175 Posts found for Source: Leader to Leader

“For six years, my research team at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business carried out an extensive investigation of business breakdowns—not just missteps, but major business failures…At almost every one of the 51 companies we investigated, we were able to interview people who could give us firsthand accounts of what happened. In all we conducted 197 interviews of CEOs, former CEOs, other top executives, and midlevel … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sydney Finkelstein | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Organizations sometimes practice an unconscious hypocrisy, preaching a people-focused leadership style while rewarding managers solely on the basis of financial and operating results. This causes managers to focus more on the bottom-line results than on the process of obtaining them. Often this leads to a number of counterproductive outcomes, such as managers’ resorting to demanding, autocratic, or punitive leadership in order to get short-term results. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

It is impossible to separate the performance and well-being of organizations from the performance and well-being of their members. To provide people with mean­ingful work and rewards, organizations need to be successful. And to be successful, organizations need high-performing individuals. The challenge is to design organizations that perform at high levels and treat people in ways that are motivating and satisfying.

Treating people in ways that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Edward E. Lawler III | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

“Without a clear vision, an organization be-comes a self-serving bureaucracy. The top managers begin to think “the sheep are there for the benefit of the shepherd.” All the money, recognition, power, and status move up the hierarchy, away from the people closest to the customers, and leadership begins to serve the leaders and not the organization’s larger purpose and goals…A vision is compelling when it … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Jesse Stoner, Ken Blanchard | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management

The most important things a leader can bring to a changing organization are passion, conviction, and confidence in others. Too often executives announce a plan, launch a task force, and then simply hope that people find the answers — instead of offering a dream, stretching their horizons, and encouraging people to do the same. That is why we say, “leaders go first.”

However, given that passion, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Rosabeth Moss Kanter | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Change Management, Leadership

Language is messy by nature, which is why we must be careful in how we use it. As leaders, after all, we have little else to work with. We typically don’t use hammers and saws, heavy equipment, or even computers to do our real work. The essence of leadership — what we do with 98 percent of our time — is communication. To master any … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Communication, Leadership

“We don’t have the right people” is an excuse that suits all times and all circumstances; it is a refuge for scoundrels. Moreover, it obscures leaders’ fundamental task of helping people do more together than they could individually.

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

The dictionary — which, unlike the computer, is an essential leadership tool — contains multiple definitions of the word mission; the most appropriate here is, “purpose, reason for being.” Vision, by contrast, is “a picture or image of the future we seek to create,” and values articulate how we intend to live as we pursue our mission. Paradoxically, if an organization’s mission is truly motivating … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Vision

“Whether in a corporation, a Scout troop, a public agency, or an entire nation, constituents seek four things: meaning or direction, trust in and from the leader, a sense of hope and optimism, and results. To serve these constituent needs — and ultimately to unleash an organization’s intellectual capital — leaders can foster four supporting conditions, which in turn can create four respective outcomes.”

Content: Article | Author: Warren Bennis | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Leadership

John P. Kotter offers up eight critical stages involved in the change process as well as four mistakes that are the source of most failures and three key tasks for change leaders.

Content: Article | Author: John P. Kotter | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Change Management, Leadership

Ever provocative, Peter Drucker turns his attention to the “bigger” picture of social structure and the care of community amongst the pluralistic and autonomous private, public, and social sector organizations.

Content: Article | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Peter M. Senge offers an excellent look at Peter Drucker’s discipline of innovation (focus on mission, define significant results, and do rigorous assessment), providing along the way some of the best comments about mission and vision that I have ever read.

Content: Article | Author: Peter Senge | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Doris Kearns Goodwin takes a look at the leadership traits of U.S. presidents Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Franklin Roosevelt, and offers lessons to be drawn from them.

Content: Article | Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Leadership

Frances Hesselbein offers some thought-provoking ideas on leaders who are women.

Content: Article | Author: Frances Hesselbein | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Women in Business

Business people exercise leadership in the community as well as the commercial world, yet we know little about the magnitude, form, and significance of their engagement in this other leadership arena. In many ways it has been the invisible side of leadership. We know that community involvement is widespread: a 1993 Conference Board survey of 454 companies revealed that over 90 percent have formal volunteer … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: James E. Austin | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Best Practices, Leadership

If we want people to listen, we must banish “but” from our vocabulary. How many times has someone told us how well we have performed — and we were feeling good about the feedback, listening carefully — then we have heard “but,” and the positive, energizing part of the feedback was lost in the “but” and what followed it. “But” is nobody’s friend — listener … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Communication, Leadership

It appears that the old aphorism, “people are our most important asset,” is actually true. Compelling evidence suggests that organizational success comes more from managing people effectively than from attaining large size, operating in a high-growth industry, or becoming lean and mean through downsizing — which, after all, puts many of your most important assets on the street for the competition to employ. But while … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Best Practices, Organizational Behavior

“Leaders make things up, and they make them happen. They’re defining the game — but they’re also making sure the game is on. And those two behaviors sit at very distinctly opposite ends of the continuum of how things get done. We must frame a vision, defining what done means. And we must then make that vision operational, deciding what doing actually looks like. It … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: David Allen | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Leadership

Next time you hear a chief executive go on about teamwork, about how “we” did it by all pulling together, ask who among the “we” is getting what kind of bonus. When you hear that chief boosting about taking the long view, ask how those bonuses are calculated. If cooperation and foresight are so important, why have these few been cashing in on generous stock … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership

Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, which appears in 1,900 newspapers around the world, and author of four bestselling books, including The Dilbert Principle, which has sold 1.5 million copies since 1996. His publications, prime-time TV show, Web site, and 700 licensed products have made Adams the head of a virtual company with an estimated $200 million in annual revenues. (6/99)

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Management