Leadership Insights

Leadership Insights is for new and veteran managers who want to be more than just a boss.  It's for managers who want to be leaders and shape remarkable teams that are high-performing, resilient, adaptive, and creative.

Some managers see their role as a boss.  Some have simply adopted an authoritarian model of leadership, picking up on the subtle messages in society that promote it, often without even realizing it or questioning it.  Chances are, if you're reading this, you're questioning it.

Others have adopted a more self-centered and competitive model fueled by ego and ambition, perhaps because that's how they were raised or their early exposures to leadership involved people like that.  They tend to be mercurial, vindictive, and morally flexible.  They focus on themselves, their own ambitions, and usually short-term wins, such as the next promotion, the elimination of a competitor, etc.  All is fair in their pursuit of ambition, even if it is not in the best interest of the organization.  While on the surface their teams may look solid and productive, that is usually a façade hiding resentment, frustration, fear, and distrust.  Their foundation is weak, and they eventually break, often dramatically, when under pressure or the boss is no longer there to hold the façade in place.

Increasingly, many managers are seeing themselves as leaders, though.  Their teams tend to be much more resilient and successful.  Leaders focus less on themselves and their own ambitions, and instead focus more on their team's needs and goals and those of the organization.  While they may welcome a promotion, their goal is the success of the team and the company, even if it means suppressing their own personal success.  They develop their team's competencies, even when it means one may surpass them.  They commit more attention to long term goals, such as product improvement, innovation, and client success, and resist getting seduced by short term wins, such as revenue targets, client acquisition quotas, or besting their closest rival.  They recognize that if their team is strong and competent, then the team is better able to achieve the short term goals on their own and allow their manager to focus more on the long term.  As a result, these teams tend to persist through challenges much more successfully and thrive, because their foundation is strong.

This blog will feature research and commentary on leadership principles and models and more to help enable managers explore their role from a leadership perspective and adopt anything they may find useful or meaningful.