In complex times, many leaders find themselves facing one crisis after another. It can leave you breathless and run ragged as you try to deal with problem after problem. But in uncertain times, it’s more important than ever to stop, take a breath, and look at the big picture. As you’re trying to get everything […]

When Alex walked into my office and said she was overwhelmed, I thought: OK, she needs my help. She needs answers. I listened, asked a few clarifying questions, and then did what I’ve been trained to do—fix it. I grabbed a pen, broke the problem into parts, and offered strategies: delegating more, calendar blocking, prioritization. […]

When Alex walked into my office and said she was overwhelmed, I thought: OK, she needs my help. She needs answers. I listened, asked a few clarifying questions, and then did what I’ve been trained to do—fix it. I grabbed a pen, broke the problem into parts, and offered strategies: delegating more, calendar blocking, prioritization. […]

Management of long-term, complex, large-scale change has a reputation of not delivering the anticipated benefits. A primary reason for this is that leaders generally fail to consider how to approach change in a way that matches their intent. Consider Ling Yen*, a client of ours and finance director at an industrial manufacturing company. She sat […]

Identity and success often get intertwined for high-achieving professionals, leading to a fear of failure that can be paralyzing. In this interview from our “Personal Perspectives” video series, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School and coauthor (with Oprah Winfrey) of Build the Life You Want, delves into the complexities of professional identity and offers a unique approach […]

As a leader, naturally you want to be sympathetic to your team’s struggles. You want them to know you care, and see them as whole people rather than cogs in a machine. But is it enough to be sympathetic? Or are forward-thinking leaders aiming higher than that? Sympathy vs empathy So what does sympathy actually […]

There are some kinds of failure we want to encourage. As I outlined in my last blog post – Should you “fail fast, fail often”? – intelligent failures are necessary if you want to innovate. But not all failures are created equal. Most of the time, you want to avoid them if at all possible. […]

Is there such a thing as a “good failure”? Innovative leadership researcher Amy Edmondson certainly thinks so. Her latest book, Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive, lays out how failure can lead us to greater heights – insights, innovations and inventions. But if you’ve even glanced in the […]

When business leaders confront complex problems, there’s a powerful impulse to dive right into “solving” mode: You gather a team and then identify potential solutions. That’s fine for challenges you’ve faced before or when proven methods yield good results. But what happens when a new type of problem arises or aspects of a familiar one shift substantially? […]

Every good leader knows that giving feedback is a key part of their job. But perhaps because we know it’s so important, many of us get tied up in knots trying to figure out how to do it well. As is often the case when we’re overwhelmed, there’s a temptation to rely on oversimplified rules. […]