By Joel Peterson for | Inc.com | All decent leaders wrestle — at least a little — with the notion of wanting to be both respected and liked. It’s human nature. Great leaders, however, know that execution, getting the job done, and done well, is vastly more important than popularity. The often-cited example these days is Steve […]
How to Give Feedback People Can Actually Use
| Harvard Business Review | Over the last decade, I’ve conducted thousands of 360-degree feedback interviews with the colleagues of the leaders I coach. My goal with these sessions is to get a better sense of my clients’ strengths and weaknesses, but more often than not, the feedback isn’t particularly useful. How do you give […]
Hiring Externally Can Severely Damage Your Company, According to a Wharton Study
By Ben Fanning | www.inc.com | Wharton research shows that external hires cost 18 to 20 percent more than those promoted from within. They also have significantly lower performance for the first two years. I was skipped over four times in my career for promotion, when the company hired from the outside. Each time I ended up leaving the company and so […]
Forget the Pecking Order at Work
Organizations are often run according to “the superchicken model,” where the value is placed on star employees who outperform others. And yet, this isn’t what drives the most high-achieving teams. Business leader Margaret Heffernan observes that it is social cohesion — built every coffee break, every time one team member asks another for help — […]
How To Give Negative Performance Feedback, Part 1
By Caroline Ceniza-levine | www.forbes.com | Giving performance feedback can be tricky because ideally you want to turn the situation around but you don’t know how the person receiving the feedback will react. In this post, I’ll share suggestions for sharing negative performance feedback when you have a recipient who gets defensive. In a follow-up post, Part […]
3 Interview Questions to Help You Weed Out Jerks
By Jessica Stillman | www.inc.com | According to Harvard Business School research rooting out a toxic employee from your team will actually save you more than twice as much as hiring a superstar will earn you. Hiring jerks, in other words, is hugely costly. But that’s not the only reason Chieh Huang, the founder and CEO of online retailer […]
Transcending Either-Or Decision Making
hbr.org Jennifer Riel, an adjunct professor at the Rotman School of Management, presents a model way to solve problems: integrative thinking. It’s taking the best from two inadequate options to come up with a successful solution. She gives examples from the film industry to show how CEOs have put the process to work. Riel is the […]
5 Little Words That Will Make You a Much Better Leader
By Jessica Stillman, www.inc.com We all know great leaders excel at articulating their vision. What’s less often appreciated is that listening is an equally valuable leadership skill. Why? First, because feeling truly heard is deeply empowering for a team. As Yale business professor Marissa Kind has explained, “when employees feel listened to, they are less likely to feel emotionally exhausted and […]