Writing about Life in the digital age

It's been largely assumed that to run a successful business today, good leadership is required. But it's not the end of the world for leaders who worry that they're low on charisma or can't stir employees' hearts and minds. Maybe they don't particularly want to, and that's OK too.

Sometimes, it's more effective for employees to be more loyal to the work instead of being more loyal to the leader. After all, the end goal should be to keep employees engaged and productive by charging them to solve compelling problems.

First, it's important to understand the difference between an appealing boss and challenging work. A recent Harvard Business Review article found that employees at Facebook were more likely to quit because of their work--and not because of a "horrible" boss. The authors--three HR executives and Wharton professor Adam Grant--had spent years studying Facebook. When the social media giant started tracking employee exits, "all bets were on managers," the authors wrote. Turns out, employees left "when their job wasn't enjoyable, their strengths weren't being used, and they weren't growing in their careers."

How inclusive or exclusive should organizations be when developing their employees’ talents? In a world of unlimited resources, organizations would surely invest in everyone. After all, as Henry Ford is credited as saying, “the only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.” In the real world, however, limited budgets force organizations to be much more selective, which explains the growing interest in high potential (HiPo) identification. An employee’s potential sets the upper limits of his or her development range — the more potential they have, the quicker and cheaper it is to develop them.

Scientific studies have long suggested that investing in the right people will maximize organizations’ returns. In line with Pareto’s principle, these studies show that across a wide range of tasks, industries, and organizations, a small proportion of the workforce tends to drive a large proportion of organizational results, such that:

Do you remember that executive who was such a natural? She never seemed stressed, always knew the right thing to say, delivered good results consistently. A born leader, right? Just had the right genes for leadership from the start.

Remember that other boss you had? He was rubbish. Not much point trying to fix him. He just wasn’t a leader.

That’s how it looked. But it wasn’t true.

My company’s research from multiple fields, as diverse as neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to form and reorganise synaptic connections, especially in response to learning experience or following injury) and musicology, shows that skills are not as innate as we naturally believe.

And that applies to leadership just as much as any other capability.

The contemporary business world lauds those who are seen as creative. Innovators such as Elon Musk and Jony Ive have become household names. Yet, for many of us, despite our best efforts to be recognized as creative thinkers, our suggestions in meetings are ignored and our pitches to bosses get rebuffed.

If your colleagues have already formed an opinion of you as technically competent but a little staid, it’s going to take a lot to change their minds and get them to listen — a situation that’s especially true for women, who, research suggests, are often unfairly viewed as less creative than men.

Want your kids to grow up to be successful? Make them do chores. When they balk (and trust me: they will probably balk), you can tell them that scientific research supports you.

It sounds great, and it's true--but there is a catch. (We'll get to that in a minute.) For now, the science.

In the Harvard Grant Study, the longest running longitudinal study in history, (spanning 75 years and counting--from 1938 to the present), researchers identified two things that people need in order to be happy and successful:

The first? Love.

The second? Work ethic.

And what's the best way to develop work ethic in young people? Based on the experiences of the 724 high-achievers who were part of the study (including people like future-President Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, the Watergate-era editor of The Washington Post) there's a consensus.

The further along you are in your career, the easier it is to fall back on the mistaken assumption that you've made it and have all the skills you need to succeed. The tendency is to focus all your energy on getting the job done, assuming that the rest will take care of itself. Big mistake.

New research from Stanford tells the story. Carol Dweck and her colleagues conducted a study with people who were struggling with their performance. One group was taught to perform better on a task that they performed poorly in. The other group received a completely different intervention: for the task that they performed badly in, they were taught that they weren't stuck and that improving their performance was a choice. They discovered that learning produces physiological changes in the brain, just like exercise changes muscles. All they had to do was believe in themselves and make it happen.

When the groups' performance was reassessed a few months later, the group that was taught to perform the task better did even worse. The group that was taught that they had the power to change their brains and improve their performance themselves improved dramatically.

Feeling stressed lately? Chances are you're not alone. We carry varying degrees of stress around with us all the time—sometimes more, sometimes less. Does that pressure make us more productive or less? As with so many aspects of human psychology, the answer is: It depends. But what it depends on is something called the Yerkes-Dodson curve, a theory that dates back to 1908. Here's how understanding it can help you channel the stress you may be feeling into energy to get things done.

The Yerkes-Dodson curve relates the amount of motivational energy, called "arousal," a person may possess to how well they'll perform at a given task. The basic idea is that at low levels of arousal, people don't perform particularly well. In this state, people aren't all that motivated to get much done. That helps explain why being totally stress-free can breed laziness or complacency, and also why some of your most productive days are those when the clock is ticking for you to wrap up a big projec

For the past 16 years, we've studied the background of incoming CEOs at the world's largest 2,500 public companies as part of the annual Strategy& CEO Success study. Take this quiz to assess your immediate chances, based on the data we've collected, of becoming a chief executive in your chosen industry.

Most time-strapped executives know they should plan ahead and prioritize, focus on the important as much as the urgent, invest in their health (including getting enough sleep), make time for family and relationships, and limit (even if they don’t entirely avoid) mindless escapism. But doing this is easier said than done, as we all know—and as I, too, have learned during years of trying unsuccessfully to boost my effectiveness.

In my case, I stumbled upon an ancient meditation technique that, to my surprise, improved my mind’s ability to better resist the typical temptations that get in the way of developing productive and healthy habits. Much in the same way that intense, focused physical activity serves to energize and revitalize the body during the rest of the day, meditation is for me—and for the many other people who use it—like a mental aerobic exercise that declutters and detoxifies the mind to enhance its metabolic activity.

When we think of great leaders, certain characteristics come to mind: They have confidence in their abilities and conviction in their beliefs. They “trust their gut,” “stay the course,” and “prove others wrong.” They aren’t “pushovers,” and they certainly don’t “flip-flop.” But this archetype is terribly outdated. Having spent three years studying many of the world’s most successful leaders for my new book, Persuadable, I’ve learned one surprising thing they have in common: a willingness to be persuaded.

Alan Mulally, the vaunted CEO who saved Ford Motor Company, is, for example, exceptionally skeptical of his own opinions. Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers, insists that his team ruthlessly second-guess his thinking. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, seeks out information that might disprove her beliefs about the world and herself. In our increasingly complex world, these leaders have realized that the ability to consider emerging evidence and change their minds accordingly provides extraordinary advantages.

To make a good decision, you need to have a sense of two things: how different choices change the likelihood of different outcomes and how desirable each of those outcomes is. In other words, as Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb have written, decision making requires both prediction and judgment.

But how do you get better at either? We’ve published volumes on this subject —here are a few of my favorites — but there are three rules that stand out. Following them will improve your ability to predict the effects of your choices and assess their desirability.

Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has said that overconfidence is the bias he’d eliminate first if he had a magic wand. It’s ubiquitous, particularly among men, the wealthy, and even experts. Overconfidence is not a universal phenomenon — it depends on factors including culture and personality — but the chances are good that you’re more confident about each step of the decision-making process than you ought to be.

So, the first rule of decision making is to just be less certain — about everything. Think choice A will lead to outcome B? It’s probably a bit less likely than you believe. Think outcome B is preferable to outcome C? You’re probably too confident about that as well.

Once you accept that you’re overconfident, you can revisit the logic of your decision. What else would you think about if you were less sure that A would cause B, or that B is preferable to C? Have you prepared for a dramatically different outcome than your expected one?

You can also practice aligning your level of your confidence to the chance that you’re correct. Try out quizzes like this one or this one. You’ll realize that while it’s not possible to always be right, it’s totally possible to become less overconfident.

If you think your boss is some freak of nature and you're the luckiest person alive, I'll break it to you gently: He or she is human and will make mistakes.

The great ones rise up from their errors by A) acknowledging they made a mistake and correcting a behavior (think humility), or B) acknowledging a blind spot that needs to be addressed, then doing something about it.

Lets dive into a few prevalent leadership mistakes that even the best and smartest leaders tend to make.

Can you imagine working for someone in a high-level leadership role, perhaps a CEO, and suddenly it dawns on you: This person isn't leadership caliber.

Your next thought may be, How in the world did he (or she) make it this far up the ladder?

It's a fair question. People are promoted into leadership roles every day who have no business belonging there.

Sometimes it's political; other times it's the easier choice--promote from within and avoid the high cost of recruitment--but a bad choice, nonetheless.

The biggest challenge leaders face is performing to the set standards of the best in the business. This means raising the bar really high--as the ten hugely successful CEOs I wrote about recently have done.

In the end, you'll find the leadership journey is predicated on two things that drive success: Results and relationships. You can't have results at the expense of people. And serving your tribe well without getting results is merely putting lipstick on a pig.

Let me first clarify what I mean by saying "get out of the way." I am not referring to being a passive leader nor am I saying that any good leader should be less visible. Quite the opposite. Being present and getting your hands dirty is part of the job. But there is a fine balance.

Working alongside the team in the trenches at times is important, but a high performance team must be empowered, nimble and adaptive. This is hard to accomplish when micro-managers are breathing down their necks all day. That's not a sound leadership strategy anyway and it won't lead to improving speed, efficiency or morale.

When it comes to success, it's easy to think that people blessed with brains are inevitably going to leave the rest of us in the dust, but social psychologist Amy Cuddy knows first-hand how attitude can outweigh IQ.

Cuddy suffered a car accident at the age of 19 which resulted in brain damage that took 30 points from her IQ. Before the crash Cuddy had an IQ near genius levels; her post-crash IQ was just average.

As someone who had always built her identity around her intelligence, the significant dip in Cuddy's IQ left her feeling powerless and unconfident. Despite her brain damage, she slowly made her way through college and even got accepted into the graduate program at Princeton.

Once at Princeton, Cuddy struggled until she discovered that it was her lack of confidence that was holding her back, not her lack of brainpower. This was especially true during difficult conversations, presentations, and other high-pressure, highly important moments.

The truth is that life can be tough, business can be hard-hitting and success comes with challenges. What separates those who can hold their own and keep going in times of adversity is a cluster of habits that center on resilience.

Resilience means developing a strong solid level of mental toughness. We aren't born with it--it's a habit you develop, a skill you learn. And it's absolutely essential.

Here are four core habits of the most resilient people:

1. They're connected to their emotions.
Resilient people understand their emotions and how to manage them. Some people say that suppressing what you feel is the best approach when you're going through tough times, but it's just the opposite--suppressing your emotions can backfire. People who are highly anxious or have a lot on their minds tend to struggle with unwanted thoughts. Resilient people are connected to their emotions and self-aware, which gives them more control.

2. They don't listen to negative voices in their heads.
Resilient people are able to get past the negativity and dig deeper to discover what's triggering it. Then instead of taking it to heart, they're able to turn it  into positive intentions. Resilient people are optimistic and believe in their own strength and ability to overcome any problems. In a crisis, a resilient person will be positive, open and willing to find the solution. They will not be dwelling on the problem but looking forward to the future solutions that should be considered.

What makes a great leader? Although the core ingredients of leadership are universal (good judgment, integrity, and people skills), the full recipe for successful leadership requires culture-specific condiments. The main reason for this is that cultures differ in their implicit theories of leadership, the lay beliefs about the qualities that individuals need to display to be considered leaders. Depending on the cultural context, your typical style and behavioral tendencies may be an asset or a weakness. In other words, good leadership is largely personality in the right place.

Research has shown that leaders’ decision making, communication style, and dark-side tendencies are influenced by the geographical region in which they operate. Below we review six major leadership types that illustrate some of these findings.

Most time-strapped executives know they should plan ahead and prioritize, focus on the important as much as the urgent, invest in their health (including getting enough sleep), make time for family and relationships, and limit (even if they don’t entirely avoid) mindless escapism. But doing this is easier said than done, as we all know—and as I, too, have learned during years of trying unsuccessfully to boost my effectiveness.

In my case, I stumbled upon an ancient meditation technique that, to my surprise, improved my mind’s ability to better resist the typical temptations that get in the way of developing productive and healthy habits. Much in the same way that intense, focused physical activity serves to energize and revitalize the body during the rest of the day, meditation is for me—and for the many other people who use it—like a mental aerobic exercise that declutters and detoxifies the mind to enhance its metabolic activity.