1129 Posts Found

Resilience is the most important characteristic, along with curiosity, for any leader. It’s not exactly about what you know; it’s about those two dimensions. I think there are two ways to develop resilience: one is through the relationships you have… The second way is through your attitude.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ginni Rometty | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Leadership

Narcissism. Overconfidence. Low EQ. Why do we persist in selecting for leadership traits that hamper organizational progress—and leave the right potential leaders in the wrong roles?

Content: Article | Authors: Brooke Weddle, Bryan Hancock, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Diversity, Human Resources, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

All CEOs need to ask themselves, “What do you want to be remembered for—as a great person or a person who made the company great?” If you want to make the company great, then you must think about the company first, yourself second. It’s human nature to want to be recognized, so it’s not easy to put the institution ahead of yourself.

Content: Quotation | Author: Roberto Setúba | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership

The path to leadership can seem unclear in competitive organizations. In the book The Treasure You Seek, Archie L. Jones offers a roadmap to help aspiring leaders discover their strengths, communicate effectively, and build meaningful connections.

Content: Article | Authors: Archie L. Jones, Dina Gerdeman | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Career, Leadership, Personal Development

We all want possibility, transformation, change, and innovation, but the only way to get to that is through uncertainty. If we want those things, we need to get better at navigating uncertainty as individual leaders, as teams, and as organizations. Organizations need to ask themselves, “Do we have the ability to face uncertainty? What is our uncertainty ability?” I believe uncertainty ability is like a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Nathan Furr | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Innovation, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Great leaders challenge their organizations. They see the opportunity that uncertainty creates to learn quickly, to do new things. But they also, on the other hand, support their people and pay attention to the anxiety that uncertainty creates. Great leaders create a rich soil to sustain their people.

Content: Quotation | Author: Nathan Furr | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Leadership

No one is hired to win a popularity contest—you’re hired to get things done. You’re hired to make things happen, so when you show up to lead a group of people, those people want many things from you. What they don’t necessarily want from you is your authentic self.

What they need from you is inspiration. They need energy, even if you’re not feeling energetic that … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

In a complex, fast-changing world, leadership teams are facing challenges that are bigger than ever while trying to reach goals that are sometimes seemingly at odds. A super leadership team must: 

• Guide the organization’s transformation while ensuring near-term performance.
• Shift from being a group of individual “superheroes” championing their own domains to putting the enterprise first—sometimes at the expense of team members’ individual agendas.
• Recognize the necessary behaviors

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Brittany Heflin, Jennifer Thomas, Jim Hemerling, Megan Lindley | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership

The strategy, purpose, and values discussions—what Kevin Sharer, the former CEO of Amgen, calls a company’s “social architecture”—have often felt like separate exercises, but they now need to work in concert. “If you don’t have a social architecture that’s solid, well-accepted, and can be operationalized against the most important decisions you make, that’s leadership’s fault,” said Sharer.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Adam Bryant, Kevin Sharer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Goals, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy, Values

Overconfidence should actually be viewed as a warning sign that someone will turn out to be a poor leader — immune to feedback, resistant to change, and unlikely to consult others when making key decisions.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Conflicting demands and challenges must be managed. Here’s how to do it.

Content: Article | Authors: Adam Bryant, Kevin Sharer | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Leadership

Executives who confront new challenges with old formulas often fail. The best leaders tailor their approach, recalibrating their “action orientation” to address the problem at hand, says Ryan Raffaelli. He details three action orientations and how leaders can harness them.

Content: Article | Authors: Ben Rand, Ryan Raffaelli | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Decision Making, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

It’s not enough to make sure the right people are on the bus and in the right seat on the bus, as Jim Collins enlightened us in his book Good to Great. Great leaders understand that even the best players on their team need coaching and inspiration.

Content: Quotation | Author: Harrison Monarth | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Training & Development

The best CEOs don’t just tell people, “This is where we’re going,” and expect them to follow. They understand the underlying psychology at play. For example, researchers have done experiments where they give lottery tickets to a group and half get a ticket with an assigned number and the other half gets a blank piece of paper where they write their own number. Then, before … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Keller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management

Instead of asking [executive leadership team (ELT)] members to summarize how they are doing (which usually only yields positive reports), one CEO we know focuses the conversation on “What keeps you up at night?” At executive team meetings, she asks her direct reports to share their biggest challenges. Then as a team ELT members help one another by sharing ways they have successfully overcome such … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Deborah Lovich, Henning Streubel, Joseph Halverson, Robert Werner | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership, Management

One of our foundation principles is that leadership and communication are the same thing. Communication is leadership.

Content: Quotation | Author: Kip Tindell | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Communication, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.

Content: Quotation | Author: Haruki Murakami | Subjects: Communication, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

The initial 100 days are a time for boldness and clarity—a time when CEOs can express the purest form of their vision for the company.

• CEOs should create an integrated narrative that lays out their ambition as well as their plans for transformation, stakeholder management, talent assessment, and communications.
• In addition to laying out their ambition and plans, they also have an opportunity to step outside their

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Christine Barton, Jim Hemerling, Mrin Nayak, Tuukka Seppä | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership, Management

In order to disrupt your own frame of reference, you have to be willing to treat your accumulated experience as sunk cost, to be discarded as circumstances require. It’s a psychologically difficult thing to do. Moreover, ordinary daily pressures make it difficult to find the time to really think about, and thoroughly analyze, environmental trends. Many people, managers among them, suffer from cognitive myopia, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jan-Benedict Steenkamp | Source: Management and Business Review (MBR) | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Personal Development

New leaders no longer have the luxury of a 90-day listening tour to get to know an organization, says John Quelch. He offers seven steps to prepare CEOs for a successful start, and three missteps to avoid.

Content: Article | Author: John A. Quelch | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership