| By Tony Schwartz, hbr.org | Here’s the dilemma: In a competitive, complex, and volatile business environment, companies need more from their employees than ever. But the same forces rocking businesses are also overwhelming employees, driving up their fear, and compromising their capacity. It’s no wonder that so many C-Suite leaders are focused on how to build […]
Master the Team Meeting
| By Julia Austin, hbswk.hbs.edu | No matter how much we hate going to meetings, there’s a generally accepted best practice that teams should meet with their managers on a regular cadence. More often than not, unfortunately, I hear leaders and their staffs dreading these get-togethers. Shouldn’t these meetings be looked forward to? That we felt they […]
How Leaders Can Keep Their Cool in a Crisis
| By Mark Bonchek, Cara France, hbr.org | The word crisis suggests something that happens infrequently. But these days, crises have become a regular state of affairs. Brands that you’d think would be fairly immune to scandal have found themselves embroiled in controversy. And those that deal with public relations challenges regularly have still been caught off guard by a customer […]
Three Myths of Collaboration
It’s not a fad or a ‘soft’ topic. For more, read “Smart Collaboration.”
The Best Leaders Are Great Teachers
| By Sydney Finkelstein, hbr.org | Kundapur Vaman Kamath was a teacher. But he didn’t work at a school or stand in front of a class. Instead, he delivered his lessons at the office—to the employees who served under him during his four decades as a senior executive at, and then CEO of, India’s ICICI Bank. Whether […]
How Are You Perceived at Work? Here’s an Exercise to Find Out
| By Kristi Hedges, hbr.org | It’s not easy to understand how other people perceive us. We are often uncertain, confused, or even completely unaware of what we project. And this lack of self-awareness can be career-limiting. Consider a former client of mine who was angling for the C-suite but had received feedback that his colleagues considered […]
Productivity Tips for People Who Hate Productivity Tips
| By Monique Valcour | hbr.org | “Traditional approaches to staying focused don’t work for me.” “I know what I should do to be more productive, but I just don’t do it.” I hear sentences like these repeatedly from coaching clients. Many have read articles and books — and have even been trained in productivity methods — […]
How to Excel at Both Strategy and Execution
By Paul Leinwand, Joachim Rotering | hbr.org | For decades, we’ve often thought of leadership profiles in unique buckets—two popular varieties were the “visionaries”, who embrace strategy and think about amazing things to do, and the “operators”, who get stuff done. We intuitively knew that there must be leaders that span these areas, but in fact, few do. […]