;
• 7% is based on the actual words people use. So you stand a greater chance of being misunderstood when you're communi-cating via telephone, and even moreso when you're using e-mail. Take care!

Here are some great tips on how to make the best use of various communication channels.


And did you know that...

• Employee surveys show that a good group of people, effective leadership, strong vision and mission, and exciting and meaningful work are more important than salary level and options?
• Many mergers and reorganizations fail to realize intended results in part because communication and culture issues are ignored?
• Many studies show that interpersonal skill ranks at the top of key leadership and general success traits?
• A vast majority of employees say that they rarely, if ever, receive positive feedback or praise from their manager?
• Research shows that using a financial "carrot" to motivate employees fails miserably?

Want to browse more interesting stats?

Ivy Sea, Inc.

51 Federal Street

Suite 307

San Francisco, CA

94107

T 415.778.3910

F 415.778.3911

info@ivysea.com