Management Training

You start off as a functional leader, and within a few years, you’re tapped to lead at a higher level. But you’re struggling—it’s different at the top. At this point, it’s crucial to make a series of (sometimes tricky) shifts to make the leap to enterprise leadership.

Thanks to Mike Duke’s detail-mindedness with data and scheduling, Lee Scott thinks his successor as Walmart CEO is a better manager than he was himself. “Mike is not only a good leader but a really good manager,” Scott says.

This season, the Washington Nationals have stood at or near the top of their division because they have a skipper who knows how to lead: Davey Johnson.

No one—not even CEOs—can do it all without sound guidance and advice. In a recent Booz & Company study of CEO turnover, leaders explained how they learned what they needed to know, when they needed to know it.

After a diagnosis, patients at the Mayo Clinic meet with a team of specialists who help them understand what’s happening so they can decide about treatment together, says president and CEO Denis Cortese. This kind of teamwork is the stock-in-trade of Cortese, who won last year’s top leadership award from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership.

Growing up, no one considered Harry Truman a leader. He was a kid with thick glasses who mostly stayed home, working the farm or reading. But the course of his life changed when he entered the Army during World War I. One rainy night, he faced a moment of true terror.

PROBLEM: You give a series of sterling evaluations to one of your employees and she suddenly asks, “If I’m so good, why is it that I’m never considered for promotion around here?” How should you respond?

By definition, a leader has to be out front. That’s why in hindsight it’s so easy to see how Peter Drucker, the foremost management guru of the 20th century, got off to an early lead: He was ahead of his time.

John Chambers, Cisco's CEO, survived both the Internet bubble burst in 2000 and the financial bubble burst in 2008, when so many of his colleagues did not. He refused to let the huge computer company stagnate. Chambers pushed Cisco to innovate in videoconferencing, idea generation and sharing, and acquisitions.

While you may not have been partying much at the office lately, some employers see summer as an ideal time for an all-staff get-together. Instead of spending a lot on flowers and glassware rentals, though, they’re getting creative with summertime themes. Here are ideas that assistants posted on the Admin Pro Forum.