Kurt Lewin (1951), organizational theorist of “three phases” fame, also developed the concept of force fields in change. Lewin basically asserts that there are forces that drive change or progress toward a goal (helping forces) and forces that drive resistance to change (hindering forces). The difference in resistance to change vs. readiness to change lies [...]
What is the difference between a competent leader and am extraordinary executive? This is the question Richard Davis proposes to answer in The Intangibles of Leadership. Davis argues that intelligence, pedigree and training are all important…but there is more to it than that. Davis cites research, case studies and his own experience as a management [...]
There’s a considerable body of literature arguing for the importance of trust in leadership. In this video from the LeaderSkilz series, Bryson Moore and the people at Soderquist demonstrate how NOT to build trust in followers.
LeaderSkilz – ‘Trust’ from The Soderquist Center on Vimeo.
Your company’s employees are its value-creation engine, so you need to take care of them, writes HCL Technologies chief Vineet Nayar, author of Employees First, Customers Second. That doesn’t mean throwing picnics for them, Nayar says; rather, it means letting them shape your company’s strategy and feed into the management process directly. “We give them [...]
“When leading a group, should the leader pay differentiated attention to individual members and the group as a collective simultaneously?” This is the question raised by Joshua Wu, Anne Tsui, and Angelo Kinicki in a recent Academy of Management Journal publication. Their study of 70 work groups in eight companies found that successful team leaders manage the team, not the [...]
Transformational leadership involves the ability to inspire and motivate followers to take action toward the desire goal or behavior. We all know that inspiration is a vital part of effective leadership, most of us just don’t know what it means to inspire someone. Instead, we sell them on the desired actions or levels of performance [...]
Ronald Heifetz is the King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership and founder of the Center for Public Leadership. Recognized for his seminal work on both the practice and teaching of leadership, his research focuses on building the adaptive capacity of societies and organizations. His first book, Leadership without Easy Answers, has been reprinted [...]
One of the core principles of strengths management is that people don’t need to be well-rounded to succeed. It helps, however, if teams are well-rounded, say the authors of Strengths Based Leadership.
What Makes a Great Leadership Team – GMJ
Often managers are called to be more than just managers; they’re called to be leaders. Recent literature continues to blur the line between management and leadership. However, one theory stands out because of its potential to make clear cut distinctions between leaders and managers: Transformational Leadership theory.
Transformational Leadership is a relatively new approach to leadership [...]
I’m going to recommend that you read “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter,” by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, despite the fact that it has a few serious flaws. Don’t be fooled by the title, the authors do NOT offer research support for their claim that leadership can make folks smarter. In fact, [...]
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