More Great Articles About Leadership

Motivation Secrets

This excerpt from John Baldoni's book Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders provides an excellent overview of the leadership behaviors that contribute to employee motivation. Includes some excellent leadership stories and summarizes the framework covered in the book.

Leaders Who Lead Leaders

The manner in which senior leaders lead the leaders who report to them has a tremendous impact on organizational effectiveness and innovation. All too often, senior leaders punish their direct reports for making mistakes or try to control their areas of responsibility. This article from the July 2005 Gallup Management Journal Outlines several key practices that senior leaders can implement to unleash the talents of their leadership team. Reprinted by GovLeaders.org with the kind permission of the Gallup Organization.

22 Ways to Develop Leadership in Staff Managers

This exceptionally useful report by Robert W. Eichinger and Michael M. Lombardo explains how a person who works exclusively in staff jobs throughout a career is less likely to develop important leadership competencies than a person who works exclusively in line jobs. Includes a number of specific examples of the kinds of work assignments that can have the biggest impact on a staff manager's leadership development. Highly useful for both manager's who are interested in developing their leadership skills as well as leaders who want to develop their people. The four-part excerpt is reproduced here with the kind consent of The Center of Creative Leadership.

Enabling Under-Performers to Become Valued Contributors [PDF]

Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux published this insightful article in the March/April 2003 issue of the Ivey Business Journal. They describe how supervisors' low expectations can actually drive the performance of their subordinates to lower levels. The article is based on the authors' recent book The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail. For a very content-rich online archive of articles on leadership and management, see the Ivey Business Journal's web site.

Unleashing the Power in Your Workforce [PDF]

In chapter 1 of A Company of Leaders: Five Disciplines for Unleashing the Power of Your Workforce, Robert Quinn and Gretchen Spreitzer discuss several highly successful organizations where employees at all levels act like leaders. The key to the success of those organizations, they assert, is that managers have created the conditions where self-empowerment can flourish. As he does in his books Deep Change and Building the Bridge as you Walk on It, Quinn argues that leaders must change themselves in order to change their organizations. The authors also discuss how the term "empowerment" became overused in the 1990s (and thus dismissed by many as a fad) and describe some of the obstacles to empowerment.

Reworking Intuition

This article from Science News magazine describes how three companies underwent remarkable transformations after putting employees through an intense two-day simulation designed by psychologist Lia DiBello. On the first day, the simulation made the employees take their normal ways of doing business to their logical extreme--and causing them to fail. The failure on day one generated a tremendous amount of learning and caused the employees to find new and better ways of doing things--much to the benefit of their organizations. Some great insights here.

Getting Personal in the Workplace

According to recent research by the Gallup organization, there is a very high correlation between negative workplace relationships and "actively disengaged" workers (i.e. those who act out their unhappiness at work). Conversely, over 80 percent of engaged workers indicate that their organizations actively encourage friendships at work. These findings have major implications for government managers. Few public sector organizations actively promote friendships at work, and many managers are reluctant to confront the problem employees who tend to be poison to workplace chemistry. This article was published by the Gallup Management Journal in June 2004 and reprinted by GovLeaders.org with the kind permission of the Gallup Organization.

How New Managers Become Great Managers

According to Linda A. Hill, the best managers are those who are committed to lifelong self-improvement. This article, an excerpt from Hill's book Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenge of Leadership, suggests ways for managers to identify the right kinds of development assignments for their specific situations. One of many excellent articles available from HBS Working Knowledge.

Leading Your Boss

This article provides a taste of the kinds of leadership stories Michael Useem covers in his book Leading Up. Includes a number of compelling examples of upward leadership--both good and bad and suggests a number of strategies that executives can implement to encourage employees to help keep their bosses on the right track.

Good to Great

Jim Collins published this nice summary his bestselling book Good to Great in the October 2001 issue of FastCompany. A must read if you haven't already read the book.

Courageous Followers, Courageous Leaders

Subordinates have a key role to play in helping their supervisors improve their leadership skills, argues Ira Chaleff. Rather than complain about the faults of our superiors, we all have a responsibility to help them leverage their strengths and address any fatal flaws they may have. Chaleff observes that those who go to the trouble of cultivating relationships of trust with their superiors and then offer honest feedback to them can make a huge impact on the quality of leadership in their organizations.

Is Your Company Bleeding Talent?

The Gallup Organization surveyed more than 200,000 workers from dozens of organizations and industries in an effort to identify the factors that most influence retention, productivity, profitability, customer loyalty and safety. Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham published their findings in First, Break All the Rules. They found that employee responses to six key questions had an especially strong correlation to performance, and concluded that those six factors represent the foundation of great management. This article, reprinted by GovLeaders.org with permission from the Gallup Management Journal, provides an excellent summary of the six questions.

The Six Stories You Need to Know How to Tell [PDF]

Chapter One of the terrific book by Annette Simmons, The Story Factor. In this part, Simmons explains why stories are so much more effective than "facts" in influencing people and describes the six key kinds of stories that leaders need to be able to tell. Includes several examples of highly effective stories.

How to Lead Now

How do you motivate your employees and build loyalty when you don't have the ability to give big pay raises, bonuses or other financial incentives? This article from the August 2003 issue of FastCompany provides several case studies about managers who inspired their employees to do great things despite the lack of financial rewards. They did it by showing day in and day out that they care about their employees. Includes a number of very inspirational stories.

It Doesn't Take a Wizard to Build a Better Boss

This superb article by Len Schlesinger describes the three most common kinds of bad bosses (he calls them the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man) and how working for each type can be a golden opportunity for highly competent subordinates. This article was first published in the June 1996 issue of FastCompany.

Building a Highly Engaged Workforce

The Gallup Organization's research indicates that 29 percent of all workers in government are "actively disengaged," compared to 16 percent across all sectors. This Q&A with Curt Coffman (co-author of First, Break All the Rules and Follow This Path) summarizes some of the key findings of Gallup's management research, including a description of some of the things managers can do to keep employees engaged. Re-produced by GovLeaders.org with permission from the Gallup Management Journal.

EPIC: The Science and Art of Delegating

This article, from the Spring 2002 issue of the Kravis Leadership Institute's Leadership Review, provides a useful framework to help managers delegate more effectively. The EPIC Model of Delegation provides a graduated approach to delegation (and empowerment) that addresses the fact that both "delegators" and "delegatees" may be very uncomfortable with delegation until there is a strong level of trust between the supervisor and subordinate.

Challenge is the Opportunity for Greatness

James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, authors of the classic book, The Leadership Challenge, published this article in the Spring 2003 issue of Leader to Leader. They argue here that difficult challenges represent the most powerful force for developing great leaders. They also discuss how to approach challenges in a way that will maximize leadership learning. See the Leader to Leader Institute's Full-Text Article List for a wealth of other good articles on leadership.

Leading Resonant Teams

This Q&A with Daniel Goleman, co-author if the acclaimed book Primal Leadership, was first published in the Summer 2002 issue of Leader to Leader. It includes a summary of many of the key points from Goleman's recent work, including the four elements of emotional leadership and the six styles of leadership. For a wealth of other good articles on leadership, check out the "Article index by author" section of the Leader to Leader Institute web site (formerly the Drucker Foundation).

The Three Questions

This article by William Bridges provides excellent guidance on how to communicate change to employees most effectively. It also stresses the need to help employees deal with the psychological transition they must go through during times of change. Bridges argues that an employee's sense of loss (e.g. loss of status, familiar structures, or co-workers due to a reorganization) can undermine their ability to accept change, so it is vital that leaders understand and acknowledge what the employees are going through.

How to Build a Critical Mass of Support to Accelerate Your Change

Insightful article about building support--and breaking down resistance to-- change initiatives within an organization. Especially useful for mid-level change agents. This is one of a series of superb articles on organizational transformation from the free monthly newsletter published by Being First, Inc. Also make sure to check out their free Change Tools.