Leadership Development
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The Harder Work of Leadership Development: Cultivating Purpose and Judgment
Most formal leadership programming focuses on developing competencies — from managing conflict to leading change. No doubt, effective leaders need an ever-growing set of knowledge and skills — tools and practical guidance on how to use them. But for many institutions,...
A Skeptic’s Observations on Leadership
Having just finished another article on leadership, I’m reminded of why I find most modern treatments of the subject uninspiring, uninformed, repetitive, and unoriginal. No matter what color the wrapping, inside the best books and articles on leadership is a similar...
Making Tough Career Choices: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both… Robert Frost Last year, during one of our large leadership programs, a participant asked me about a major career choice she faced. In this case, the choice involved leaving her organization and...
Why “Soft” Skills Aren’t Really Soft
Today, emerging leaders will likely have a college degree, technical qualifications (making them theoretically competent to perform the tasks required of them), and relevant work experience—but what about the personal attributes that enable leaders to interact...
What Leaders Can Learn from the “World Happiness Report”
In Chapter 9 of The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders, titled “Hope,” Rob and I devote several paragraphs to discussing the work of Viktor Frankl, a survivor of both Auschwitz and Dachau and the father of logotherapy—a theory founded on the belief that human nature is...
How to Deal with Dissent
When it comes to dissent, my perspective is perhaps somewhat unusual if not unique. As a middle manager for 20 years, I often encountered dissent when presenting and enforcing policies that in some cases I didn’t agree with, either. And as someone who has also been...
Five Game Changing Resolutions for Leaders
New Year’s Resolutions have become something of a cliché in our culture, even the butt of jokes. Why? Because our collective failure to keep those resolutions—to lose weight, to save money, to call Mom every week—has rendered them semi-ridiculous, the stuff of...
Leadership Assessment: Power of Introspection
“I'm starting with the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways and no message could've been any clearer. If they wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change.” These Michael Jackson lyrics may be familiar to some....
