Leadership Skills

The recent failure of the Atlanta Public School system is an example of what can go wrong if you have a failure of leadership. At the root of the scandal was leadership that rewarded the wrong behavior and punished the correct behavior.

When protesters targeted the Gap, accus­ing the company of ignoring child labor practices in Cambodia, the company realized it needed a new way to interact with critics. Here are five ways the Gap turned around its tarnished reputation by engaging stakeholders:

Media mogul Jim Dolan’s signal characteristics include becoming easily bored and getting a thrill from taking calculated risks. In fact, he took his company public in 2007, having long ago learned about timing investments—that lesson came when he was a little kid selling fireworks.

Andy Grove, co-founder of microprocessing giant Intel, believes in the fear of failure more than the joy of success.

Concentrating on the labels of a leader­ship system isn’t as productive as focusing on the behaviors themselves. If you come upon a behavior that makes sense, try it.

To identify problems or opportunities worthy of people’s attention, ask these 7 questions:

In one way, Ezra Newman is the opposite of Stephen Hawking, another genius physicist. Unlike Hawking, who is great at attracting attention, Newman is great at deflecting it. Newman is unassuming, but boy is he influential. Like the black holes he studies, he gets noticed through his effects on his surroundings.

When Captain Chesley Sullenberger made the decision to land his doomed plane in the Hudson River, he didn’t have time to calculate his odds of success. He made his decision based on “heuristics,” a rule that directs focus to areas that matter while blocking out nonessential information. Could it work in organizations?

It’s quite possibly the worst customer service experience we’ve ever heard of. You’re entitled to breathe a sigh of relief that your company didn’t make such an egregious misstep. But do heed the critical lessons this tale offers:

Bobby Bowden won his first four games as West Virginia’s football coach in 1970. Then he made a big mistake. In a game against Pittsburgh, winning 35-8 at halftime, he listened to people who said: “We have this game won. Just don’t blow it. Don’t do anything crazy.”