If you’re in a leadership role, there’s a pretty decent chance that when you were a kid, you were one of the smartest kids in class. If that wasn’t you, you probably remember who was. You know the smartest kid routine. They always had the right answer and wanted to make sure everyone else – especially the teacher – knew it. In organizational leadership, being right is less important than […]
The preeminent happiness researcher shares some surprising results on connecting well-being, mental health, and how employers can play a role in improving our lives at work. Happiness and work: An interview with Lord Richard Layard
Toxic employees can affect turnover, productivity, and morale. And they can be harder to deal with than you may think. Fixing a toxic work culture: Guarding against the ‘dark triad’
Costco has found immense success by prioritizing the interests of its customers and employees over those of its shareholders. How Costco gained a cult following — by breaking every rule of retail
Aspiration or frustration drives you to seek advice. But you end up rejecting advice in favor of staying the same. How People Weasel Out of Change and Justify Staying the Same
One of the worst feelings at work is when you realize you totally messed up. You stare in disbelief at first hoping that you didn’t really make as big of a mistake as you think you did. Then, with a pit in your stomach, you calculate all the ways you can hide and hope that nobody notices what happened. How to apologize for messing up at work
Amazon’s 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods was met with a lot of fanfare. The deal would allow Amazon to grow beyond e-commerce and sell groceries in hundreds of stores while collecting significant shopper data. Meanwhile, Whole Foods could lower its prices (organic avocados for just $1.69!) and scale up after its recent declines in sales and market share. In the words of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, the partnership was […]
We tend to think about change in broad, sweeping terms. We grow dissatisfied with some aspect of our lives or ourselves and we proclaim that THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT FROM NOW ON. But having coached hundreds of senior leaders and MBA students at Stanford since 2006, I’ve observed that broad, sweeping change is rare–and this way of thinking about change is at odds with the practices that make successful change […]
The debate about feedback at work isn’t new. Since at least the middle of the last century, the question of how to get employees to improve has generated a good deal of opinion and research. But recently the discussion has taken on new intensity. The ongoing experiment in “radical transparency” at Bridgewater Associates and the culture at Netflix, which the Wall Street Journal recently described as “encouraging harsh feedback” and […]
Thanks to AI and other tools, we’re getting amazingly sophisticated at determining which candidates might have the skills and personality necessary for a great business fit. But in a recent episode of the podcast A Call to Lead with Jennifer Morgan (SAP president, Americas and Asia Pacific Japan), Stacey Cunningham, president of the New York Stock Exchange, identified an important move to take once you’ve got some data on a […]
