Peter Koestenbaum

The best leaders operate in four dimensions: vision, reality, ethics, and courage. These are the four intelligences, the four forms of perceiving, the languages for communicating that are required to achieve meaningful, sustained results.

Peter Koestenbaum

I believe that the central leadership attribute is the ability to manage polarity. In every aspect of life, polarities are inevitable: We want to live, yet we must die. How can I devote myself fully to both family and career? Am I a boss or a friend? A lover or a judge? How do I reconcile my own needs with those of my team? Those … [ Read more ]

Peter Koestenbaum

Authentic leaders have absorbed the fundamental fact of existence — that you can’t get around life’s inherent contradictions. The leadership mind is spacious. It has ample room for the ambiguities of the world, for conflicting feelings, and for contradictory ideas.

Peter Koestenbaum

Reflection doesn’t take anything away from decisiveness, from being a person of action. In fact, it generates the inner toughness that you need to be an effective person of action — to be a leader. Think of leadership as the sum of two vectors: competence (your specialty, your skills, your know-how) and authenticity (your identity, your character, your attitude). When companies and people get stuck, … [ Read more ]