By Rodger Dean Duncan

If you appreciate the study of leadership, you’ll certainly recognize names like Covey, Maxwell, Peters, Bennis, Blanchard, and Kouzes. These modern-day experts help us understand and practice the art and science of influencing people.

But we can reach back—way back—in history to consider a much earlier focus on what makes for effective leadership.

Plutarch, the Greek-turned-Roman historian, profiled dozens of ancient personalities in his now-famous work called Parallel Lives. For centuries, that study has been a staple in universities. But you can bet it’s not on any of Amazon’s bestseller lists.

Today, the appetite seems to be for quick-read hero-worship of hot shot turnaround artists or celebrity C-suite execs who understand social media as well as they do balance sheets.

Enter Stanley McChrystal. After graduating from West Point, he served 34 years in the U.S. Army. His last assignment before retirement was as a four-star general in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

You might assume that with a career like that behind him, McChrystal would have his fill of studying leadership. Not so. With two collaborators (Jeff Eggers and Jason Mangone) and a team of researchers, McChrystal jumped headlong into an investigation of leadership far beyond anything he’d experienced or observed in the preceding decades.

The result is Leaders: Myth and Reality.

With Plutarch’s Parallel Lives as a model, McChrystal examined parallel sets of leaders who followed unconventional paths to succeed.

For example—

• Hollywood icon Walt Disney and French fashion designer Coco Chanel. Both built empires, but in very different ways. And both had public personas that sharply contrasted with how they led in private.

• Boss Tweed, the famously corrupt New York politician from the 1860s, and Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. Both followed unlikely roads to the helm of powerful institutions.

• Martin Luther, a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, and his namesake Martin Luther King, Jr., known for his work in behalf of American civil rights. Both started as local clergymen, then emerged from modest backgrounds to lead world-changing movements.

As the book title suggests, McChrystal has identified three common myths about leadership—myths that can produce less effective results:

• The Formulaic Myth—Simply follow a checklist of behaviors and you’ll be a great leader.

• The Attribution Myth—The success and failures of a team flow mostly from the influence of its leader.

• The Results Myth—Delivering results is all that’s required for positions of power and accolades.

To explore these findings further, I sat down for a conversation with Stan McChrystal.

Rodger Dean Duncan: You’ve identified three leadership myths that you say are widely recognized and even followed but that lead people astray with adverse consequences. If the myths don’t produce good results, why do people embrace them?

Stanley McChrystal: We found that these three leadership myths sort of jump out of our research. They are embraced by people because, first, they simplify understanding leadership. In fact, they over-simplify leadership. For example, with the Formulaic Myth you can come up with a list of leadership traits that are easy to describe. The list may not necessarily be accurate, but it’s easy.

The same with the Attribution Myth. We often give leaders credit for the success or failure of an organization far in excess of what they actually deserve. Again, it makes evaluation of leadership much simpler. When you think about how history is written, we often write leader-centric history. So it’s clean to say this army had a better general so they won. In reality, it’s usually much more nuanced than that.

With the Results Myth, we follow leaders who don’t actually produce good results. That was more interesting to me yet less intuitively obvious. But leaders fulfill a need in us as followers. And it’s not always about results. It involves the need for something to believe in. As a consequence, some pretty bad leaders turn out to be pretty darn powerful.

Today I’m asking questions I never asked before.

Duncan: Of the three leadership myths you’ve identified, which one do you regard as most common and what role does it play in the perpetuation of less-than-excellent leadership?

McChrystal: I believe the Formulaic Myth is the most common. That’s because we like to write down lists of top leadership traits and that sort of thing. It makes it seem that if we simply follow these rules we’re going to be effective. But this approach tends to ignore the contextual nature of leadership.

Duncan: People like check lists, and although simplicity has its place, too much of it can get you in trouble.

McChrystal: Exactly.

Duncan: You’ve said that mastering the art of “followership” is one of the keys to becoming an effective leader. What does that “look like” in terms of observable behaviors?

McChrystal: If we think about the times we’ve been in leadership positions and we had followers that we very much valued or appreciated, often they were ones who took the time to understand what we as leaders were trying to do and they gave us credit for intent if not perfect guidance. They filled in the blanks. If someone does only exactly what you tell them to do, the result is often not quite right.

Effective followership is a combination of trying to put yourself in the mind of the leader, trying to understand what that leader wants to have occur—the desired outcome—and then filling in the holes so you get there.

There’s also value in things like overt loyalty. Sometimes leaders need subordinates who stand up in front of other followers and say “Okay, this is what we’re going to do.”

Understanding the power of good followership helps prepare a person for leadership.

Duncan: You’ve acknowledged that a multi-generational, diverse workforce requires leaders who can build consensus and a shared sense of purpose. What kind of behaviors enable a leader to do that?

McChrystal: I think one of the first is establishing a connection with followers. Followers must believe that they’re an important part of the success equation, not just automatons responding to the leader’s guidance. And they must know that the leader believes that, too.

A multi-generational and diverse workforce brings different perspectives. They laugh at different jokes, they wear different clothing, etc. The best thing a leader can do in this kind of environment is to show empathy. I’m not saying sympathy. I mean empathy—the ability to listen and understand and acknowledge that everyone has a different viewpoint. When you do that, you’re showing that you respect people and appreciate their perspectives.

Duncan: Years ago at Campbell Soup Company I worked with a very effective CEO who used to say that the quality of your ideas is not directly proportional to your title or where your parking place is located.

McChrystal: That’s absolutely right!

Duncan: One of the people you highlight in your book is Leonard Bernstein, conductor of the New York Philharmonic. What cues can other leaders glean from an orchestra conductor?

McChrystal: For a long time, orchestras didn’t have conductors. Conductors arose in the nineteenth century and the baton because the symbol of power. In reality, what a good conductor does is help every member of the orchestra understand the music in a similar way. A good conductor paints a picture of what the music should sound like when all the musicians play together. A good conductor provides vision and enthusiasm. And then—in the moment—the conductor must provide a coordinating function so all the musicians focus on their own technical excellence and are enabled to perform as an orchestra as opposed to individuals.

I like to remind people that conductors don’t create any music. If the orchestra were not present, all the arm swinging in the world by the conductor would produce nothing but sweat. The magic is in the connection between the conductor and the musicians.

Duncan: Power, you say, is derived more from reputation than rank, more from persuasion than direction, and more from example than prescription. Why do so many people in leadership positions seem to have missed that lesson? What price are they paying?

McChrystal: A lot of people equate positional power with real power. Of course there’s some power in position—for example, enabling a person to approve or reject certain things. They might be able to promote or fire people. But the reality is that the power to truly influence people’s behavior is strongest when it’s all about example.

In the Army I once had a battalion commander who wore his T-shirts backwards because he said he’d learned in Vietnam that soldiers were less vulnerable if their T-shirts covered more of their neck, which would be visible to the enemy. I noticed that a tremendous number of people in the battalion were wearing their T-shirt backwards simply because this very credible individual had said this was a good idea.

In my view, real, long-term power comes from the ability to persuade people that they should do or not do something based on your suggestion or example. That’s much more effective than transactional things based on only title or position.

Duncan: Of course in many organizations we find people with tremendous influence because of who they are rather than rank or tenure.

McChrystal: Yes, that’s so true. As you suggest, the most influential people in an organization are often not the people with the best parking places.

Duncan: You point out that leadership success is highly contextual. How would you advise leaders to use situational awareness to enhance their likelihood of producing positive results?

Read more

Vanderhoven explains that productivity is fundamentally a social challenge rather than an individual one. Leaders shape the environment in which others work through the priorities they set, the meetings they schedule, the way they delegate, and the expectations they create. By intentionally reducing distractions, clarifying priorities, and making room for deep, focused work, leaders unlock higher performance while reducing burnout and unnecessary complexity.

• Great leaders don’t confuse speed with progress. They know when to tap the brakes, creating clarity and focus that ultimately enables their teams to achieve better results.

• Productivity is shaped by the environment leaders create. Every meeting, email, delegation, and conversation either supports deep work or contributes to unnecessary distraction.

• Leaders earn trust by tuning in before they jump in. Understanding a person’s current workload before assigning new responsibilities demonstrates respect and leads to better decisions for both the individual and the team.

1. Before adding another task to someone’s workload, pause long enough to understand what they are already responsible for and discuss priorities together.

2. Review your meetings, emails, and communication habits to identify ways you may unintentionally be creating distractions for your team.

3. Before delegating work, ask, “What are you currently working on?” ask “If you take this on, what would you need to set aside?” to ensure expectations remain realistic and sustainable.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

People often ask me what’s the most common issue I’ve seen in four decades of executive coaching. The answer is easy: inadequate preparation for leadership.

Too many “leaders” reach their positions through attrition. They’re shifted into leadership roles because somebody else retires or otherwise moves on. They may have been competent in sales or engineering or some other role, so it’s assumed they can lead. But they often can’t

An instructive example comes to mind. Frank, a new client, invited me to his office. He had just become CEO of a global energy firm. The founder, in his mid-80s, had finally decided to “step aside.” (He couldn’t bring himself to use the word “retire.”)

Here’s our conversation—

Frank: “I want you to write a speech for me.”

Rodger: “I don’t write speeches anymore.”

Frank: “But you can do it, can’t you?” (He knew I could do it, because earlier in my career I wrote speeches for presidential cabinet officers, U.S. Senators, and others.)

Rodger: “Yes, I can write speeches. But that’s not what I do now. I coach people on leadership and performance issues.”

Frank: “Well, I need you to write a speech for me.”

Rodger: “Who’s your audience?”

Frank: “Well, I don’t have an audience yet.”

Rodger: “Then why do you need a speech?”

Frank: “Because in my new role I’m sure I’ll be called on to give a speech.”

Rodger: “But, Frank, a good speech is prepared with a specific audience in mind. The message should be tailored to the needs and interests of the people you’re addressing.”

Frank: “Well, I’d just like to have a good speech in hand so I’ll be ready when I’m asked.”

I could see he was determined to have a speech for his imaginary audience. So I agreed to write a speech for him.

“So, what would you like to talk about in this speech to a hypothetical group that hasn’t invited you yet?”

“I want to talk about leadership,” Frank said.

“Okay, that’s a pretty broad topic. What do you want to say about leadership?”

“That’s what I’m asking you to tell me!”

Sometimes I’m slow, but it finally dawned on me. Frank wanted a speech, yes. But what he was really asking for was a dose of leadership coaching. He had been an officer of a multi-billion-dollar company for several years, but the title came with no meaningful grooming. All the decisions—even the relatively minor ones—had been made by the founder who was now gone. Frank was ill prepared for his new role, and he felt like a kid trying to ice skate barefooted.

Unfortunately, Frank’s predicament was not unusual. In his organization, title was often mistaken for competence. Position and tenure were mistaken for leadership.

Enter Scott Jeffrey Miller. He’s the former executive vice president of thought leadership at FranklinCovey, one of the world’s top people development firms.

Miller’s book is Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow.

This book is aimed at people who feel they weren’t perfectly groomed for leadership. It speaks to leaders at all levels with a bit of “mess” in them. Miller can relate, and he openly acknowledges his own career missteps along the way to his current role.

Miller offers immediately usable advice on a wide range of issues like how to:

· lead difficult conversations

· inspire trust

· actively listen

· challenge paradigms

· create a clear and actionable vision for a team

· make it safe to tell the truth

· protect your team against urgencies

· lead through change

· make high-value decisions

I appreciate Scott’s candor, and enjoyed our conversation.

Rodger Dean Duncan: You’re very transparent in acknowledging your own past missteps along the way to leadership success. What role do you think self-awareness plays in a person’s development as a leader?

Scott Miller: Self-awareness is the linchpin to becoming a successful leader. Your position in the organization is inversely correlated to the level of feedback—truthful feedback—you receive. People don’t want to create a “career cul-de-sac” for themselves by telling their leader—let alone a member of the C-suite—how they dominate the conversation in meetings or how epically boring their last speech was. So, leaders must set up their own feedback loops with trusted colleagues at all levels, to prevent the inevitable insulation that surrounds leaders. Most importantly, they must make it safe for others to share their truth with them, without fear of reprisal. And leaders have to listen without becoming defensive.

Confidence drives humility. Humility flows from feedback. Feedback leads to self-awareness, and self-awareness can create vulnerability. Who doesn’t want to work with a confident, humble, self-aware, and vulnerable leader? I certainly do. Too many leaders think their intellect and instincts will secure their position at the top. They are sadly mistaken and often never see their ousting coming. Had they been more self-aware, they could have prevented the wave or at least had time to grab their surfboard.

Duncan: People are sometimes thrust into leadership positions with little or no training for their new roles. What’s your advice for getting up to speed while avoiding serious mistakes?

Miller: First, be sure that leading people is right for you. Become mindful of what validates and motivates you. There’s no shame in saying no to leadership roles. Frankly, not everyone should lead people. Leadership requires a vastly different set of skills and strengths than most high performers possess.

If you do choose to take the role, assess your paradigms about how you perceive success and the contributions of those on your team. As Liz Wiseman advises, great leaders are genius makers, not geniuses. Consistently ask yourself, “How can I shine the light on my colleagues, raise them up, and leave them better than I found them? Are they better or worse off because of my leadership?”

Remember, humility flows from confidence, not arrogance. Perhaps most importantly, remind yourself that your key role is not to be right or always have the answers. Your role is to create a culture where the smartest, most trustworthy people choose to collaborate effectively—the key to any winning team.

Duncan: Many of the 30 challenges you suggest for leaders seem to be common sense. But as Will Rogers famously said, “Common sense ain’t all that common.” Why do so many people seem to miss the common sense principles and practices that have been around for ages? What’s the attraction of alternate behaviors that produce less-than-stellar results?

Miller: We spend most of our formal education learning technical skills, refining our business acumen, and learning to be persuasive, convincing negotiators. But these skills have little to do with creating a winning culture, which requires the ability to build high-trust, effective relationships. A leader’s ability to do that is often the reason people choose to quit … or create lifelong careers inside an organization.

Culture is every organization’s most precious asset, and it can’t be left to chance. Either create it intentionally through the deliberate behaviors of your leaders, or let it devolve into something you can’t possibly control. How people communicate, share information, coach, collaborate, and partner with each other is the lifeblood of innovation and success. Woe are the leaders who forget this and neglect to understand that their number-one priority is to nurture and coach people. That requires high-courage feedback, straight talk, and clarity around goals, while setting a clear vision of success for every role.

Duncan: How can the principle of “Declare Your Intent” help a leader build trust with team members and other stakeholders?

Miller: Leaders who want to minimize confusion should deliberately declare their intent before every engagement, interaction, and conversation. As the old PR adage goes, “Absent the facts, people make stuff up.” It’s the same in any team, division, or organization. Invest the time to state your intentions to shareholders, vendors, leaders, and team members, especially before a high-stakes conversation when emotions may be running high and agendas are suspect.

When both your supporters and your detractors (yes, you have both) are clear on your intent, it’s less likely that you will be misunderstood or that your behavior will be met with suspicion.

Duncan: Some well-meaning people violate their own commitments without even realizing it. What’s a good approach to replacing that self-destructive habit with one of total reliability?

Read more

Epstein illustrates how constraints force people to clarify priorities, question assumptions, and discover solutions they would never have considered otherwise. From Pixar and Dr. Seuss to entrepreneurs, athletes, and product designers, he demonstrates that breakthrough thinking rarely emerges from unlimited possibilities. Instead, great leaders create environments where thoughtful constraints sharpen attention, encourage experimentation, and transform complexity into meaningful progress.

• Constraints often stimulate creativity rather than suppress it. Clear boundaries force people to think more deeply, solve problems more effectively, and discover innovative solutions they might otherwise overlook.

• Unlimited choices frequently reduce satisfaction and decision quality. Leaders create better outcomes by simplifying options and helping people focus on what truly matters.

• The most successful innovators solve well-defined problems. Rather than trying to do everything at once, they concentrate their efforts on addressing a specific need with exceptional clarity.

1. When facing a difficult problem, intentionally establish a few meaningful constraints before searching for solutions. Let the boundaries sharpen your thinking rather than limit it.

2. Simplify decisions whenever possible by identifying the few options that genuinely matter instead of trying to evaluate every possibility.

3. Before launching a new initiative, clearly define the specific problem you are trying to solve and resist the temptation to solve several problems at once.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

Most of us know by now that a primary job of the leader is not to create followers, but to develop more leaders.

I’ve observed this process up close and personal.

I worked with a CEO at Campbell Soup Company who, rather than hoard all the leadership power for himself, gladly shared both responsibility and authority with many others. I see similar behaviors by top leaders in agribusiness, high tech, nuclear power, pharmaceuticals, engineering and health care.

These leaders are unusually effective because they understand their roles as developers of people.

This process of multiplying leadership lies at the heart of The 100X Leader: How to Become Someone Worth Following. Leadership experts Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram explain how forward-thinking leaders help others achieve their full potential.

Becoming someone worth following, the authors insist, requires much more than merely “letting go” of leadership prerogatives. And it’s more than a shift in mindset. It requires deliberate, day-after-day attention to the nurturing of others. The result is a collaborative culture and a deeper talent pool of leaders. Everyone wins.

Rodger Dean Duncan: The four ways to multiply, you say, are Informing, Training, Coaching, and Apprenticeship. How can a leader decide which approach to emphasize in a given situation?

Steve Cockram: It really depends on the size of group you’re working with and what your intentions are.

Informing is about efficiency, but is less transformational. If you want to communicate new information or share an inspiring event, then an email or a keynote address are examples of speaking to many people in one setting, but has different impact.

Training, on the other hand, is more focused on 12 to 70 people where there’s a specific agenda to provide information in more of a teaching session.

Coaching provides more relational access and depth as the goal becomes helping people on specific issues and providing more accountability.

Apprenticeship is truly meant to transfer knowledge, wisdom and skills to expand people’s capacity.

The leader must know when to apply each to what group and for what reason.

Duncan: You talk about leadership as an act of liberation. What does that mean? Who’s being liberated from what?

Jeremie Kubicek: To liberate is to calibrate high support and high challenge in order to empower someone in a true growth culture. Most people suffer from some form of self-preservation and fear. A liberating leader learns what the other person needs and provides appropriate support or challenge to help people overcome their negative patterns and get to a higher level of influence.

If you give support but no challenge, you are protecting. If you give challenge but no support, you will tend to dominate. If you give neither, you are abdicating.

Truly liberating leaders fight for the highest possible good of those they lead.

Duncan: It’s been said that we never graduate from the school of self-awareness. How does that relate to a person’s ability to lead?

Cockram: We can’t give away what we don’t possess. We as leaders must live out what we teach. I think that’s why we’re all so disgusted when we see political, sports or religious leaders in the news who have committed a crime, been dishonest, lost their cool, etc. We think to ourselves, “If they can’t lead themselves, why would we follow them?”

We must constantly know ourselves, so we can lead ourselves. We lead ourselves by understanding our patterns and making better choices or actions. Once we practice that, then we can start leading others because we become credible.

Duncan: Why do you use a greenhouse as the metaphor to describe organizational culture?

Kubicek: The greenhouse is such a great visual picture of health. The gardener (leader) spends time, cultivation and attention to make sure the plants (employees) are thriving.

A gardener wouldn’t think of buying a beautiful plant and then just leaving it to die, or expecting it to thrive on its own without needing tending. But some organizational leaders think they can just leave their people on their own and expect them to thrive.

Who has responsibility for a plant’s growth? The plant or the gardener? We say both. The same is true for employees. They want to grow and the leader should want them to grow as well. People need time, vision and encouragement in the same way that plants need water, sunlight and the proper soil.

Duncan: Subculture is often recognized as the key to organizational change. What has been your experience in dealing with subcultures?

Read more

O’Leary shares powerful stories that illustrate how authentic leadership begins with personal ownership. Whether describing the nurse who taught him to walk, the father who challenged him to choose victory over victimhood, or the broadcaster who faithfully encouraged him for months, each story reinforces a common truth: great leaders empower others to discover strengths they cannot yet see in themselves. Leadership is ultimately less about removing obstacles than helping people believe they can overcome them.

• Great leaders call people toward responsibility rather than rescuing them from it. Empowerment begins when leaders help others recognize their own capacity to overcome difficult circumstances.

• Every conversation has the potential to shape someone’s future. A few thoughtful words spoken with sincerity and conviction can influence another person’s life for decades.

• Leadership often requires believing in people before they believe in themselves. By seeing possibility where others see limitation, leaders help unlock growth, confidence, and resilience.

• Gratitude changes how we experience life. While circumstances may remain unchanged, choosing to focus on opportunities instead of obstacles transforms both perspective and performance.

1. The next time someone faces a difficult challenge, resist the temptation to solve it for them. Instead, encourage them to discover their own ability to take the next step.

2. Never underestimate the impact of a conversation. Look for opportunities to speak words that encourage, challenge, and inspire someone who may need them more than you realize.

3. Identify someone whose potential exceeds their current confidence. Intentionally encourage them and communicate your belief in what they are capable of becoming.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

You’ve seen most of the teamwork clichés:

• Together Everyone Achieves More

• Great things never come from comfort zones

• Teamwork makes the dream work

• Individually we’re a drop, but together we’re an ocean

But of course posters on the employee cafeteria wall do not transform glib slogans into reality. Effective teamwork requires a deep understanding of human behaviors and a disciplined approach to execution.

Both of those ingredients are abundantly present in The Best Team Wins: The New Science of High Performance by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton.

Undergirded by 850,000 employee engagement surveys and volumes of other research, Gostick and Elton offer a clear roadmap to the kind of teamwork that most leaders only dream about.

Their previous books—The Carrot Principles and All In—were #1 New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers. The Best Team Wins has earned the same accolades.

I visited with Adrian about teamwork issues that matter to leaders everywhere.

Rodger Dean Duncan: Your research shows that many of today’s younger employees—having grown up as recognition junkies—seem to be more strongly motivated by recognition for their good work than do workers from previous generations. How can leaders best accommodate Millennials’ desire for recognition without turning off older workers who are motivated by other things?

Adrian Gostick: True. What our new research shows—as we’ve done in-depth interviews with more than 25,000 Millennials—is that younger workers’ need for extrinsic recognition from their bosses is three times greater than for older workers.

However, we find that they aren’t looking for meaningless pats on the back. What they are looking for is reinforcement that their work matters and that it’s on track with the needs of the organization.

In other words, they’re looking for more feedback—of the positive and constructive types. The benefit of offering more and better recognition is a leader is providing more feedback to her people—younger or older—and few workers are going to be turned off by receiving more of that.

Duncan: What are the keys to effective recognition?

Gostick: When it’s offered, smart recognition is tied to the organization or team’s core values, it’s given soon after the achievement, and it’s frequent in a team. Most importantly, the recognition is tied to what motivates a person.

Smart leaders use a knowledge of a worker’s individual motivators to tailor expressions of gratitude to each team member.

For instance, someone driven by concepts such as autonomy and excelling might feel best recognized when given a chance to work independently on an important project, while someone who is more motivated by concepts such as teamwork and friendship would likely feel more valued when thrown a party with work friends in celebration of a big win. It all depends on the individual.

Duncan: The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche famously said that “He who has a why to live for can endure almost any how.” What are some good ways for a leader to help workers connect the dots between their work and their values?

Gostick: We’ve found believing in a noble cause rises all ships in the harbor. For instance, a strong why makes older employees more willing to spend time mentoring younger team members and be more open to sharing with them.

For Millennials (whom we often call the Why Generation), clarity about the cause helps them believe that, even as entry level players, they are making a significant contribution to a mission that matters.

To connect the dots between work and values, we encourage leaders to get input on a purpose statement from their team members. In other words: Don’t do this alone. With that said, we do not recommend asking your team the question: “What’s our purpose?” Instead, make it more human by asking, “Why do we exist as a team?” or “What job do we do for customers?” or “What gets you excited to come here every day?”

Duncan: In many organizations, the performance review is poorly regarded by givers are well as by receivers. Because good coaching is important to a person’s development, what approach do you recommend regarding the appraisal process?

Gostick: Instead of relying on the once- or twice-a-year formal review, many of the best leaders we’ve interviewed hold one-on-one performance review sessions every week or two with each member of their team—even though many of their people are remote and around the globe. “’What do you want to talk about?’ is a great first question.

Many prominent firms have decided to either substantially alter the annual performance review or to abandon the practice entirely—replacing it with other processes for evaluating and developing employees that are more timely, frequent, and in the control of the immediate supervisor. We call this the continuous review. The biggest reason for the change: In today’s fast-moving business environment, a yearly (or half-yearly, for that matter) appraisal is simply not responsive enough to address changes that teams are facing and help people respond.

People need much more regular feedback and guidance—especially younger workers who are unwilling to wait an entire year to learn about their strengths or needed-improvement areas.

Duncan: The culture manifesto at Netflix is often referred to by people wanting to build a high-performing organization. One section of that manifesto says this—“On a dream team, there are no ‘brilliant jerks.’ The cost to teamwork is just too high. Our view is that brilliant people are also capable of decent human interactions, and we insist upon that.” What can leaders do to operationalize that philosophy when forming and managing their teams?

Gostick: Terrific question. One CEO we interviewed told us his company’s number one salesperson had just been let go because he had been found to be sexually harassing female staff members. As the CEO told us, “While you may pay top performers differently and reward them differently, the rules have to apply to everyone exactly the same.” Many organizations might try to sweep his actions under the rug because he was such a high performer, but the CEO said: “How long would that have taken to get out? A few days at most. And it would have given our company a black eye. There are no secrets in an organization.”

Duncan: One of the disciplines you recommend for leaders is “manage the one.” What does that look like in actual practice?

Read more

Throughout the conversation, Norman explains that psychological safety is built through thousands of small leadership behaviors rather than grand initiatives. She discusses the importance of pausing before reacting, asking thoughtful questions like “What am I missing?”, listening to understand instead of simply responding, welcoming disagreement, and treating mistakes as opportunities for learning. Trust grows not from what leaders say, but from what they repeatedly demonstrate through everyday interactions.

• Psychological safety is built through consistent daily leadership behaviors. Trust develops when leaders repeatedly demonstrate that people can speak honestly, ask questions, challenge ideas, and learn from mistakes without fear of negative consequences.

• Great leaders replace defensiveness with curiosity. Simple practices such as pausing before responding, asking “What am I missing?” and genuinely listening create environments where better ideas and stronger collaboration can flourish.

• Trust cannot be declared—it must be demonstrated. Employees decide whether an environment is truly safe by observing how leaders consistently respond to difficult conversations, mistakes, and differing viewpoints.

1. Before responding to criticism, disagreement, or unexpected questions, intentionally pause for a few seconds to replace an emotional reaction with a thoughtful response.

2. Begin asking your team, “What am I missing?” during meetings to invite broader participation and uncover valuable perspectives that may otherwise remain hidden.

3. Pay attention to how you respond when someone challenges your thinking. Make every difficult conversation an opportunity to reinforce trust rather than weaken it.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

In the words of psychiatrist R. D. Laing, we live in a moment of history where change is so fast-paced that we “begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.”

Change is not just faster. It’s also exploding in quantity and magnitude. Experts say we can expect more change in our lifetimes than has occurred since the beginning of civilization more than ten millennia ago.

Trying to keep up with change can feel like getting trapped on a runaway treadmill. Managing it can be even harder.

This reality poses special challenges for people in the workplace.

Think about it. Many of the top jobs on LinkedIn didn’t even exist just a few years ago. It’s anyone’s guess how many as-yet-unknown jobs will be the hot tickets ten years from now. Or even five. Or maybe even two.

Nobody understands this better than Michelle R. Weise, a renowned thought leader in the field of the future of work and education. She’s founder of the Strada Institute of the Future of Work. Her thought-provoking book is Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Even Exist Yet.

For anyone who wants to take a proactive approach to education and career planning, Michelle’s insights are worth of consideration.

Rodger Dean Duncan: Due to the “algorithmic editing” of their online searches, many people live inside a so-called “filter bubble” and no longer have access to a balanced information diet. What’s your advice on dealing with such filters?

Michelle R. Weise: How we relate to one another is changing drastically because of new forms of artificial intelligence. We’re surrounded by things with which we agree as opposed to differing viewpoints that might challenge our thinking and make us feel uncomfortable. This is hugely problematic as we consider that researchers are suggesting that empathy and emotional intelligence are skills that may empower us to out-compete or better coordinate with machines in the future.

At first blush, it seems promising that more automation will force us to demonstrate our uniquely human skills. But just because we’re human doesn’t necessarily mean we excel at the human side of work. These aren’t innate skills; we must practice them.

Duncan: So what’s the implication of this?

Weise: It’s hard work putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes. But it’s much harder to empathize when we’re never exposed to those challenging views in the first place. It’s therefore important that more of our citizenry become aware that this is happening through every single click we make in the apps we use on our smartphones, tablets, or computers.

Countries like Finland may have the right approach with its “1%” AI initiative. With the support of government and private companies, the country is trying to teach 1% of the country’s population (approximately 55,000 people) basic concepts at the root of artificial intelligence technology. Although seemingly small-scale, the thrust of what the country is trying to accomplish is incredibly important.

As tasks increasingly get digitized, it’ll be ever more critical for the humans coordinating with the computers or robots to have enough domain knowledge to assess and check the work of the machines. We must be able to question the AI that undergirds all of our technologies, rather than let these technologies outstrip our ability to control them. Otherwise, our filter bubbles will become even more insular, and our ability to connect with one another will weaken without practice.

Duncan: The effect of more hours focused on screens means that people are investing less time practicing person-to-person skills with others. What’s the impact of that on an individual’s preparation for the workplace of the future?

Weise: Without deliberate practice of our human skills, we may inadvertently be impairing our competitive advantage for the future of work. Emotional intelligence, or our emotional quotient (EQ), as an example, is connected to larger issues of self-awareness and self-control, as well as optimism and flexibility. It helps us persist, face hardship, and deal with delayed gratification. In our work lives, it means we can take feedback well and demonstrate grit in the face of real challenges. Our bosses view us as more accountable and coachable with stronger EQ. These leadership skills are a powerful differentiator for employees; higher EQ translates into earnings on average of $29,000 more per year. But without deliberate practice, we may end up derailing or stagnating, unable to advance in our careers and provide for our families.

Duncan: In addition to paralyzing the world economy, the Covid-19 pandemic has unmasked a lot of problems that were in plain sight. What has the pandemic helped reveal about the issues of learning?

Weise: The global pandemic laid bare how fragile our multiple, fragmented systems of K–12 education, postsecondary education, and workforce training are. Siloed and unintegrated, our systems had long neglected millions of people looking to access the relevant information, funding, advising, support, and skills training they need in order to advance. And when Covid hit, it became all too clear that our systems of learning and work were not equipped to skill up and transition large numbers of workers to jobs that are in demand.

Duncan: For a variety of reasons, online courses are gaining “market share” in the world of education. What are the keys to creating and delivering an online course that is not only engaging for the students but actually delivers great value?

Read more

Throughout the conversation, Wernicke explains that lasting transformation begins with culture rather than software. Leaders who foster curiosity, intellectual honesty, and thoughtful inquiry create organizations where data becomes a catalyst for learning instead of merely a tool for reporting. In a world shaped by accelerating change and increasingly capable artificial intelligence, competitive advantage will belong not to organizations with the most data, but to those that develop the discipline to question assumptions, validate conclusions, and continually explore what might be possible next.

• Curiosity is the engine of better decision making. Leaders who consistently ask “Why?” and “What if?” uncover opportunities that certainty and routine often overlook.

• Effective leaders distinguish between success metrics that evaluate yesterday’s results and steering metrics that guide today’s actions.

• Artificial intelligence amplifies human capability, but it cannot replace critical thinking. Leaders must continue to question, validate, and interpret information rather than accepting confident answers at face value.

1. Encourage your team to ask “Why?” and “What if?” before searching for solutions. Better questions often produce better decisions.

2. Separate the metrics you use to steer today’s work from the metrics you use to evaluate long-term success so each serves its intended purpose.

3. When using AI, treat every response as a starting point for inquiry rather than a final answer. Verify important conclusions before acting on them.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

In this age of “cancel culture,” many people are reluctant to speak their minds for fear of being ridiculed, shamed, or even banished. A superior, holier-than-thou mindset seems to be the new favorite tool of bullies.

But more subtle versions have been seen in the workplace for as long as any of us can remember.

Here’s an example. A nuclear power plant was in the middle of a planned outage. That’s when the plant is temporarily shut down for routine maintenance. During an outage, a nuclear plant is of course not generating electricity and is therefore not making money. It’s spending money, lots of it. So it’s important to complete the outage safely and as quickly as possible. In my role as a leadership consultant I was observing the beehive of activity in the outage control center, a large room with dozens of computers and closed-circuit TV screens for monitoring the work being done in the plant. The plant vice president walked into the room with a concerned expression on his face.

“What’s going on? ” I asked.

“We’ve got a problem.”

“Is it a safety issue? ” I inquired.

“No, it’s not a safety issue.”

At this point I realized he was probably using the word “safety” in reference to physical safety concerns like a radiation leak or an industrial accident. I, on the other hand, was talking about psychological safety.

But I just let the conversation unfold. The vice president explained that a crew had entered a room in the plant, set up scaffolding, and started dismantling equipment for inspection and, if needed, replacement. The first crew finished its shift, and the second crew entered the room to continue the work. At the end of the second shift a third crew came in and one of its workers immediately said, “Hey, this is the wrong room. We’re not scheduled to work on this equipment until the next outage twelve months from now.”

Oops.

I asked the vice president how this mistake would affect the schedule for this outage. He said it would delay the outage by at least 18 to 24 hours. In addition, there would be a ripple effect on the hundreds of supplemental workers who had been hired to help with the outage.

“What’s your company’s selling price for electricity these days? ” I asked.

“About $50 per megawatt.”

“Okay,” I said. “This nuclear plant features a 1,000-megawatt reactor. A thousand megawatts multiplied by $50 is $50,000 per hour. Multiply that by 24 hours and you get $1.2 million of lost income. Add to that the expense of keeping several hundred supplemental workers on site for an extra day and the cost jumps to well beyond $2 million.”

My friend didn’t like the explicit math, but he knew it was accurate.

“But you say it wasn’t a safety issue? ” I asked again.

“No, it had nothing to do with safety. It …” He paused, and then he got it. “Oh, yeah, it was a safety issue.”

“Tell me about it,” I invited.

The vice president explained that the first work team was led by a take-no-prisoners crew chief whose command-and-control style was feared by all. He made it clear that people should simply do what he told them and not ask any questions. A couple of guys on his team knew this was the wrong room and the wrong equipment, but they didn’t dare speak up. A similar situation existed with the second team—some people knew it was the wrong room and equipment, but their boss had long ago intimidated them into silence. The third crew was different. The crew chief could read the organization chart. He knew he was the boss, but he didn’t feel the need to remind people. His orientation toward his work mates went something like this: “Our job on this team is to help each other work smarter. The only way to do that is to challenge each other’s thinking. I’ll challenge your thinking and I expect you to challenge mine.” So in that kind of environment it was easy for a member of this crew to say “Hey, this is the wrong room!”

Not every instance of conversational silence has a $2 million price tag. But the cumulative effect of such silence—reluctance or outright refusal to speak freely—adds up quickly. Let’s say you have ten smart people at a table and three of them don’t feel “safe” in speaking up. Not only do you not benefit from the “smarts” of the silent three, I suggest that you don’t have the full benefit of the other seven.

As you can see, psychological safety has important workplace benefits. And the lack of it can have serious consequences.

Nobody understands that better than Dr. Timothy R. Clark, founder and CEO of LeaderFactor, a leadership consulting and training organization.

Ranked as a global authority in senior executive development, strategic acceleration, and organizational change, Tim is the author of five books, including The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation.

Rodger Dean Duncan: Employee “engagement”—which involves things like discretionary effort—is clearly an important factor in an organization’s success. You say an organization that expects employees to bring their whole selves to the workplace should engage the whole employee. What roles do “respect” and “permission” play in creating (and maintaining) high levels of engagement? (Please briefly explain the 4 stages in your model.)

Timothy R. Clark: It Psychological safety is based on the intersection or fusion of two things: respect and permission. Without increasing levels of respect and permission, employees will not release their discretionary efforts. Why? Because they don’t feel safe.

Watch your own behavior. When you enter a new social setting, what’s the first thing you do? You do threat detection. All human beings engage in this subconscious process. We are scanning and monitoring the social dynamics to assess the level of personal risk. If it’s not safe, we withdraw into a defensive mode of performance. If it is safe, we move through four stages of psychological safety that each engage us at progressively higher levels.

Stage 1 is inclusion safety. It means we feel a sense of belonging, that we fit in.

Stage 2 is learner safety. This means we feel safe to engage in the learning process—asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, even making mistakes.

Stage 3 is contributor safety which allows us to contribute as a full member of the team to use what we have learned and make a difference.

Finally, stage 4 is challenger safety which means we feel safe to challenge the status quo. And you can do all of this without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way.

The bottom line is that if you want people to bring their whole selves to work, you better be ready to engage them through all four stages of psychological safety. Otherwise, you’re being disingenuous.

Duncan: You say there’s opportunity in calamity, and that a crisis like the Covid pandemic or social unrest liquefies the status quo. Please elaborate.

Clark: A crisis has a unique ability to knock the current state out of its orbit, to disrupt our equilibrium, or as I say liquefy the status quo. Because things have become fluid, we have an incredible opportunity to transform organizations. I studied organizational culture at Oxford and one hard fact that we learned is that organizations fossilize the status quo and it usually takes several years to recast an entire culture. The Covid pandemic gave us a rare chance to accelerate that process because the status quo is already gone. We are in transition. The question is where we go from here. We either drift a long and let things happen or we get deliberate about it and design our future state.

Duncan: The prevalence of fear, you say, is the first sign of weak leadership. What are the most common telltale signs of fear in the workplace, and what steps can a leader take to replace fear with safety?

Clark: The telltale signs are the interpersonal indicators of engagement. Just walk into any meeting and you will see the habits, norms, instincts, and assumptions of the organization on display. Organizations always reveal the quality of the leaders in the expression of their norms. It’s impossible to hide it. If the patterns of interaction are formal, contrived, tense, forced, and reluctant, rest assured that you are swimming in fear. If they are fun, energetic, and risk-taking, you know that leaders set that tone.

Leaders can do a lot of things to drain fear out of the workplace. I’ll just mention two: First, invite your employees to challenge you. Insist on it. Second, prove that it’s safe to do that by acknowledging, welcoming, and valuing that dissent. Remember, the homogenization of thought is the enemy. The last thing you want is for people to agree with you and defer to your positional power. If they are doing that, you are not leading at all. You’re hiding behind title, position, and authority. That’s a cop out.

Duncan: “Behave until you believe” is a practice you advocate for overcoming bias and granting inclusion to someone. Give us an example of how the works.

Clark: Here’s a simple example: When you’re talking to someone, face them with your whole body. It communicates more respect and allows you to listen better for comprehension. Now that’s the theory based on sociometric research. But don’t take my word for it. Go do it and see if it works. That’s the principle. Apply principles to verify and validate them.

Duncan: The “leader as oracle” model doesn’t work well in today’s world. How can leaders help create a learning environment that nurtures people’s curiosity and motivation?

Clark: The leader as oracle mindset is based on an industrial age notion that the leader has the answers. The leader is an oracle. Now you may have some answers, but in a highly dynamic environment, your answers become obsolete, so you lead by leading your team in the learning and adaptation process, not in being the repository of answers. How do you do this? Through inquiry. Lead through questions more than answers. Shut up and listen. It actually works.

Duncan: How does the “tell-to-ask” ratio affect a leader’s ability to create what you call contributor safety?

Read more

Throughout the conversation, Hale reframes accountability as an ongoing process of building trust rather than winning arguments. Effective leaders replace assumptions with questions, judgment with curiosity, and blame with genuine dialogue. Instead of entering difficult conversations determined to prove someone wrong, they seek to understand what caused the gap between expectations and results. When accountability is approached with psychological safety, mutual purpose, and respect, even challenging conversations become opportunities to strengthen relationships while improving performance.

• Silence is never neutral. When leaders ignore broken commitments or poor performance, they unintentionally communicate that lower standards are acceptable.

• Accountability begins with clarity. Many performance problems originate because expectations were never defined with enough specificity for success to be measured.

• Curiosity is more productive than certainty. Leaders who replace assumptions with thoughtful questions create conversations that build trust instead of defensiveness.

1. The next time you feel frustrated with someone’s performance, pause before reacting and ask yourself whether your expectations were communicated clearly and specifically.

2. Replace assumptions with curiosity by asking questions that help you understand why a reasonable person may have struggled before deciding what conclusions to draw.

3. Address performance concerns promptly instead of allowing them to grow into larger relationship problems that become more difficult to resolve.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

We live at a time when brash and loud seem to be the norm. Our commerce and civic life—and especially our politics—seem to be dominated by in-your-face noise.

Steve Herz recommends a different approach. Steve is a talent agent who represents more than 250 of today’s top journalists, broadcast executives, and media personalities at CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, ESPN and elsewhere. He also provides guidance and coaching to athletes, CEOs, and entrepreneurs. If you assume his clients are not exactly the shy and retiring types, you’d be right.

So what is Steve’s approach? It’s summarized in the title of his book—Don’t Take Yes for an Answer: Using Authority, Warmth, and Energy to Get Exceptional Results.

Steve says knowledge, skills, and experience are not the biggest factors in one’s career and leadership success. So what is? The ability to make deep human connections. And the three things that determine your “connectability” are the authority you exhibit, the warmth you convey, and the energy you exude and bring out in others.

In other words, your AWE.

Rodger Dean Duncan: You use the acronym AWE (Authority, Warmth, Energy) as the prism through which you observe, assess, coach, and develop your clients. Why that particular approach?

Steve Herz: I developed this approach over time, based on something I first learned from an old mentor, Alfred Geller. He was a successful television news agent whose core mission was to do whatever it took to make his client better. He believed that if you could build yourself up into something outstanding, irresistible, or indispensable, the world and the marketplace would be yours. So he obsessed over the details of his clients’ on-air performance, reviewing tapes, analyzing and critiquing every nuance of their delivery.

Over time, I concluded that this exclusive focus on on-air performance didn’t go far enough. Our career success doesn’t only stem from how we behave, speak, and present ourselves when we’re “on,” but also from how we behave, speak, and present ourselves in the hallways, at the conference table, at lunch, networking events, and our interpersonal relationships.

So I took what I learned from Geller about extracting an excellent performance and started to focus on all-around excellence. And I determined, based on 20 years of working with clients, that authority, warmth, and energy make all the difference in a career that sputters and one that soars.

Duncan: Multiple studies show that so-called “soft” skills like interpersonal communication are equally important—or even more important—to a person’s career success as technical skills. If that’s true, why do schools—and companies—invest so little in soft skills training?

Herz: It’s just the way in which things have evolved. We put metrics around hard skills. We get grades in school on math, science, English, etc. Putting metrics around soft skills is a harder task because some of it is subjective and we tend to grade only what we believe is objective. Personally, I think this is false because much of the hard skill grading is subjective and much of the soft skills are actually objective. But until we can find common ground on how we even define the soft skills, and we get comfortable talking about it, I don’t see widespread change. That’s why it’s incumbent on individuals to be proactive about seeking it out for themselves.

Duncan: Studies also show that more than six in ten recent college graduates believe they possess strong soft skills, while only about 15% of their employers agree. To what do you attribute such a wide gap?

Herz: Two factors. First, many college graduates (and others) have an inflated sense of their overall skill set because of the massive grade inflation we’ve seen in the country over the past four decades. And second, the proliferation of the participation trophy, which has morphed into an MVP (for all) trophy. Employers have largely gotten out of the business of feedback and/or actually firing people (instead using euphemisms like “downsizing”), so these recent college grads are living in an echo chamber of Yes.

Duncan: In your coaching work, what seems to be the most common deficit in professional people’s ability to “project” in ways that lead to success?

Herz: It depends, but often it’s a blind spot that is relatively easy to fix. Such as using filler words (like, so, you know) or having a weak voice/delivery (often from bad habits, not a structural issue) or poor eye contact (while speaking and/or listening) that tends to self-sabotage their ability to gain trust or influence in the room.

Duncan: Your book title is derived form your observation that truly honest (and helpful) feedback is rare in the workplace. To what do you attribute people’s reluctance to be more helpful in assessing each other’s performance?

Herz: It’s become the cultural norm not to judge other people. We see “no judgments” on bumper stickers and once that norm takes place, well-meaning people don’t feel safe risking it to offer feedback that might be perceived as inappropriate. Then there is a layer of litigation defense that HR departments are using as a shield, and it’s again not worth the risk for many companies. Better to say nothing and let someone fail (and protect your own hide) than offer guidance and find yourself on the wrong end of a complaint.

Duncan: So what’s the solution to the problem?

Herz: The solution has to start with the individual. Rather than seeing constructive criticism through a negative prism we should start to see the lack of feedback as the most dangerous thing to our future.

Old paradigms like “no news is good news” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” don’t apply to the workplace anymore. There are unfortunately plenty of people out there who are blissfully unaware that they are on the chopping block for the next round of “downsizing” or the next “re-org.” The other solution is for managers and leaders to welcome and encourage feedback of their work on a regular basis and truly be open to learning what their direct reports have to offer. Learning is not a one-way street and only confined to an org chart. Once these leaders do this and demonstrate their sincere openness to feedback, it helps them gain people’s trust and open them up to a healthy vulnerability about their own areas of needed improvement.

Duncan: How can careful observation of others help people increase their own self-awareness?

Herz: It’s often not sufficient to have self-awareness about our own weaknesses. First, just having the awareness doesn’t help us improve in real time. And second, we often forget about our weaknesses and fall back on the safety of our comfortable bad habits. By observing these same bad habits in others, it shines a light back on yourself. For example, if you have a bad habit of saying “like” every other sentence, once you become hyperaware of others doing it, it’s likely to start driving you crazy—and you’ll stop doing it.

Duncan: What are the steps to translating self-awareness into improved personal performance?

Read more

Throughout the conversation, Hawk illustrates how remarkable leaders continually embrace learning, seek honest feedback, and remain humble enough to keep improving regardless of their accomplishments. Whether discussing the Beatles finding their own voice, Wayne Gretzky creating advantages from perceived weaknesses, or Roger Federer’s ability to recover quickly from failure, the underlying message remains the same: lasting success belongs to those who stay committed to learning, focus on what matters most, and view every challenge as another opportunity to become better.

• Excellence is built through consistent daily choices rather than dramatic moments of inspiration. Small actions, repeated over time, create extraordinary results.

• Imitate before you innovate. Learning from proven examples provides the foundation for eventually developing your own authentic voice and leadership style.

• High performers embrace challenges because difficult experiences build confidence, resilience, and the evidence needed to face future adversity.

1. Identify one area where you can intentionally learn from someone who has already mastered the skills you hope to develop before trying to create your own approach.

2. Look for one difficult task each day that stretches your abilities. Confidence grows by consistently doing hard things, not by avoiding them.

3. Clarify the single most important activity that drives your effectiveness, then protect your time and attention from distractions that dilute your impact.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

Let’s face it. The Covid pandemic brought more disruption to our lives than most of us could ever have imagined.

Businesses of every kind were forced to alter their operating models.

Schools at every level were scrambling to serve their students, coping with the tenuous (and ever-changing) balance between safety and effective learning.

Football teams played in empty or near-empty stadiums while baseball and basketball teams played in front of cardboard cutouts of fans while phony crowd noise was piped in to help it all seem “normal.” Surreal.

At my bank I told the manager “There was a time when you’d be concerned if someone walked into the bank wearing a mask. Now you won’t let anyone in who isn’t wearing a mask.” I think he might have smiled, but I can’t be sure.

Alas, even years after the pandemic there’s at least one thing that doesn’t seem to have changed. A lot of people are still less than happy with the leadership they receive in the workplace.

An MIT study shows that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their leaders have the right mindsets to lead them into the future. Meanwhile, an Edelman Trust index found that only 50% of people in the U.S. trust business as an institution.

We can do better. We must do better.

What kind of leaders do people want? They want leaders who can navigate the speed and complexity of the digital workplace. They want leaders who explain the why of the work, who connect with empathy, who communicate with authenticity, and who collaborate with openness.

Becoming this kind of leader requires deliberate choices and habits.

That’s the message of a book by Alain Hunkins titled Cracking the Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders.

Drawing from decades of fieldwork and research, Hunkins provides a comprehensive—and realistic—approach to becoming the kind of leader who can inspire people to top performance. His consulting clients range from Pfizer, General Electric and IBM to General Motors, Microsoft and WalMart.

Rodger Dean Duncan: You quote a Ketchum survey of more than 25,000 people from 22 industries on five continents that show only 23% of respondents believe their leaders are leading well. Many other studies show similar results. To what do you attribute such anemic confidence in leadership?

Alain Hunkins: Leadership has been mired in mediocrity for quite some time now. Most mediocre leaders are in denial. They genuinely believe they’re doing a good job. None of them wake up on a typical workday thinking, “Today, I’m going to be lousy communicator and most of my team won’t trust me.” While they mean well, their good intentions don’t translate into good results.

Surveys like Ketchum’s ask people for candid feedback about their leaders’ behavior. Since the surveys are confidential, there’s no downside to sharing the truth. The results provide a clear snapshot of leadership effectiveness.

Sadly, most leaders don’t ask their own people for this same level of candor. Moreover, employees aren’t about to give unsolicited feedback. Power dynamics are alive and well, and employees know giving honest feedback could be a career-limiting move. As a result, leadership has blind spots.

Some companies institutionalize these blind spots. I experienced this firsthand working with a Fortune 100 manufacturing company. On my way to meet with the CEO and the Executive Team, a Senior Vice President took me aside, and told me, “These guys run this company, and they know they run this company. When you go in there, one word you never use is “no.” You can say “maybe”, or “possibly,” or “I’ll look into it,” but you never say ”no.” Do you understand?” He then waited for my verbal “yes”—only after which I was permitted to go into the boardroom.

Without external feedback, leaders can’t bridge the gap between their own intentions and others’ perceptions. They’ll remain blind to their own blindness. They’ll stay mired in mediocrity.

Duncan: You focus on four principles of strong leadership—context, connection, communication, and collaboration. How did you arrive at those four principles?

Hunkins: The content grew organically from the process of training and coaching tens of thousands of leaders over two decades. They shared personal stories of their own failures and successes. I started taking notes and writing blogs about what I was learning. As I reviewed my writing, I saw patterns of behavior emerge.

It turned out that the best leaders had certain things in common, and so did the lousy ones. As I started to categorize these behavioral patterns, I saw that they fell into three main categories:

1. Connection: Leadership is built on a foundation of human to human relationship. Lousy leaders put tasks first. Strong leaders put people first.

2. Communication: People don’t want information as much as they want insight. Lousy leaders share data. Strong leaders share understanding.

3. Collaboration: Great teams and great cultures don’t happen on their own. Lousy leaders create an environment by default. Strong leaders create an environment by design.

Besides recognizing behavioral patterns, I also spotted patterns of thinking. Strong leaders shared similar beliefs and assumptions about leadership, as so did the lousy leaders. How did these mindsets differ? What gave rise to these mindsets in the first place?

The opening section on context seeks to answer these questions. It explores the history of leadership and the legacy that most leaders have unconsciously inherited. Organizational leadership was birthed in the industrial age, for a world in which 95% of the workforce performed repetitive manual labor. This was the world in which Henry Ford famously said, “Why is it every time I want a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?”

In Ford’s day, command and control was a viable strategy. Today, it’s not.

In our knowledge economy, today’s leader needs to work from an upgraded playbook.

Duncan: What role does empathy play in a leader’s ability to inspire people to perform well?

Hunkins: Empathy is a leadership superpower. Leadership, at its core, is a relationship between leader and follower. The quality of that relationship is based on the quality of the connection between them. How do you improve the quality? Show people you understand them and care how they feel. In other words, connect with empathy.

How people feel profoundly impacts how they perform. Gallup has found that highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability. What’s the fast track to engagement? Empathy. When people feel their direct leader cares for them, they are 1.3 times as likely to stay with the organization and are 67% more engaged.

Duncan: Is it possible to “practice” empathy so you can get better at it? How?

Hunkins: The good news is that while empathy may seem intangible, it’s actually a group of specific learnable behaviors. This means that empathic skills can be practiced and mastered. Think of empathy as a muscle—if you exercise it, it gets stronger.

The keystone skill to develop empathy is listening with purpose. This type of listening is quite different from what most people are used to. For starters, it’s not about waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can give advice.

Listening with purpose means giving your complete and undivided attention. It’s actively seeking to see reality the way the other person sees it, and to feel it the way they feel it. It means suspending your own agenda, and “holding space” for their agenda. This kind of holding space takes energy and can be exhausting. However, the investment is worth the return. Empathy builds trust, yields insights, and fosters innovation.

Duncan: You quote Dwight Eisenhower as saying motivation “is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” What leadership behaviors help produce that kind of response?

Hunkins: Eisenhower’s quote highlights the innate challenge of motivation. His “because they want to do it” is the really tricky part. If motivation were as simple as getting people to do something, we’d just wield authority and get compliance. To get people to want to do something, we have to use influence to create commitment. Want to isn’t a request to someone’s head. It’s an appeal to their heart.

Great leaders know they can’t motivate anyone directly. Rather, they create an environment in which people can motivate themselves. Leaders do this by satisfying the four human needs that, when met, allow people to perform at their best. These are the needs for safety, energy, purpose and ownership.

There are countless behaviors leaders can use to meet these various needs. For example, one way to meet the need for safety is to ensure everyone’s voice is heard in relatively equal part during team meetings. A way to meet people’s need for energy is to make meetings 50 minutes long instead of one hour. That gives people a physical and mental break before starting their next meeting.

Duncan: What can leaders do to help people embrace—and be inspired by—the “why” of their work?

Read more

Throughout the conversation, Fowler challenges many long-held assumptions about leadership, coaching, performance management, and workplace culture. She demonstrates how external rewards often undermine the very behaviors leaders hope to encourage and explains why meaningful work, personal values, continuous learning, and genuine human connection create far more durable motivation than carrots and sticks ever can. Whether leading a global organization, coaching a sports team, or raising a family, leaders who create environments where people experience autonomy, purpose, and growth unlock levels of engagement and performance that incentives alone can never achieve.

• People are always motivated—the real question is the quality of their motivation and whether it leads to sustainable performance or short-lived compliance.

• Great leaders create environments that satisfy three essential psychological needs: choice, connection, and competence.

• Effective coaching shifts from judging performance to helping people reflect on their choices, learning, contributions, and personal growth.

1. Before trying to motivate someone else, ask yourself what is driving your own actions and whether your motivation is rooted in fear, rewards, values, or purpose.

2. Make connection a daily leadership practice by helping people see how their work contributes to customers, teammates, and a larger purpose.

3. Review your workplace systems—including meetings, performance reviews, and incentives—to determine whether they strengthen or weaken choice, connection, and competence.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

Beyond obvious things like a paycheck and insurance benefits, does your work have purpose?

For your sake, let’s hope so.

According to a Gallup study, there’s a 68% probability that you’re not highly satisfied with your life in general if you’re dissatisfied with work. Conversely, there’s a nearly 80% probability that you’re highly satisfied with life if you’re satisfied with work.

Bea Boccalandro has devoted her career to helping people get more from their work than a paycheck. For more than 20 years she has served as president of VeraWorks, a global consulting firm specializing in workplace purpose. She’s helped companies such as IBM, FedEx, PwC, and Toyota ignite purpose in the workplace. Her latest book is Do Good at Work: How Simple Acts of Social Purpose Drive Success and Wellbeing.

Many (most?) jobs lack a compelling purpose. That deficiency leads to sluggish performance, disengagement, carelessness, disloyalty, and unhappiness. Aside from the human toll, all that of course has huge financial implications. For example, employee disengagement is estimated to cost the overall U.S. economy upwards of $500 billion every year.

Boccalandro believes a big part of the solution is to help people improve their own jobs.

As a little girl growing up in Venezuela, she was taught a life-changing lesson by her father: “Listen beyond the clamor of your wants for the whisper of the world’s needs.”

“I try to animate every workday with that advice,” she says. “Its value is not so much that it helps me be more caring and ethical, although I do appreciate that aspect, but that it drives my best performance.”

Is she saying that merely shifting work toward social purpose boosts people’s motivation, performance, and satisfaction?

As a matter of fact, yes.

“To be honest, I was once skeptical,” Boccalandro says. “But dozens of studies paint a clear picture: Conducting acts of social purpose, even those lasting no more than five minutes and costing no more than five dollars, typically improves attitudes and behavior.”

So how does social purpose in the workplace affect people’s personal lives?

“Making meaningful contributions to others or societal causes at work impacts how well-rested we feel when the alarm blares, how often we argue with our spouse, and other far corners of our personal lives,” she says. “Studies show that work with social purpose reduces stress, improves sleep, heightens happiness, dampens chronic pain, strengthens immune response, boosts career success, supports mental health, lowers the risk of heart disease, lengthens lifespan, stabilizes relationships, and makes us more attractive to potential romantic partners.”

Do the benefits of social purpose sound too good to be true? Boccalandro expands.

“That something as squishy as social purpose drives substantial impacts, at first, sounds preposterous,” she says. “It starts to make sense, however, if we consider our ancestry. Unlike bears, who are solitary and self-sufficient, prehistoric humans were needy. They couldn’t hunt big game, fend off tigers, rear their young, or even sleep safely without a helping hand. Our forbearers had to aid each other to survive. Evolution, therefore, shaped us into creatures with a primal need to contribute to our tribe or community. Our physiology rewards us when we engage in social purpose. For example, it reduces our levels of cortisol, what is often referred to as the ‘stress hormone.’”

Boccalandro frequently tells people that if their job doesn’t improve the world, they should improve their job.

For most people, she says, workdays are often devoid of social purpose. The solution she recommends is something she calls “job purposing.” This involves making meaningful contributions to others or society as part of our workweek—however we can. “I recently job purposed by directing a small fraction of my workday to support the mental wellbeing of two coworkers,” she says. Other examples of job purposing include:

• An administrative assistant ordering catering from restaurants owned by minorities. Her event planning supports social justice.

• A marketing associate inviting all new hires at her small company to lunch once a week for their first month. She helps colleagues make a smooth, pleasant transition to their new job.

• A surfboard designer inserting sensors in the fins that relay data to scientists trying to save the oceans.

You get the idea. Job purposing is about applying the advice Boccalandro received from her father. It’s a way to use work as a platform to help meet the world’s needs.

Job purposing can also be practiced as a team.

“When team members job purpose with colleagues, as opposed to solo, the workplace benefits are augmented,” Boccalandro says. “This includes motivation, performance, and satisfaction, as well as recruitment, engagement, teamwork, and retention.”

Managers who don’t have the authority to define their organization’s purpose can job purpose specific functions and still benefit from managing a team ignited by purpose. For example, a manufacturing plant manager decided to donate ten dollars from his department’s budget to a local food pantry every day his team has no safety violations. “His team members now fight hunger whenever they strap on a hard hat or hold a ladder for a colleague,” she says. “Not surprisingly, this job-purposed incentive resulted in his plant’s safety record beating that of the company’s other 130 plants.”

Boccalandro has also seen managers job purpose by replacing the company holiday party with a beach cleanup, creating a competition for making products more inclusive, and using office space to exhibit the art of disabled artists. The possibilities of managerial job purposing are endless.

How does job purposing differ from following one’s passion?

Read more

A central theme of the conversation is that reputation is no longer a public relations concern—it is a business resilience issue. Akubuiro explains that polarization, misinformation, and information overload have fundamentally changed how people form opinions about companies and leaders. In this environment, organizations must become more proactive, continuously monitor emerging risks, and conduct realistic scenario planning rather than relying on outdated crisis manuals. Leaders who understand the fears, concerns, and motivations of their stakeholders are far better positioned to build trust and navigate uncertainty when disruption occurs.

Perhaps the most powerful lesson is that trust is built long before a crisis begins. People may disagree with a leader’s decisions, but they rarely forgive inconsistency, hypocrisy, or a lack of conviction. Akubuiro argues that organizations must clearly understand their values, communicate them consistently, and align their actions with their words. In an era shaped by AI, social media, and shrinking attention spans, authenticity, intellectual humility, and credibility have become more valuable than ever. Leaders who know where they stand, continue learning, and communicate with clarity will be better prepared to earn trust when it matters most.

• Effective leaders anticipate potential crises through scenario planning rather than waiting to react when problems emerge.

• Trust is built through consistent actions and convictions long before a crisis occurs.

• People are more willing to forgive disagreement than they are hypocrisy or perceived betrayal.

1. Evaluate whether your actions consistently align with the values and commitments you publicly communicate.

2. Ask yourself where you may be vulnerable to charges of inconsistency and address those gaps proactively.

3. Practice intellectual humility by seeking out a perspective that challenges your current assumptions.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

You may be familiar with Peter Drucker’s assertion that management is doing things right and leadership is doing the right things.

According to Drucker’s view, you might say that a manager makes sure you climb a ladder efficiently while a leader makes sure your ladder is leaning against the right wall.

These are succinct definitions, but of course in reality the roles often overlap. Some managers are very good at helping people catch the vision of what’s possible, while some leaders are equally adept at making sure day-to-day deliverables are properly handled.

Still, in most organizations there’s a clear distinction between the roles of managers and leaders. And despite the many workplace paradigm shifts that occurred during the Covid pandemic, the view persists that career advancement requires a move from manager to leader.

Adam Bryant offers a cogent analysis of the subject. He’s the creator and former author of the iconic Corner Office column in The New York Times, and is now senior managing director at The ExCo Group, a leadership development and executive mentoring firm. Based on his work with hundreds of successful CEOs and fast-rising executives, Bryant has distilled his key insights into The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership.

What questions should people be asking themselves if they think they’d like to move into a leadership role?

“They should invest the time to think about why they want to lead others because these roles are often much harder than they appear,” Bryant says. “As a leader, you’re dealing with a lot of people problems and you’re putting out a lot of fires. Because it’s hard to get work done at work, you’re often facing a three-shift day and the work will bleed into weekends.”

Too often, Bryant says, “people can get enticed by a bigger title and the financial rewards that come with it rather than pausing and asking themselves if they really want to do the work that the job entails. Similarly, companies, when they are looking at their leadership pipeline and succession plans, too often just assume that every person wants to move up. So be clear about your ‘why’ to help you get through the tougher patches, because the sense of reward from a bigger title and higher pay tend to wear off.”

Bryant says the biggest challenge for people who make the leap to leadership roles is the mindset shift they’re required to make. “As a manager, there’s usually an explicit outcome that you are expected to deliver,” he says. “You’re given resources such as time, manpower and a budget to execute the plan. As a leader, you have to think more broadly about opportunities and what the organization needs that maybe other leaders haven’t considered. Doing that requires courage, and a willingness to take bets and own the consequences if things go wrong.”

Bryant says “selfless versus self-centered” is the central paradox facing leaders.

“Leaders who are more selfless think first about the people they are leading and the organization,” Bryant says. “What’s best for the people? They see their role more in terms of coaching people to unlock and develop their skills.”

One of the paradoxes of leadership, Bryant says, is that the role is simultaneously about you and not about you. “Yes, you set the tone and direction as the leader, and all the signals you send—verbal and nonverbal—will carry an outsized impact. But the role isn’t about you.”

Bryant quotes Christian Klein, the CEO of software company SAP, who said, “For me, what’s important is that I’m able, when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, to answer the question, ‘Is what we are doing absolutely the right thing to do in the midterm and the long term?’ And as long as I can answer that question by saying yes, I know that I’m doing the right thing for all stakeholders.”

Some managers seem to assume that a Starbucks coffee card is the best (certainly one of the easiest) ways to recognize employee performance. What forms of recognition has Bryant found to be most helpful in reinforcing good performance?

“It’s true that people don’t necessarily want a Starbucks coffee card,” he says. They want somebody to come up to them and say, ‘Thank you for the time, effort, and thought you put into that project, which resulted in X in terms of impact.’ It’s about saying, ‘I see the contribution you made, and I appreciate you for it.’ It’s specific. It’s about giving people feedback on the ‘how’ of what they did well and what they could do better next time.”

Another type of recognition, he says, is about the “who”—telling someone why it’s important that they are on the team and what they bring to the table.

How can a leader shorten the learning curve for new team members?

Being a manager and a leader often requires telling people things they may not want to hear. Bryant has found some effective ways to develop and hone that skill?

He acknowledges that difficult conversations are hard. He’s found that one helpful approach is telling a direct report early on that you’re going to give them a lot of feedback—when they did something well and when they could have done something better. “Problems often start when people let things build up,” he says. “Better to give feedback in the moment and be direct, so that people become more used to it, and less defensive.”

Read more

One of McGoff’s central themes is that communication is a power skill. Whether through body language, concise emails, interview responses, or difficult conversations with managers, the ability to communicate clearly and intentionally creates opportunities that technical competence alone cannot. She encourages professionals to think strategically, “play chess instead of checkers,” and focus on how their words and actions influence long-term outcomes rather than simply reacting in the moment. Simple practices such as using BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front), preparing thoughtful interview answers, and learning to negotiate confidently can dramatically improve career outcomes.

McGoff also emphasizes the importance of boundaries, self-advocacy, and professional reputation. From handling micromanagers to navigating the first 90 days of a new role, she encourages workers to communicate expectations clearly and avoid emotional decision-making. Career success is not simply about working harder; it is about understanding how organizations function, building strong relationships, and communicating with confidence and purpose. Those who learn the secret language of work gain a significant advantage in virtually every stage of their careers.

• Strategic communication requires thinking about long-term outcomes rather than simply reacting in the moment.

• Clear, concise communication builds credibility and earns respect from colleagues, managers, and employers.

• Strong interview performance comes from preparation, self-awareness, and understanding the question behind the question.

1. Review your emails and written communication for opportunities to be more concise and direct.

2. Practice answering common interview questions using a structured framework before you need them.

3. Research the full value of your compensation package and prepare to negotiate future opportunities more effectively.