1123 Posts Found

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

The best leaders cultivate a climate that is both comfortable and intense. They remove fear and provide the security that invites people to do their best thinking. At the same time, they establish an energizing, intense environment that demands people’s best efforts.

What occurs when you create only one of these conditions? What happens when you stretch people without first building a foundation of safety, trust, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Liz Wiseman | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Leading and managing do not describe the activities of different people, but are different roles carried out by the same people. All executives have both to manage resources judiciously and to lead their people to motivate them. Some are better at one than the other, but every organization needs both.

Content: Quotation | Author: Stephen Bungay | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management

One of the hard problems of leadership is that an organization is only as strong as its weakest leader.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Fred Kofman, Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Leadership

Nobody ever applies for a job called ‘leader.’ The job is usually called ‘manager.’ We have to restore dignity to the office of the manager. I’ve found that folks are too focused on finding really complicated, cool leadership-y things for their unique environment, instead of just focusing on the stuff that works pretty much everywhere.

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management

We rely upon persuasion when an objective, inarguable truth isn’t available, when the facts can be interpreted in different ways and judgment is required. Then the persuader, instead of arguing to prove a truth, must enable the listener to accept a mere possibility – to accept the idea that another explanation might be viable and begin to consider it.

Content: Quotation | Author: Bruce Craven | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Communication, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

The pressures of day-to-day leadership can trigger conflict between colleagues, even if they have been through strong mutual experiences, feel extensive mutual goodwill, trust one another, and have common goals. If we make assumptions about personal values, we can make devastating mistakes. For example, if we assume other people need to prioritize their values in the order we prefer, we can deceive ourselves about other … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bruce Craven | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development