Leadership

Focus on these five areas.

Ron Howard achieved early fame as a child actor on The Andy Griffith Show. Then came a long stint as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. But from an early...

He or she can create an innovative environment using these five principles.

Denial dogged my travels around the world these past weeks. At a World Economic Forum gathering in Dubai just before Dubai World’s debt problems made headlines, the head Sheikh touted Dubai’s superiority over the West for problems that Dubai had seemingly avoided. But the idle cranes and empty buildings I saw were monuments to denial […]

Recently, I posted a list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. Now I’m following up by delving into each one of them. This post is about the eighth belief: “One of the best tests of my leadership — and my organization — is “what happens after people make a mistake?” I have authored or co-authored […]

“It’s okay if other people think you’re God, but you’re in trouble if you start believing it.” David Cornwell, a sports attorney, recalled that quote as one uttered by his father, a surgeon. While Cornwell was speaking on Larry King Live about Tiger Woods’ foibles, the quote has relevance to anyone in a leadership position, […]

On this blog, I’ve speculated on the factors that lead to highly talented women dropping out of their once-chosen careers and thus not being available to take the next step, leading to one consequence that these folks are not available in the pool of candidates for top jobs. With this as backdrop, it was fascinating […]

Powerful leaders exude confidence and control. You can convey these same qualities-by strategically directing your body language.

When high-tech businesses lose a valued inventor, they often gain access to her new employer's intellectual capital. To take full advantage of the networking...

Leadership transitions go awry with alarming frequency, often the result of an emotionally charged power struggle between the CEO and his would-be heir. Four practices, however, can help successors defuse the crisis—and make it to the top.

It's natural to feel distracted when times are tough.

And in some cases the boards themselves will have to change.

A majority of managers just don’t understand what it means to be a leader. That’s a conclusion that I draw from a recent global survey by McKinsey and Company about what it takes to manage corporate performance. Only 48% of managers surveyed believed that they need to inspire and only 46% believed it was their […]

It's up to leaders to set the right example.

J.C. Penney and its CEO Ron Johnson have parted ways. The news wasn’t terribly surprising as 2012 had been a challenging year: sales were down by $4.3B, the company lost close to $1B, and its stock price dropped by more than 50%. Despite Johnson’s and his supporters’ pleas of “give us more time,” Penney’s board […]

Is your company unintentionally keeping your most senior people from getting the feedback they most need? It can easily happen as an unintended consequence of success. Consider these situations: Senior executives at car companies drive only the newest models: For decades, the top executives at America’s leading automobile manufacturers always drove models fresh from the […]

Were you among the hundreds of thousands of passengers recently stranded when American Airlines grounded more than 3,000 flights in less than a week? If yes, I can tell you who to credit, yes, credit — Bobby Boutris and Douglas Peters. Never heard of them? Well, you should have, for they have done no less […]

Advice from Susan Cain, author of Quiet.

Three years ago, when a cave-in at the San Jose mine in Chile trapped 33 men under 700,000 metric tons of rock, experts estimated the probability of getting...

No matter how big the job, work shouldn’t come at the expense of everything else.