I guess like everyone else I have been following the GOP candidates show closely. Because of my interest in leadership, I am less focused on the ideological issues than of which of the candidates are most likely to be successful in the top leadership position of the US Presidency. The age-old issue is this; if you have been successful in one leader...
Well, you gotta think outside the box occasionally right? I got the idea from the Economist that recently published an article on how octopuses think. Apparently they don’t really have a central brain like we humans. Instead their neurons are dispersed around their body, especially in their tentacles. So actually they think with their tentacles not...
Did you see the recent article “Working at Amazon Is a Soul-Crushing Experience"? It was written by an ex-employee so he should know, or should he? It’s raised much controversy ranging from the defenders of Bezos to those who say I told you so. We have other poster-boys for alleged employee abuse including Elon Musk (seeAshlee Vance’s “Tesla, Space...
Much of the talk about leadership is about how the leader looks and how he should act to be seen as being most effective by her followers. But I think there’s another perspective; that the best leaders, to paraphrase the old saying about children in Victorian times, are best not seen, and not heard. That might seem a bit heretical. Isn’t the job of...
Was doing some coaching last week and met a young lady who had impressive skills in arranging events. She’s a leader but doesn’t know it yet. And her lesson is a good one for all of us. She arranges conferences for her company. But although young she has already migrated to making these conferences into experiences. People at her conferences don’t ...
Did you see that Microsoft has developed software and a website that can guess your age just by looking at a photo? No more lying about our age I guess. And I suppose you have seen the numerous reports about how researchers can now identify your emotions based on brainwaves seen from MRI scans? So now we’re cutting off yet another avenue for creati...
Well I’m sure that this post will get me flamed but here’s going anyhow. Emotional intelligence is hot. It’s supposed to make you a better leader. How so? By making you more sensitive to your fellow man, it’s supposed to make your followers more engaged, more loyal to you and so on. The same with customers. In this model high engagement and high lo...
So Oscar de la Renta just died. A fashion icon par excellence. Can a fashionista be anything more than a dressed up peacock, no matter how wealthy? Every era has its leadership zeitgeist. Usually in the heady times, the zeitgeist favors pomp and circumstance, narcissists, unachievable visions and huge fortunes. That was the early 2000s. Now the zei...
The EBOLA crisis is giving us a pointed lesson about leadership. On the one hand there’s a rules-based approach to addressing the crisis adopted by government and the US medical bureaucracy. On the other there’s the passion-based approach championed by the NGOs and particularly Doctors without Borders (donate to this great organization here). The p...
Did you hear about the recent discovery of the so-called Dreadnoughtus schrani dinosaur (found in Argentina)? When it lived on Earth it weighed some 85 tons. That’s 12 African elephants or 7 Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Or to translate into a modern equivalent, that’s over 40 Cadillac Escalades. That’s really, really big. So as usual that got me to think...
I guess you’ve been seeing all the news about the Rosetta probe that has now just rendezvoused with the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. To do that it had to travel 4 billion miles over a period of 10 years, and make several gravity-assisted flybys of several planets in an incredibly convoluted series of space maneuvers. What’s the odds that you co...
Did you see Serena Williams flame out at the French Open? So what was that all about? Leadership is a phase in one’s life. You start it, do it and then finish it. How do you prepare for its end? There’s a gazillion books and articles on leadership (including my own). They all tell you how to do it better. But they don’t tell you about that one. How...
Many wise words have been penned about women in leadership. Most of them focus on the work-life balance, the glass ceiling and the leadership characteristics of women as distinct from men. But what about women’s profitability performance versus men? Why wouldn’t we be interested in that? Ever heard of a women investment manager? Yeah, I know, there...
It’s now fashionable to talk about leadership agility. The idea is that it doesn’t matter so much what your strengths and weaknesses are; the trick is whether you can learn to act the strengths you need if you don’t possess them naturally. And it doesn’t matter what your weaknesses are either as long as you can address them in a productive way, eve...
I can’t get used to all the reporting on Donald Sterling. The media have gone to town on it. He’s a bad guy no doubt; but there's even worse. How about the unspeakable and truly despicable Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Bok Haram, if you want the lowest villain of them all? Nonetheless this got me to thinking (again) about the nature of leadership....
I got to thinking about all this recently, what first with the unhappy event on MH370, and then the ignition lock saga at General Motors. Both were crises, in their own particular way. And both were badly handled. The question that arises for me is: how can smart leaders in good companies and organizations make such a massive screw-up of a crisis e...
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How do you distinguish between leadership style and substance? First-time leaders usually don't understand how closely they are being watched and that even the smallest signals count. That means insubstantial styles and actions also. See my article in Warren Bennis' Leadership Excellence
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