Effective Networking Is About Giving, Not Just Taking
01/02/2024
Developing professional relationships starts with adding value to others’ lives. Networking can feel a bit scary for many people. For human social relations, small is often beautiful. After all, for a lot longer than modern civilisation has existed, humans lived in small, close-knit hunter-gatherer groups of about 150 individuals . In these groups, we felt […]
How to Motivate a Top Performer — When You Can’t Promote Them
28/02/2023
In many work environments, promotions serve as one of the few indicators of career success and advancement. But promotions have a long feedback loop. They often take years to happen, which means they mask the growth happening across the months and years before a promotion is conferred. Promotions are also not entirely under an employee’s […]
Supporting Women Leaders, Beyond the Crisis
21/03/2022
The pandemic’s negative impact on women in the workforce will not be reversed for a very long time. In the first year of the pandemic alone, 54 million women around the world left the workforce, almost 90 percent of whom exited the labor force completely. The participation rate for women in the global labor force […]
Setting Career Priorities When Everything Is Uncertain
14/01/2022
When you head into any new year, it’s natural to think about where your career stands and where it’s going. Companies traditionally notify employees of compensation changes and bonuses for last year’s performance in these first few months. They also announce promotions and reorganizations in line with succession planning and company strategy. As a result, […]
Feedback Isn’t Enough to Help Your Employees Grow
15/12/2021
A 2,000-person IT division of an investment bank, had a problem: Employees were leaving at alarming rates. The line we heard over and over again from the people we interviewed: “It’s easier to talk to a headhunter about my career than my own manager.” So the division went on a feedback campaign. They spent more […]
Our Brains Were Not Built for This Much Uncertainty
11/10/2021
Prior to the pandemic, the working world already felt to most of us like it was undergoing rapid, unrelenting change — changes in customer preferences, client and employee expectations, and competitive advantages. Covid-19 managed to upend the few things that felt relatively predictable, like where we spent our working hours, how we collaborated with colleagues, […]
Start Tackling That Big Goal You’ve Been Putting Off
23/09/2021
We all have professional goals we want to accomplish, whether it’s mastering a new technical skill, getting better at delegation, or carving out time in our schedule for networking and relationship building. Yet so often, we find ourselves putting these ambitions on the backburner — again. Sometimes it’s simple busyness, our days eaten up by […]
How to Say “No” After Saying “Yes”
23/09/2021
Picture it — a colleague asks if you can chair a new committee they’re starting. Without even pausing to think, the first words out of your mouth are, “Sure. I’d love to!” Flash forward, and you’re looking at emails piling up in your inbox and a flurry of appointments on your calendar. It suddenly hits […]
The Secret to Building Resilience
17/02/2021
An anesthesiologist we’ll call Jacob used to describe his job as “90% boredom, 10% horror.” With a few exceptions of challenging surgeries and managing a department of several hundred physicians and nurses, most of the time, Jacob’s role was routine. But that was before the Covid-19 pandemic. Since anesthesiology is not a specialty that can […]
Don’t Get Blindsided by Your Blind Spots
18/11/2020
To help people navigate the profound challenges posed by a global pandemic, a fragile economy, and social unrest, leaders at all levels of organizations in the public and private sectors must be more sensitive than ever to others’ situations and needs. Most breakdowns in workplace interactions are caused not by bad intentions but rather by […]
Gravitas Is a Quality You Can Develop
22/10/2020
Artem Hvozdkov/Getty Images “Rebecca, I need more gravitas,” Andreas said to me at the start of our first coaching session, “but I want to be myself. I don’t want to pretend to be someone else.” As an organizational psychologist at the London School of Economics, teaching leadership development in executive education programs and coaching professionals […]
Why Visionary Leadership Fails
29/07/2020
Gary Waters/Getty Images Visionary leadership is widely seen as key to strategic change. That’s because visionary leadership does not just set the strategic direction — it tells a story about why the change is worth pursuing and inspires people to embrace the change. Not surprisingly, then, science and practice have a very positive view of […]
Give Your Workers the Latitude to Learn on the Job
02/05/2020
We are in the early stages of a global economic shift as companies face intensifying competition, an accelerating pace of change, and exponentially expanding opportunity all at the same time. Despite growing productivity, the average return on assets (ROA) for U.S. companies has fallen to almost one quarter of what it was in 1965, according […]
What are the best negotiation tactics?
17/02/2020
Most business books push a singular narrative around negotiations: Go hard or go home. The advice is tied to the idea that the negotiation table is a place of conflict where one party must best the other. But research conducted by Maurice Schweitzer, Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions, and Einav Hart, Wharton postdoctoral […]
What’s the best way to make informed decisions?
15/02/2020
Decision-making works like a muscle: as you use it over the course of the day, it gets too exhausted to function effectively. One of the best strategies successful people use to work around their decision fatigue is to eliminate smaller decisions by turning them into routines. Doing so frees up mental resources for more complex […]
Real Mentorship Starts with Company Culture, Not Formal Programs
04/02/2020
Bernhard Lang/Getty Images We hear it all the time. Ask executives and managers how junior talent is encouraged, developed, and supported, and you’ll hear some variation of this refrain: “We’ve got a mentoring program!” Even vague rumors of a mentoring “program” nested somewhere in HR allow too many leaders to check off the employee engagement […]
Why Junior Employees Should Mentor Senior Employees
26/10/2019
Peter Dazeley/Getty Images When Mark Tibergien, CEO of Advisor Solutions, thought about the future of BNY Mellon’s Pershing, he knew the company had a problem. Millennials were uninterested in working in financial services. In addition, Millennials who did join the company were leaving the company at higher rates than their older peers. Like BNY Mellon’s […]
Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development
17/10/2019
Gregor Schuster/Getty Images Organizations spent $359 billion globally on training in 2016, but was it worth it? Not when you consider the following: Not only is the majority of training in today’s companies ineffective, but the purpose, timing, and content of training is flawed. Learning for the Wrong Reasons Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at […]
Are you a growth leader? The seven beliefs and behaviors that growth leaders share
16/10/2019
What makes someone a growth leader? In conversations we’ve had with business leaders, the answer tends to boil down to a variation of “I know it when I see it.” But it turns out that there is a specific set of attributes that growth leaders share. After carrying out a survey of 165 C-suite executives […]
Convening a red team and blue team can help business leaders get both sides of the story
09/10/2019
Despite their best intentions, executives fall prey to cognitive and organizational biases that get in the way of good decision making. In this series, we highlight some of them and offer a few effective ways to address them. Our topic this time? Getting both sides of the story The dilemma The CEO of a large, […]
3 of the Most Common Challenges Women Face in Negotiations
08/10/2019
master1305/Getty Images Small negotiations are woven through the fabric of our everyday working lives. Managers negotiate to secure resources for their teams, create new positions, or retain existing ones. Employees negotiate to gain more flexible work arrangements, access development opportunities, or define new roles. We use negotiations to help our selves, our team members, and […]
A Lack of Sponsorship Is Keeping Women from Advancing into Leadership
07/09/2019
ferrantraite/Getty Images Too few women are reaching the top of their organizations, and a big reason is that they are not getting the high-stakes assignments that are prerequisite for a shot at the C-suite. Often, this is due to a lack of powerful sponsors demanding and ensuring that they get these stepping-stone jobs. Ensuring that […]
181 Top CEOs Have Realized Companies Need a Purpose Beyond Profit
30/08/2019
Tim Robberts/Getty Images On August 19 the Business Roundtable issued an open letter titled “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” One of the preeminent business lobbies in the United States, the Business Roundtable (BR) includes the CEOs of leading U.S. companies from Apple to Walmart. Sandwiched between the spare title and 181 signatures was a one-page […]
Confronting overconfidence in talent strategy, management, and development | McKinsey
18/07/2019
Many leaders we encounter insist that their talent- and people-development strategies are sound—and that their organizations are good at implementing them. Is this confidence warranted, and are companies living up to their leaders’ assertions? Could these leaders be succumbing to the same optimism bias that motivates three out of four people to imagine that they […]
How to Be Resilient in the Face of Harsh Criticism
12/07/2019
Richard Drury/Getty Images Most of us have been “feedsmacked” at some point in our life. In the midst of a meeting, an innocent walk down the hallway, or a performance review, someone delivers a verbal wallop that rocks our psychological footing. We looked at 445 such incidents when we conducted an online survey asking people […]
Why Self-Awareness Isn’t Doing More to Help Women’s Careers
18/06/2019
Mads Perch/Getty Images Self-awareness is the foundational leadership skill of the 21st century. Leaders who know who they are, and how they’re seen by others, are more effective, confident, respected, and promotable. When I speak to business leaders about our five-plus year research program on self-awareness, one of the most common questions I get is […]
Time for Happiness
20/02/2019
Adam (real story, fake name) was a good employee who was given a plum project he believed could get him a promotion and a raise. Taking it seemed like the proverbial no-brainer: Work hard, nail the assignment, get more pay. He knew he’d have to put in long days and some hours on weekends, which […]
To Improve Your Team, First Work on Yourself
07/02/2019
Howard George/Getty Images. A colleague and I were recently meeting with a CEO and his leadership team, observing them as they discussed how to improve their annual planning process. As the team of ten explored their current process, the conversation got heated. The team had been talking for 45 minutes, but it wasn’t clear who […]
How to Manage an Employee Who’s Having a Personal Crisis
18/01/2019
Source: How to Manage an Employee Who’s Having a Personal Crisis
How to Embrace Change Using Emotional Intelligence
13/01/2019
Fuse/Getty Images Have you ever reacted to organizational change by rolling your eyes and quietly saying to yourself, “Here we go again”? Or by not so quietly telling others, “Haven’t we tried this before?”? Changes at work can be emotionally intense, sparking confusion, fear, anxiety, frustration, and helplessness. Experts have even said that the experience of […]
7 steps to becoming a ‘CEO Academy’
10/01/2019
Any discussion of CEO succession planning has to start with a single fact: most companies do a good job of developing internal candidates. According to one recent analysis, more than eight in 10 executives who are appointed to the top job came from within the organization. Internally appointed CEOs tend to stay in the role […]
Here’s how to find a job you really love
07/12/2018
Often millennials receive career advice along the lines of “follow your passion”. Although it sounds great, it is hard to put into practice. One can’t help but notice the dissonance between the current emphasis on passion at work, and the lack of avenues to build meaningful careers. The term “follow your passion” has increased nine-fold […]
When Companies Should Invest in Training Their Employees — and When They Shouldn’t
30/11/2018
Executive Summary According to one industry report, U.S. companies spent over $90 billion dollars on training and development activities in 2017, a year-over-year increase of 32.5 %. While many experts emphasize the importance of employee development — critics point to a painful lack of results from these investments. Ultimately, there is truth in both perspectives. […]
Women Act More Ethically Than Men When Representing Themselves — But Not When Representing Others
11/11/2018
Alex and Laila/Getty Images Research tells us a lot about why people behave unethically. For example, there is evidence that people tend to be more dishonest later in the day, because they’re more fatigued, and when they’re anxious, because they’re more likely to look out for themselves. Many of these studies, however, only look at […]
To Give a Great Presentation, Distill Your Message to Just 15 Words
10/11/2018
Fearless public speaking is about more than combating nerves. It’s about knowing the technique, the art, and the business of public speaking. Start with the idea and why you are the right person to take the stage and deliver this big idea. While it must be a big idea, you need to be able to […]
How to Gracefully Exclude Coworkers from Meetings, Emails, and Projects
05/11/2018
Here it is/Getty Images You and about 20 of your coworkers are sitting around a crowded conference room table, discussing the details of some project. Some people are fighting for attention, trying to get a word in. Others won’t stop talking. Others have tuned the meeting out, retreating to their laptops or phones. At the […]
Susan David: The gift and power of emotional courage
15/09/2018
Psychologist Susan David shares how the way we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, health and happiness. In this deeply moving, humorous and potentially life-changing talk, she challenges a culture that prizes positivity over emotional truth and discusses the powerful strategies of emotional agility. Read More
Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability
13/09/2018
Brené Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. Read More
You Don’t Find Your Purpose — You Build It
24/07/2018
“How do I find my purpose?” Ever since Daniel Gulati, Oliver Segovia, and I published Passion & Purpose six years ago, I’ve received hundreds of questions — from younger and older people alike — about purpose. We’re all looking for purpose. Most of us feel that we’ve never found it, we’ve lost it, or in some way we’re […]
How to Be an Exceptional Coach with Michael Bungay Stanier
20/07/2018
Do you interact with people? Then you need to learn how to be an amazing coach. My guest, Michael Bungay Stanier, will show you how with The Coaching Habit. Source: SPI 325: How to Be an Amazing Coach with Michael Bungay Stanier
A TED speaker coach shares 11 tips for right before you go on stage
21/06/2018
The weekend before a TED conference, each speaker rehearses their talk in the TED theater. It’s a chance for the speakers to get to know the space, for our curators to give last-minute suggestions on talk content, and for our speaker coaches to give advice to help each speaker feel their absolute best the day […]