Leaders & Managers
From the nitty gritty of daily management to addressing your aspirations of leadership, this section for leaders & managers tells you how to make strong leadership decisions, build effective teams, delegate and stay above the everyday management muddle.
Get tips, strategies, tool and advice on: performance reviews, preventing workplace violence, best-practices leadership, team building, leadership skills, people management and management training.
Top executives often take up hobbies such as golf and sailing. But Mark Hellerstein is probably the only CEO who is also a professional ventriloquist. Hellerstein served as chief executive of St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. from 1995 to 2007. During that time, the oil and gas firm—now known as SM Energy Co.—grew from an $80 million private company to a $2.5 billion public company.
Starting his career as a junior naval officer, Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr. (1920-2000) earned a series of promotions to become the youngest vice admiral in Navy history. He commanded U.S. naval forces in Vietnam and, at age 49, became chief of naval operations—the youngest man to serve as the Navy’s highest-ranking officer.
Many leaders pride themselves on their ability to listen. But to listen well, you must do more than concentrate on what you hear: You need to ask smart questions. Follow these steps to extract more information through probing.
Never happy with convention, Steve Jobs created Apple University to mold MBAs in his company’s image. His first hire was Joel Podolny, dean of the Yale School of Management. Podolny then hired Harvard University’s Richard Tedlow, a leading business historian. Now Apple has hired Morten Hansen, co-author of Great by Choice.
There’s new thinking about sponsorships. Consider how music innovator Will.i.am is helping corporate America figure this out.
In the 1920s, Alfred Sloan ran General Motors. When he convened his management team to explore whether to open a plant abroad, they all approved the move. Sloan replied that he wouldn’t make a decision until he heard some disagreement. He wanted the best judgments to flow from clashing viewpoints.
During Facebook’s meteoric rise from startup to global giant, founder Mark Zuckerberg sought to preserve the company’s innovative culture. He achieved this by embracing what he calls “The Hacker Way.”
When Jeffrey Hayzlett took over as Kodak’s chief marketing officer, he didn’t know much about the founding father of the company, George Eastman. What he learned gradually, by raiding the archives and reading everything that Eastman had written, was that Eastman had been a change agent.
Raising teamwork to the next level doesn’t mean you must hire team-building consultants and send employees on Outward Bound. Take these simpler steps.
Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, former publisher of The New York Times who died in 2012, had not been an obvious choice as leader. Mild-mannered, introverted and modest, Sulzberger remained modest even after great success in the family business.
