Tag Archives: Mentoring

3 Things Managers Should Be Doing Every Day

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by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback

“When are we supposed to do all that?” That’s the question we constantly get from new managers, only weeks or months into their new positions, when we describe the three key activities they should be focusing on to be successful as leaders: building trust, building a team, and building a broader network. To their dismay, most of them have found they rarely end a day in their new positions having done what they planned to do. They spend most of their time solving unexpected problems and making sure their groups do their work on time, on budget, and up to standard. They feel desperately out of control because what’s urgent–the daily work–always seems to highjack what’s important–their ongoing work as managers and leaders. Continue reading →

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

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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 →

Jon Stewart, Superboss

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by Sydney Finkelstein

This past February, when Jon Stewart announced his impending retirement from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show after sixteen years, the collective mourning began almost immediately. “I have this irrational feeling of sadness, bordering on hurt,” a commentator for Entertainment Weekly said. “I feel wounded. It’s not like a romantic break-up, per se—more like a childhood best friend announcing his family is moving away right before sixth-grade starts.”

“Sixth grade” referring to, of course, the upcoming Presidential election. How would the nation possibly cope without Stewart around to skewer the candidates? “Jon Stewart, we need you in 2016,” pleaded a headline in the New Yorker. His departure, said the magazine, killed the “last hope for bringing some rationality to the 2016 Presidential field.” Stewart’s opponents on the right disagreed, with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly proclaiming, “I don’t think overall he’s been a force for good.” Continue reading →

Create a Conversation, Not a Presentation

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by John Coleman

When I worked as a consultant, I was perennially guilty of “the great unveil” in presentations—that tendency to want to save key findings for the last moment and then reveal them, expecting a satisfying moment of awe. My team and I would work tirelessly to drive to the right answer to an organization’s problem. We’d craft an intricate presentation, perfecting it right up until minutes or hours before a client meeting, and then we’d triumphantly enter the room with a thick stack of hard copy PowerPoint slides, often still warm from the printer.

But no matter how perfect our presentation looked on the surface, we regularly came across major issues when we were in the room. These one-sided expositions frequently led to anemic conversations. And this hurt our effectiveness as a team and as colleagues and advisers to our clients. Continue reading →

The Real Difference Between Leader and Manager

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by Steve Tobak

In the 19th century, Karl Marx famously called religion “the opium of the people.” In the new millennium, the opium of the people is content. A massive amount of content is generated and consumed daily by a billion people who increasingly resemble addicts or drones in an online collective, depending on your choice of metaphor.

The only real difference between the two opiates is that, today, anyone can create his own personal brand of religion and attract a flock of followers to his blog or Facebook page. No wonder so many who’ve never actually managed an employee or run a business call themselves entrepreneurs and CEOs. They have followers, so they must be leaders. Continue reading →