Tag Archives: business

A First-Time Manager’s Guide to Leading Virtual Teams

Posted on

by Mark Mortensen

In the past, new managers often had the luxury of cutting their teeth on traditional collocated teams: groups of people, sitting down the hall from one another, who met up in conference rooms to hash out what they were trying to achieve and how to get there. Unfortunately, today’s increasingly global work environment does not always afford that luxury. Many first-time managers find themselves assigned to a team of subordinates scattered far and wide.

Managing a distributed team can feel overwhelming as it requires you to navigate many different types of distance: geographic, temporal, cultural, linguistic, and configurational (the relative number of members in each location). Every one of these dimensions affects team dynamics and, therefore, has an impact on effectiveness and performance as well. Daunting as that may seem, there is good news in the form of a large and ever-increasing body of research and best practices on how to increase your odds of success. But first, it’s important to understand which aspects of team dynamics are, and are not, affected by distance. Continue reading →

7 Things That Make Great Bosses Unforgettable

Posted on

by Travis Bradberry

Some bosses are harder to forget than others. While bosses can be unforgettable because they make life miserable, the most memorable bosses stick with us because they change us for the better.

When I ask audiences to describe the best and worst boss they ever worked for, people inevitably ignore innate characteristics (intelligence, extraversion, attractiveness, and so on) and instead focus on qualities that are completely under the boss’s control, such as passion, insight, and honesty. Continue reading →

Treat Promises to Yourself as Seriously as Promises to Others

Posted on

by Michael E. Kibler

Successful leaders keep their promises. They take their responsibilities to others seriously, and, when necessary, they put aside their own needs for the good of the organization. As Simon Sinek put it in his bestselling book, Leaders Eat Last: “Leaders are the ones willing to give up something of their own for us—their time, their energy, their money, maybe even the food off their plate…Unless someone is willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of others to earn their place in the hierarchy, they aren’t really ‘alpha material.’”

In my firm’s work with and analysis of more than 1,000 senior executives around the world, we’ve found that this description is only half right. Of course leaders sacrifice aspects of their personal lives at times; that’s the price of admission in today’s competitive work environment. But those who subjugate their own personal needs for healthful diet and exercise, sleep and recreation, personal connections, professional development, cultural enrichment, and community engagement over five, ten or 20 years eventually succumb to a phenomenon we refer to as brownout—the graduated loss of energy, focus, and passion, which ultimately diminishes their success. Continue reading →

Why Leadership Development Programs Fail: Revolutionizing On-The-Job

Posted on

By David Carder

In response to an argument McKinsey made for why leadership development programs fail, we made two cases for how they succeed: when they set and communicate realistic expectations, and when they are built on solid, empirical research foundations Going beyond the debate on why programs succeed or fail, I’d like to share some bold ways to implement effective leadership development programs.
We have worked with and observed organizations that are creating real, far-reaching changes in how leadership development participants apply what they have learned on the job. They are fundamentally reshaping the environment in which their learners work and, therefore, redefining the 70 in the 70:20:10 model . Continue reading →

Humble Narcissists Make Great Leaders

Posted on

by Quy Huy

Narcissism gives executives the self-confidence to aim high, but greatness requires more humble behavior.

In today’s business environment of racing competition and the increasing complexities of management, leaders are frequently finding themselves having to do seemingly opposite things at once. ‘Paradoxical management’ often relates to how leaders act – their ability, for example, to focus on short-term and long term goals, or cost-cutting and investment in innovation. But it can also refer to their psychological behavior.

Recent research examined leaders who were narcissistic yet humble (two seemingly oxymoronic traits) and found that not only could the two apparently contradictory personal attributes exist simultaneously in the same leader, but narcissistic executives who were able to temper, or counter-balance, their self-centered egocentricity with humility often proved to be superior leaders. Continue reading →