Tag Archives: Leaders

Fear Can Stifle Collaboration, or Jumpstart It

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greveby Henrich Greve

During organisational change, play the radicals against the moderates to foster collaboration.

Many firms that emerge or grow by making technological breakthroughs owe a lot – maybe everything – to their engineers, and in return give them benefits both formal (organisational power) and informal (status and gratitude). These days, however, innovations are metabolised quickly. As their technology’s wow factor fades, firms tend to shift their emphasis from engineering derring-do to improving market performance. Engineers don’t know how to do that; the marketing department does. So can firms really divert authority and prestige away from the source of their success and into a new path to success? Often the answer is no, as seen in firms applying technological innovations that ignored marketing challenges – such as Sony’s continued development of disc-based music players after flash media enabled firms to make compact players like the iPod.

But there are also successful cases, and a forthcoming article in Administrative Science Quarterly by Emily Truelove and Katherine Kellogg (of MIT Sloan School of Management) explains one mechanism. The authors followed an unnamed car-sharing company that made a strategic shift to marketing following a period of strong engineering success based on disruptive innovation. This was a classic case of a firm with a dominant engineering department that had proven track record of success and professional norms that were completely different from the rising stars in marketing. They had every opportunity to resist, which they did – until they suddenly started making compromises. What happened? Continue reading →

Give Your Team More-Effective Positive Feedback

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Christine-Porath by Christine Porath

Research shows that one of the best ways to help employees thrive is to give them feedback. It’s one of the primary levers leaders have to increase a sense of learning and vitality. Giving your direct reports regular updates on personal performance, as well as on how the business is doing, helps them feel valued. Negative or directive feedback provides guidance, leading people to become, over time, more certain about their behavior and more confident in their competence.

Highlighting an employee’s strengths can help generate a sense of accomplishment and motivation. A Gallup survey found that 67% of employees whose managers focused on their strengths were fully engaged in their work, as compared to only 31% of employees whose managers focused on their weaknesses. IBM’s WorkTrends survey of over 19,000 workers in 26 countries, across industries and thousands of organizations, revealed that the engagement level of employees who receive recognition is almost three times higher than the engagement level of those who do not. The same survey showed that employees who receive recognition are also far less likely to quit. Recognition has been shown to increase happiness at work in general and is tied to cultural and business results, such as job satisfaction and retention. Continue reading →

The 5 Elements of a Strong Leadership Pipeline

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By Josh Bersin

Investments in traditional leadership development are often misguided and a waste of money.

It’s not that development itself isn’t important. In a Deloitte study of 7,000 organizations this year, 89% of executives rated “strengthening the leadership pipeline” an urgent issue. That’s up from 86% last year, and the trend makes sense. Organizations are continuously promoting people into management, and those new leaders struggle with the transition. To help them in their new roles, companies spend almost $14 billion a year on courses, books, videos, coaches, tests, and executive education programs — and such spending rose 10% last year.

But there’s little evidence that much of this works. Barbara Kellerman from Harvard, Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford, and numerous other experts have pointed out that the development market is filled with fads — slick behavioral models and fun, engaging tools — that don’t really move the needle. Continue reading →

Avoiding rifts within company leadership

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by Autumn Adeigbo

Do you find it as disappointing as I do when you hear that a company’s co founders have gone their separate ways?

This is especially true when the leadership has put in sweat equity and gotten through the hard stuff: pooling resources, boot-strapping, finding the right funding via investors or loans, hiring and training employees, building a board of directors, and making the company profitable. However sad, these separations within leadership happen all the time. And like a familial divorce- it can be traumatizing for all parties when a company’s foundation crumbles.

So why does it happen so often? Why are some company founders together for decades while others split a year after deciding to work together? I recently experienced a potential rift within my company’s leadership that led me to ask myself this question. It made me think about the subject seriously- because the disagreement I witnessed had the potential to divide the leadership within my company with enduring effects. Continue reading →

Three Questions Humble Leaders Ask

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by Annet Aris

To avoid falling victim to narcissistic tendencies, leaders need to look outside in more ways than one.

My office window looks out on the only grassed square in my neighborhood. The view is wonderful: toddlers stumbling along playing tag, love-struck teenagers flirting shyly, fathers patiently playing ball with their offspring, hopeful they have an Olympics contender in the making.

As a supervisory board member of several companies, I often have to make difficult telephone calls over the course of the day; it may be to address conflicts in the boardroom or discuss tricky takeovers or remuneration issues. In each case, a quick glance out of the window during these conversations provides perspective and significantly improves my mood, which clearly benefits the outcome of the discussions.

It is a shame then that so many directors’ offices are without such a view and are often far away from the ordinary world. Continue reading →