UPDATED: Following the theme leadership lessons from TV, I spotted this week's USA today which weighed in with this article, ‘Mad Men' offers good business lessons. Fair warning though there may be some spoilers in that article if you have been out networking so much that you are behind on your TV viewing.

Join us for this Topic!

In truth few of us will ever make it to be the key leader in the company. However many who do make it might not be the best prepared for the job either. Many CEOs have proven they were ill prepared for the realities that Murphy’s law threw at them.

Certainly BP CEO Tony Hayward despite years of experience was not prepared to deal with or even speak to what perhaps will one of most significant man made disasters or our time.

As many of you know, I work at a company that supplies television equipment to many of the reality shows. Undercover Boss was a reality show last season that featured CEOs going undercover in their own organizations to get a real view of what was going on in their business.

Inc.com recently ran a piece titled, Business Lessons Learned from Undercover Boss in which they featured the following 5 bits of wisdom from the show:

Do Sweat the Small Stuff
Pay attention to detail – and to your regular customers – and you will be rewarded with repeat business.

Even Small Jobs Require Confidence
Inspiring confidence takes confidence especially in a highly-competitive environment.

Keep Your Customer Service Skills Sharp
Your interactions with customers over the phone are deceptively difficult to get right, and require patience and foolproof systems.

Enforce High Standards
Even if your company image thrives on being a bit racy, employees must abide by clear standards set by human resources regarding harassment.

Find Out What Goals Mean in Human Terms
Seek input from – and get to know – your front-line workers.

Often as people rise up the latter they loose connection with their businesses and their work force. While it should not take a reality show to force leaders to live in their business and not over their businesses clearly there is always room to learn more about that which seems to obvious and familiar.

One must wonder would if Mr. Hayward had done time one an oil platform as a undercover average worker might he have seen the hazards that existed?

We as leaders and those above us have a tendency to become focused on a myriad of issues and loose site of the critical roles of leadership.

If you lead, what is something you should be doing but that you aren't getting to which might be affecting your impact in a big way?

Whether you are a key executive or just an employee join us in exploring the lessons that can be learned from good and bad leadership.

As always, there is no better way to meet and connect with other executives then over dinner and conversation. $21 in advance via PayPal or $25 at the event gets you a full dinner, drink and the best networking around.

RSVP Today!