You’re not too different from a prime minister or president. The scale is surely different, but the qualities of a great leader hold true from head of state to head of a pizza parlor night crew. And, as we learned from podcast guests Steve Killelea and Mike Hardy, the same hallmarks of a peaceful nation […]
Chaos. Confusion. Uncertainty. We’ve heard leaders using these terms a lot lately. How do you navigate a course through it all? How do you keep your feet – and your team – balanced? Our answer isn’t what you’d expect. We’re straying from the pack by offering a different tack: find the opportunity. The term tack […]
The Boardroom View from Helle Bank Jorgensen DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—has become a political hot potato. Beyond politicos, major corporations, non-profits, and even schools are ejecting anything that hints at it. From a boardroom perspective, there is one good reason to drop DEI programs, according to Helle Bank Jorgensen, the CEO of Competent Boards and […]
“Command and control” makes a great title for an action movie, but as a leadership style, its screen is going dark with effective leaders. Many leaders — maybe even you — still rely on power and authority, but as both the workplace and workforce continue to change, their teams become less motivated, engaged, and productive. […]
Nearsighted leaders can be fatal. In the U.S. and several other countries, leaders – particularly in business – tend to take very short-term views. The next quarterly earnings report rules all. The next election matters more than legislation. But as the American automobile industry proved in 2008-2009, those near-term views eventually kill a company. That’s […]
Multicultural Insights from Dr. Juana Bordas Why are you ignoring the past? Humans have had formal leaders for at least 6,000 years, when civilization first arose. That’s an immense amount of leadership knowledge, yet today’s leaders look only as far as this year’s trendy management philosophy – if they look at all: according to Gartner […]
Can you be a leader without followers? Absolutely – at least, if you’re in Norway. That’s an oversimplification to introduce a complex fact: cultural differences mean effective leadership looks different across the world. Followership is just one example. Most of the globe takes it for granted that followership and leadership work in ineluctable tandem. That’s […]
The systems begin with you. We all know virtually everything is in an interconnected system: supply chains, food chains, sales funnels, government, even your department’s approval process. It’s easy to forget that, as a leader, you are the heart of your team’s system. Your every word, every action, cascades through it. So how can you […]
Do you know a tyrant? We tend to think of tyranny on a national scale, but tyrants can arise in any leadership role: a parent, a supervisor at work, a CEO, or a town mayor. We also tend to think of tyrants wielding the power to rise on their own, but they require followers to […]
Memorize this line: “I am not alone anymore.” That is your mantra for this bright new year of 2025. As we learned in this week’s podcast, the leadership paradigm has changed. Effective leaders no longer lead solo; rather, the most effective leadership is now collective, focusing on shared practices within teams instead of fixating on […]