Best-Practices Leadership

How to seize opportunities? The best we can do is make informed guesses and take our chances; the main obstacle being that poor leadership tends to perpetuate itself, eroding an organization’s capacity to act. Western Union provides a striking example: It turned away Alexander Graham Bell's offer to produce the telephone.

No one is immune to resentment, but it’s been said that holding onto a grudge is like taking poison and hoping the other person will die. Instead of focusing on what you would change in somebody else, turn your attention to what needs to change in you. First steps:

Research conducted decades ago still offers insights into how leaders operate. Kurt Lewin’s 1939 study of leadership styles led the researchers to establish three basic types: 1. Authoritarian. 2. Participative or Democratic. 3. Delegative or Laissez Faire.

Thanks to the readers of my blog, I've collected an excellent list of things to do if you're a leader who wants to create a culture of fear in your organization. Not that the readers and commenters are suggesting that you actually do these things. With the idea in mind that a good way to learn leadership is to do the opposite of what really crappy leaders do, here is an edited list of readers' suggestions:

As an executive in the financial services industry for more than 40 years, Bob MacDonald noticed that too often, job applicants looked at ethics as nothing more than a set of rules. They would meet the minimum ethical standard just to get by. So he founded Old MacDonald’s Ethical Leadership Farm to teach children that ethical people do the right things even when they aren’t required.

In the workplace and the sporting world, teams that buy into their coach’s vision have a much better chance of success. How can you get your team all working toward the same goal—your goal? Start by following these four steps to build support:

Two University of Virginia leaders weigh in on what books you might want on your leadership bookshelf. Here are suggestions from Harry Harding, dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and Debbie Ryan, UVA’s women’s basketball coach for 35 years:

“It is too easy to let the person with great presentation or language skills buffalo you into thinking that they are better or more knowledgeable than someone else who might not necessarily have that particular set of skills,” says Robert W. Selander, who recently stepped down as CEO at MasterCard. Lesson: Don’t let style distract you from substance.

Keith Cowing, a software entrepreneur who has worked for Goldman Sachs and Lockheed Martin, respects the discipline, tenacity and elite performance of Navy SEALs and believes we can learn a lot from them. Here are seven lessons from the SEALs, whom Cowing notes are able to unleash military firepower on groups 10 times their size:

Moving on up can be thorny if you’re not prepared to make the transition from a peer to a supervisor. David Peck, aka “The Recovering Leader,” offers six things to consider during and after a promotion: