Research from the University of Victoria shows that most people hold regret in high regard, partly because it helps them make sense of things and fix them. In a weird way, it also feels good. Advances in neuroscience show that we learn better with an emotional connection. Regret may help us grow. Three guidelines on using regret:

Super Bowl commentator James Brown is driven by values that show up in his choices. Brown started early with a deeply religious upbringing that culminated at DeMatha Catholic High School, where he came under the influence of Morgan Wootten, the winningest coach in the history of high school basketball, whose values were: God first, family second, academics third and basketball fourth ...

Every winter, says David Logan, an expert on human behavior and change, tribes of 20 to 150 Americans come together all over the country and set social norms. We call these events Super Bowl parties or tribal councils. All tribes are not alike, he says. They have different cultures. Here’s a peek:

As a high school junior, future media magnate Ted Turner led the debate team to its first state championship in 30 years, and he did it by finding a unique angle ... Thrown completely off guard, opponents crumbled. Turner’s team won.

Few large organizations doubt their own ability to survive the downtown, says leadership consultant John Baldoni, but sadly, few of their top executives possess the kind of vision and inspiration needed to move beyond survival—to “thrival.” In other words, the financials are acceptable, but the leadership is lacking. And right now, leadership is what we need.

Looks like General Motors plans to become even more aggressive in attempting a turnaround with the resignation of Frederick “Fritz” Henderson. The carmaker’s board sees Chairman Edward Whitacre, interim CEO and a former chief at AT&T, as a proactive outsider who has more experience with government oversight, mergers and acquisitions. GM also is looking outside for a new CEO—a dramatic cultural change.

The longer Scott Berkun works as a shaman in leadership circles, the greater the danger he’ll start believing his own PR and acting like one of those annoying gurus who talk as if everybody else is too stupid to do in a year what he could do in a day. To keep know-it-alls from falling for their own malarkey, he makes the following suggestions for keeping “experts” in line:

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Whoever first said it (there’s an argument over that), Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, did it. In 2008, he invited a dozen of his fiercest critics to dinner. Because of the evening, LeBlanc and his dissidents now have a “reasonably affable working relationship.”

It took the failure of Lehman Brothers and the devastation of Wall Street for many executives to admit that their policy of “legislated optimism” wasn’t working. Leaders are increasingly replacing the culture of “Trust me! We’re fine!” with a policy of radical transparency.

Think like an inventor by looking for opportunity in failure. British inventor James Dyson says that in trying to develop a fine blade of high-speed air for another product, his team accidentally came up with new hand-dryer technology ... Nail the solution to a problem by defining the problem ... Give better feedback with the "puppy theory," says Carol Bartz, chief executive of Yahoo ...

Goal setting can be a tightrope act for supervisors. Set the bar too low and you end up with an unmotivated, unproductive employee. Set it too high and you’ll create frustration and the possibility the person will do something unethical to achieve the goal. To make sure you’re setting goals correctly for employees, ask yourself these eight questions:

Mike Figliuolo’s favorite part of being a tank platoon leader was taking his men on a tank gunnery exercise. But a new soldier who transferred into his platoon flouted rules, took a sloppy approach and lacked fire in the belly. No amount of yakking helped—but a 7UP did ...

Whether you’re giving notice at your job or going through the departure of a deputy, here’s how the world generally interprets the length of notice of an executive:

John S. Barry staked his entire claim on WD-40 and the motto of keeping it simple. When he took over his father-in-law's small company—$1 million in annual sales—he made it smaller, chopping the product line to one and renaming the company after that product: WD-40. Then … no changes—for 25 years. While his strategy seems simple, it’s actually pretty savvy:

Mission statements can be valuable if they articulate real targets. Otherwise, they sound too much like a corporate Hallmark card. Consider Microsoft’s big goal of “A computer on every desk and in every home, all running Microsoft software.” Or Amazon’s goal for the Kindle: “Every book ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.” Both statements do something crucial: They quantify the goal.

Effective leaders know that even as a business is growing, it needs pruning—trimming old products and complex processes. Example: Paris-based Schneider Electric, with its 100,000-plus employees, has made more than 80 acquisitions over the past five years. Yet its senior managers have made simplicity a strategic imperative.

If your company hopes to break out of the economic doldrums, research shows you’re better off bringing in a complete stranger to lead a reorganization, rather than promote from within. Example: Ford brought in an outsider to turn around the organization—Alan Mulally from Boeing. Meanwhile, GM replaced CEO Rick Wagoner with his protege, Fritz Henderson, who may have felt too much empathy for his former boss to completely reverse past decisions.

It’s tough to manage people who hate making decisions. Your patience may wane as these worrywarts skirt issues.

Five words changed Mitch Albom’s outlook: “Will you do my eulogy?” They came from Albom’s boyhood rabbi, Albert Lewis. After mulling over the request, Albom agreed to do it, but only if he could get to know Lewis as a man, instead of the authority figure he had looked up to in his early years ...

Resistance to change is one of the hardest things to face, and follow-through one of the hardest things to do. It’s easy to become defensive about changes—you risk running off track, rolling over skeptics, losing goodwill or ignoring red flags. To manage resistance, follow these steps:

Donald Keough, former president of Coca-Cola, has 10 commandments (plus one extra for an even more spectacular flameout) if you want to be a “highly successful loser”: 1. Play it safe. It doesn’t take long for things to grind to a halt if you simply reduce risk to zero ...

Starting a project requires so much effort that you may keep it going even when it isn’t performing. The bigger the investment of time, energy and resources, the bigger the temptation. What you need is a disengagement plan that addresses two critical issues:

In their new book, two baseball legends—pitcher Bob Gibson and slugger Reggie Jackson—examine qualities that take a player to the top. For starters, advantage: “There are at least three kinds of advantages that the pitcher and batter contest,” Jackson says. “There’s the physical advantage, the strategic advantage and also the psychological advantage. I didn’t want two out of three. I wanted them all.”

The first time Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, was put in charge of something—the foreign exchange business—the business started losing money right away. Even by the standards of the day, it wasn’t much money. But it meant a lot to Blankfein. Nervous as hell, he went to his boss ...

Sidney Pestka, the “father of interferon,” had two early influences urging him to aim high: his parents and Marshall Nirenberg at the National Institutes of Health. Nirenberg, who later won a Nobel Prize, told the young man that “it takes as much effort and time to work on something that’s not significant as it does to work on something that will make a major contribution,” Pestka recalls. “I’ve always remembered that.”