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Showing posts with the label Successful Leaders

How Successful Leaders Think

We are drawn to the stories of effective leaders in action. Their decisiveness invigorates us. The events that unfold from their bold moves, often culminating in successful outcomes, make for gripping narratives. Perhaps most important, we turn to accounts of their deeds for lessons that we can apply in our own careers. Books like  Jack: Straight from the Gut  and  Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done  are compelling in part because they implicitly promise that we can achieve the success of a Jack Welch or a Larry Bossidy—if only we learn to emulate his actions. But this focus on  what a leader does  is misplaced. That’s because moves that work in one context often make little sense in another, even at the same company or within the experience of a single leader. Recall that Jack Welch, early in his career at General Electric, insisted that each of GE’s businesses be number one or number two in market share in its industry; years later he insisted that those same busi

Cultivating The Essential Ingredient In Leadership: Energy

There is a very simple measure of the health and culture of any team or organization:  its energy level . Among high-energy groups, we witness motivation by inspiration. There is a buzz in the air. Individuals and teams are innovating, displaying enthusiasm and optimism about their work. In lower-energy organizations, we see motivation by tasks and timelines. There is a sense of busy-ness, but little excitement about the business of the group. In this article, we will examine the role of energy in leadership, including the novel perspectives of a military Special Operations leader who has lived leadership on the battlefield and in the boardroom. Leadership As Focused, Directed Energy When we examine the writings of those who have worked extensively with leaders and organizations, the energy factor pops up repeatedly. Tom Peters, in his book  The Little Big Things , explains that “the ‘business’ of leaders at all levels is to help those in their charge develop  beyond their dr

10 Traits of Innovative Leaders

Many organizations would like their leaders to create more innovative teams. But how exactly should they do this? If you ask highly innovative leaders what makes them effective you are apt to hear, “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.” Or they will make something up that sounds compelling. But the fact of the matter is that people who excel at something aren’t usually very good at pinpointing exactly what accounts for their skill. So to find out more, we conducted our own study. We began by collaborating with a respected organization in the telecommunications industry whose leaders scored well above average on most managerial competencies. We identified 33 individuals who scored at or above the 99 th  percentile on innovation, as measured by their peers, subordinates, and bosses in a comprehensive 360-degree feedback survey.  We believed these closest colleagues would have the most accurate view of what made this group of leaders stand out from the pack in this large

The 3 Es of effective board leadership

A study of successful board chairs across countries shows how they engage, enable and encourage boards Boards of directors often get media attention when something goes wrong. The board of VW, for instance, was recently in the news after it received a terrible corporate governance rating based on the 2015 emissions scandal and its fallout. Examples of how not to behave as a board are easy to come by. Yet most boards are not like VW’s because they use good governance to work well. To find out what makes a board chair successful, the INSEAD Corporate Governance Initiative conducted 74 face-to-face interviews with experienced board chairs to produce a research project spanning nine countries – Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Since boards of directors are not always transparent, and the role of their chairs doesn’t come with a handbook, we hope this report will shed light on the workings of board chairs.