Monthly Archive for March, 2009

Human beings give meaning to their lives through constellations of commitments. The commitments they make span the range from personal development, to family, to groups and organizations, to vocations and avocations, to local or global causes, to perceived spiritual truths. Some of these commitments are solitary pursuits for knowledge or pleasure, but most are inextricably [...]

A defining moment for leadership occurs when it is confronted with a moral stand by a follower. What leadership does next may affect the fate of the organization and its leaders for years to come. If followers feel the need to take a moral stand, leadership has already missed or closed itself off to many [...]

Most organizations have a board of directors or its equivalent. This body is charged with ensuring that the leadership of an organization is performing successfully and acting within the generally accepted practices or rules governing its type of activity. Because the board is responsible for the integrity and effectiveness of the organization’s leadership, it is [...]

It is self-evident that leaders who have multiple channels providing them with feedback on the impact of their policies, programs, management style, and processes are in the best position to effect continuous correction, improvement, and growth. The channels can consist of a mix of formal and informal reporting processes, internal and external auditors, task forces [...]

While in an ideal world all members of your organization would behave as courageous followers, it is no more realistic to expect perfection from followers than for them to expect perfection of their leaders. There are a number of reasons why a follower may not bring sensitive or divergent information to a leader’s attention: perceived [...]

Inviting creative challenge is a high level of innovative teamwork. It can be undermined by the lack of a more basic set of group norms governing interpersonal relationships. Too often leadership teams are plagued with internal fractiousness. There is mistrust or misunderstanding laterally among members of the team as well as a degree of upward [...]

While feedback is a critical component of the leader-follower system, it is reactive. Beyond feedback there is a proactive mode of operating in which ideas are continuously sought, encouraged, developed, examined, challenged, modified, synthesized, and adopted or discarded. A creative culture emerges when there is a commitment to broadening participation and seeking diverse perspectives, to [...]

It is not difficult to conceive of appreciating followers who find new ways to support their leaders. It takes a greater stretch of the imagination to conceive of appreciating staff who challenge the way in which you are leading. Imagine for a moment that you as a leader are surrounded with people who deeply appreciate [...]

Leaders usually have an extremely high work ethic. They often think nothing of working sixty- or seventy-hour weeks or more. This is especially so for leaders whose organizations are start-ups, in crisis, or have complex constituencies, demanding customers, intense social missions, or multi-site or multinational locations requiring significant travel. In addition to the very real [...]