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.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Is that a quote from a rah-rah motivation speaker?

Nope. It’s from Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher. His writings covered subjects ranging from the natural sciences, philosophy and linguistics to economics, politics, and psychology. His own work ethic was legendary, and he clearly understood the connection between good habits and good performance.

In the modern workplace, most people appreciate the role of human habits in an organization’s overall productivity and prosperity. Trouble is, a lot of those same people have habits that don’t serve them particularly well.

Beck Besecker is on a mission to help change that. He’s chief executive and co-founder of Marxent, the global leader in 3D e-commerce for furniture, and a leading voice in promoting work habits that produce happy and high performing employees. He’s author of Your Good Work Habits Toolbox.

The work habits he writes about seem common sense. So why are they not common practice?

“Early in my career my boss asked me to follow up on something,” Besecker recalls. “My response was ‘Got it.’ Not a well-crafted response that communicated when to expect a deliverable, who would be involved, and my approach. Just ‘Got it.’ Of course all those things were in my head, but little good that did for my boss.”

Besecker says getting out of our own heads and considering the needs and perspectives of others is a common theme across many good work habits.

He advocates a practice called 5x5.

“The 5x5 is an email that an employee sends to his or her boss (and leadership) at the end of the week,” Besecker says. “It includes ten bullet points—five bullets for tasks accomplished for this week and five goals for next week. A 5x5 takes about 15 minutes to complete. While a 5x5 may seem like a simple thing, you can glean an incredible amount about someone from it. First, you immediately learn if they have what I call the ‘consistency gene.’ If a new employee fails to submit his 5x5 within a few weeks of being on the job, that’s a major warning sign that they’re slipping in other responsibilities as well. The correlation between bad 5x5 performance and poor job performance is very high.”

Besecker examines the kind of language team members use. Are they accepting responsibility, or do they blame others? Do they take credit or recognize others? He also watches carefully to see if they share or hide bad news. “We work really hard to build a safe place for team members to surface bad news early,” he says, “and 5x5s are a direct line to the top! I can’t tell you the number of times we were able to get ahead of a difficult situation because bad news was surfaced early.”

Finally, he says, “5x5s are a great relationship builder and a real chance for a team member to share their observations, ideas, and ambitions with company leadership.”

Besecker quotes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as saying, “It’s always better in business to be right than smart.” Why does he embrace that view, and how does he assess if a person has good judgment?

“Figuring out if someone has the potential to have good judgment is actually pretty easy,” he says. “You simply ask them to make an argument for alternative perspectives. If they hold onto their original position and make no real attempt, it’s obvious that it’s more important for them to win than to be right. Helping a team come to the best decision is a lot of work and maybe the toughest part of leadership. My personal style, which took many years to develop, is to avoid ‘coming in hot’ to a meeting with my conclusions already drawn as this approach can shut down productive conversations quickly.”

Besecker suggests questions that people ask themselves to help determine if one of their decisions is sound. He’s boiled his personal “decision pitfall checklist” down to a handful of questions:

• Am I making a decision because the alternative is so bad that I’m trying to avoid facing the truth.

• Am I trusting someone else’s recommendation because I’m not familiar with the topic? Does that recommendation aligned with what my gut is telling me?

• Am I making a decision based on a position I held previously? Is my ego is too big to let it go?

• Am I making a decision because it’s popular and will make others happy?

• Am I making a decision because a major investment has already been made and it’s going to be really expensive or time-consuming to change course?

“The data you need to make a quality decision is usually right in front of you,” he says. “The trick is figuring out how to take off the blindfold.”

In many ways, the Covid pandemic turned workplace assumptions upside down. What lessons did it teach Besecker about the art of the possible?

“Imagine someone coming to you in December of 2019 and saying, ‘You know, I don’t think we need offices anymore. We can build a big, successful company completely remote!’ You’d have thought they were exercising horrible judgment. We were all suffering from this collective confirmation bias that offices are a critical part of how companies succeed. While the final chapter on remote work has yet to be written, it’s very clear that it can work—but you have to make BIG investments in bringing teams together in other ways.”

Read more

One of the most striking findings Raman shares is that 70% of the skills required for the average job are expected to change by 2030. This means that even people who remain in the same role will need to evolve significantly. Leaders can no longer rely on traditional organizational structures built around stability and predictability. Instead, they must create cultures that encourage experimentation, learning, and adaptability. Success will require leaders to be both pro-human and pro-AI, helping employees leverage new technologies while strengthening the uniquely human capabilities that machines cannot replicate.

Raman identifies five essential human capabilities that will become increasingly valuable in the AI era: curiosity, courage, creativity, compassion, and communication. These are not soft skills but core business skills that drive innovation, collaboration, and growth. He also encourages people to replace the traditional career ladder mindset with a climbing wall mindset, recognizing that careers will become more dynamic, personalized, and nonlinear. In a rapidly changing world, the greatest advantage belongs to those who are willing to keep learning, keep adapting, and keep betting on themselves.

• Human capabilities such as curiosity, courage, creativity, compassion, and communication will become more valuable as technology advances.

• Career success will depend less on credentials and more on demonstrated capabilities and work products.

• Leaders must create cultures that encourage experimentation, learning, and intelligent risk-taking.

1. Choose one of the five human capabilities and intentionally strengthen it through daily practice this week.

2. Identify a process, habit, or workflow that needs to evolve and experiment with a new approach.

3. Create a small project or work sample that demonstrates your capabilities rather than relying solely on credentials.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

As we all try to endure the scorched earth rhetoric of politicians, an age-old question continues to beg for an answer: What’s the most effective way to win the hearts and minds of people?

I can’t speak for you, but I don’t respond well to “shame talk”—as in “Shame on you for holding that particular view.” I also reject name-calling and other forms of incivility.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer polite logic and reasoning, backed up by verifiable information, seasoned by a dash of empathy. For me, shallow slogans and in-your-face sound bites are a total turn off.

Most people can smell manipulation, and they don’t respond well to the aroma. Influence and persuasion, on the other hand, often have more subtle nuances.

A thoughtful exploration of the subject can be found in the work of Jocelyn Davis, an internationally known consultant and former head of R&D for The Forum Corporation, a global leadership development firm. She’s author The Art of Quiet Influence: Wisdom and Mindfulness for Work and Life.

Drawing on the enduring wisdom of Buddha, Confucius, Rumi, Gandhi and others, Davis shows how anyone—not just people with titles—can get important things done by using influence without authority.

Rodger Dean Duncan: How do you differentiate between influence and persuasion?

Jocelyn Davis: Persuasion is pressuring someone to do what you want them to do—never mind what they want. It’s about getting your way. Influence, as I define it, is about working with others to co-create a new way, our way.

One of my favorite examples of influence comes from the tennis world. At a tournament in 1979, the champions Björn Borg and John McEnroe were facing off against each other. McEnroe was already infamous for his on-court tantrums, and he was acting up as usual: flinging his racket, yelling, abusing the officials. It was 5-5 in the final set when Borg beckoned him to the net. McEnroe thought Borg was going to rebuke him, but instead Borg put an arm around his shoulders and said, “It’s OK. Just relax. It’s OK. It’s a great match.”

McEnroe later said it was a turning point in his career. At that moment, he said, he realized “if we could keep lifting our games, I didn’t have to worry about the crowd or the linesmen or anything.” To this day he refers to Borg as his “great” rival.

Great influencers don’t push or pull or manipulate. Instead, they help all of us lift our game.

Duncan: Authority is clearly not the same as power. How can someone without authority or title exert influence with other people?

Davis: Authority and power often overlap, but they’re two different things. Some leaders have lots of formal authority—a big title—but little real power, because they’re unable to mobilize people. Other leaders have real power despite a lack of formal authority; they know how to get things done with and through others, title or no title.

Carin Gendell, a colleague who teaches influence workshops, says too many team leaders obsess over their lack of authority. They spend all their time trying to get someone to grant them decision rights, or the right to control who’s on the team, or a bigger budget. She tells them, “Stop arguing for positional authority and instead start making things happen on the team. Because when the team performs, you’re more likely to win the authority.”

And that’s really the key to influence: shift your focus away from the authority you may or may not have and toward making things happen. But “making things happen” isn’t the best way to put it, because it’s not about cracking the whip. I talk about three core influence practices: invite participation, share power, and aid progress. These three practices are the key to exerting influence without authority.

Duncan: You draw upon the thinking of twelve “sages” whose thinking on influence dates back through many centuries. How did you select these twelve people and what common themes do you see in their philosophies that are relevant today?

Davis: These sages represent the classic wisdom of the East: China, India, Japan, and the Islamic world. Of the twelve, Confucius, the Buddha, Rumi, and Gandhi are probably the best known. Some readers will recognize Dogen, the father of mindfulness meditation. Many know Zhuangzi, one of the founders of Taoism. The others are mostly unknown in the West, but renowned in their own cultures.

They come from various thought traditions. Scholars may be horrified that I’ve lumped them together! And I don’t make the mistake of regarding Eastern cultures as more inherently peaceful or “nice” than Western ones; many Eastern leaders match their Western counterparts in political ambition and ruthlessness.

I selected them for two reasons. First, research shows the Eastern perspective is less atomistic than the Western one. For these thinkers, a leader’s job is to channel the world’s natural flow rather than push things around; hence, they have a lot to say about quiet influence—strength without force. Second, they were all mavericks: marginalized or ignored by the establishment of their time and rediscovered centuries later by seekers of a better way. They weren’t perfect people, but their writings are troves of insight and fresh ideas.

Duncan: One influence behavior you recommend is to encourage others to express objections and doubts. Why do many people seem to miss that lesson, and what do you think is the cost to their relationships?

Davis: Most of us, when we hear an objection—someone says, “I don’t agree,” or “I don’t want to,” or “I hate that idea”—immediately get busy explaining why we’re right and they’re wrong. We want to overcome the objection, to beat it down. It’s our reptilian brain responding to a perceived attack. And, the other person usually responds in kind: they fight back, dig in their heels, or simply withdraw. Once both parties are in fight-or-flight mode, influence is impossible. Even a relationship can be impossible.

The way to counteract the reptile-brain response is to see objections not as pushback, but as a sign of engagement. It’s a precept taught in every sales training class: the customer who sits there nodding and smiling—“Sure, sounds good”—is less likely to buy than the customer who says, “The price is too high, I don’t like the color, what if it breaks?” The second customer is engaged. The first doesn’t care.

“Objections mean engagement” is the basic belief that can help us overcome our natural defensiveness in these situations. Thinking, “Oh, good, they want to play” makes it easier to be open to the concerns.

Duncan: Another influence practice you suggest is to take time to develop a shared outlook. That seems to fly in the face of today’s highly partisan approaches to public discourse. What are some good models of developing a shared outlook that you’ve seen, and what can be learned from those models?

Davis: Influence practices—please note!—won’t work with strangers on the internet. If you want an influence relationship, you need a relationship. With strangers or crowds, you can use rhetoric. When it comes to getting stuff done with associates, over time—that’s when you use influence.

My favorite model for developing a shared outlook is called the Hassle Graph (the brainchild of my colleague Andre Alphonso). On the vertical axis is hassle; on the horizontal axis is time. Typically a project starts off low on hassle—everyone’s into it, things hum—but later, when you really want to be making progress, hassle increases. The answer is to move some of the hassle up front, by discussing roles, ground rules, and simply getting to know one another. In other words, you need to front-load the hassle so the line goes down over time instead of up.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter which specific techniques you use. What’s important is the time and effort you invest early on to create a real group: one where people feel welcomed and integral rather than overlooked and dispensable. That investment, though it feels like a hassle, has huge payoffs in performance down the road.

Duncan: One problem in our modern society is that people learn about those who hold different views but they seldom make the effort to learn from them. Many people then become information rich but understanding impoverished. How can that trap be avoided?

Read more

Miller emphasizes that leadership begins with vision. Leaders must carve out time to reflect, assess, and create rather than becoming consumed by daily busyness. He also argues that engagement is largely a leadership responsibility, requiring leaders to create conditions where people genuinely care about their work and their organization. Reinvention is equally important, as progress is always preceded by change. Leaders must model continuous learning, encourage innovation, and cultivate cultures where growth and improvement are expected rather than resisted.

The most significant update in this edition is the focus on a leader’s heart. Miller compares leadership to an iceberg, with visible skills representing only a small portion of effectiveness while character forms the foundation beneath the surface. Great leaders hunger for wisdom, expect the best, accept responsibility, respond with courage, and put others first. Ultimately, leadership is less about authority and more about adding value. By focusing on serving others and helping them succeed, leaders create lasting influence and become the kind of people others willingly choose to follow.

• Great leadership begins with a clear vision of the future and intentional time for strategic thinking.

• Sustainable success comes from valuing both results and relationships rather than choosing one over the other.

• Character and heart are the foundation of leadership effectiveness and long-term influence.

1. Schedule dedicated time each week for reflection, planning, and future-focused thinking.

2. Evaluate whether you naturally favor results or relationships and strengthen the side you tend to neglect.

3. Practice one leadership heart habit—learning, optimism, responsibility, courage, or putting others first—every day this week.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

We live in a world where work is regarded as morally worthy. For some, in fact, being a workaholic is considered a badge of honor.

Of course work is important. It’s an engine that keeps the economy and our society moving. It’s how we use our gifts for the benefit of others. It’s how we support our families and how we turn dreams into reality. Without hard work, it’s been said, nothing grows but weeds.

But it’s easy to over do a good thing. In one way or another, most people struggle with that time-honored goal called balance.

Dr. Stewart Friedman, an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, has invested his career in studying leadership and the behaviors that make it effective (or not).

Many people, he notes, feel energized by their work, are engaged in it and find it extremely rewarding to serve others. But when they invest disproportionate attention to work they eventually pay a steep price in other areas of their lives.

In addition to (and as a result of) his decades of academic work, Friedman is author of two bestselling books—Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life and Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life.

Friedman says a starting point to living a richer life is to rethink how you define success. If your self-worth revolves around the status, paycheck, and prestige associated with your work, you’re headed for trouble. A richer life also takes into account the quality of your relationships, your engagement in the community, and your physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

I reached out to Friedman to explore his research-based approach to enjoying what he calls “four-way wins”—better results at work, at home, in the community and for your self.

Rodger Dean Duncan: You address personal development in the context of four interdependent domains—work, home, community, and self. Many people seem to think that success in one domain must come at the expense of one or more of the others. You call “work/life balance” the wrong metaphor. Why?

Stewart Friedman: “Balance” is a misguided metaphor because it conveys the idea that we have to give up the prospect of success in one part of our lives in order to have it in another part—one or the other.

When we think this way we’re likely to end up making more sacrifices than necessary. If instead we pursue the prospect of harmony among the different parts of life—like the instruments in a jazz quartet trying to make good music—then the possibilities for wellbeing and high performance are much greater.

This is what our research and practice show: Consciously and deliberately aiming for what I call “four-way wins”—improved performance at work, at home, in the community, and for the private self (mind, body, and spirit)—leads to smarter use of time, stronger relationships with people who matter most, less distraction and more focused effort, and better results. It’s not possible to have it all in balance, all at once. But our research shows that over the course of time it is possible to have a greater sense of peace and harmony.

Duncan: A major premise of your approach to personal effectiveness is that leadership skill is required to manage the boundaries between different areas of one’s life. How do you help people understand that—even if they lack a title or position generally associated with “leadership”—they need to develop specific skills to lead their own lives?

Friedman: Leadership is about mobilizing people toward valued goals, envisioning a better future and inspiring people to move there with you. You can be a great leader and have no one reporting to you in an organizational hierarchy. Conversely, you can have lots of people under you and be a terrible leader.

So it’s not as much about executive authority as it is about what it takes to clarify what’s important, recognize and respect the whole person, and continually experiment with how things get done. That’s the focus of leadership from the point of view of the whole person.

What I’ve found is that these leadership skills—which anyone can develop and which apply at all stages of our lives and careers—are key to creating harmony among, and good performance in, the different parts of life.

Duncan: You say a key to better leadership and a richer life lies in three practices—Be Real (act with authenticity), Be Whole (act with integrity), and Be Innovative (act with creativity). Why these particular practices?

Friedman: These three principles derive from extensive research we did at the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project on how the people who excel in leading the lives they want actually do it.

When I had the opportunity years ago, as global head of leadership development for Ford Motor Company, to design a new model for how to cultivate leadership capacity, our team created a program for bringing these three principles to life. We called it Total Leadership to signify that leadership isn’t just about business, it’s about life.

Participants did a series of exercises, starting with those that required them to identify their core values, share the stories of critical episodes in their lives that shaped them, and describe a compelling image of their future. They considered the people who mattered most to them and then talked to them to clarify expectations. Then they designed and implemented experiments intended to produce demonstrably improved results in all parts of their lives.

Finally, they reflected on what they learned about how to create change that’s truly sustainable—built to last because these changes serve the interests of people who matter not just at work, not just at home, not just in the community, and not just for the self, but for all key stakeholders.

Duncan: In your model, how does integrity affect a person’s relationships with self as well as with others?

Friedman: Self-awareness is the essence of authenticity. Awareness of our key relationships and how they fit with our values and vision is what being whole is about.

The Latin root of the word “integrity” is one—a whole that fits together, that has coherence. So, to live with integrity is to seek harmony among the different parts of our lives.

In order to do so, we must

• clarify mutual expectations with people in our various life roles

• build supportive networks at work and throughout our lives

• help others

• intelligently manage boundaries among roles intelligently

• apply the resources we develop in one part of life to goals we’re pursuing in other parts, and

• weave the disparate strands together to form a strong fabric.

Duncan: What role does innovation play in personal leadership, and how does it help produce harmony between work, home, community, and self?

Read more

Drawing on lessons from his own life-threatening cancer diagnosis at age 15, Rath reflects on how urgency shaped his early career and eventually forced him to reevaluate the gap between productivity and meaning. He explores why so many people become trapped in cycles of busyness, status-seeking, distraction, and social comparison while slowly disconnecting from what matters most.

Whether you are leading a team, building a career, raising children, or simply trying to live more intentionally, this episode offers a deeply practical framework for reconnecting work and life to genuine purpose.

• Purpose is built through daily actions, not distant life missions — Meaning often emerges through small choices, relationships, conversations, and acts of contribution throughout the day.

• Productivity and purpose are not the same thing — Many people optimize for busyness and responsiveness while neglecting the deeper work that creates lasting value and meaning.

• Strengths become most valuable when they are used to serve others — The goal is not simply discovering who you are, but applying your talents in ways that genuinely help people.

1. Ask yourself regularly not just what you are doing, but why you are doing it — Purpose becomes clearer when daily actions align with meaningful contribution.

2. Create intentional space for deep work, reflection, and important relationships — Constant responsiveness often prevents the work and conversations that matter most.

3. Focus more energy on serving other people rather than comparing yourself to them — Lasting fulfillment usually grows from contribution, not status competition.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

In this rush-rush digital age, many people rely on email and text messages for their communication. Smartphones and keyboards can certainly provide efficiency.

But if effectiveness is what you’re after, human conversation is still the best way to connect with other people to reach mutual understanding and solve problems.

Unfortunately, a lot of people still don’t know how to talk. Oh, sure, they can fill a void with a lot of words. But many five-year-olds can do that. Real connection and collaboration require more than just the exchange of words.

George Bernard Shaw had it right when he said “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

In exploring this all-important issue of how people communicate (or fail to), I reached out to Craig Weber. He’s the author of Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure is On.

To build their conversational capacity, Weber says, people must subordinate their base, ego-driven impulses to the finer aspects of their humanity. This requires cultivating candor, courage, curiosity, and humility.

Most of us spend so much time at work that it’s bound to affect who we are. The only question is how. Will we allow our workplace experience to reinforce the primal, self-centered aspects of our nature, or the more noble, more purpose-driven aspects of our humanity?

Weber says the key to building more skill with conversations is to become less cautious and more candid, less timid and more courageous, less critical and more curious, less arrogant and more humble. His insights are well worth digesting.

Rodger Dean Duncan: What do you mean by “conversational capacity”?

Craig Weber: Conversational Capacity is a discipline, or a conversational martial art, that I define in two basic ways:

First, it’s the ability—of an individual or a team—for engaging in constructive, learning-focused dialogue about difficult subjects, in challenging circumstances, and across tough boundaries. It’s easy to see this ability in a team. A team with high conversational capacity can accomplish really good work even when dealing with its most troublesome, contentious issues. A team with low conversational capacity can see its performance derailed over a minor difference of opinion.

So the more difficult the issues we’re facing, the more challenging the problem we’re trying to solve, the more stringent the differences of personality or opinion around the table, the more important our conversational capacity becomes.

Here’s a second way to think about conversational capacity. There’s a place a team wants to be working when they’re dealing with an important issue or decision. I call this place “the sweet spot”—that place in a meeting or conversation where things are open, constructive, balanced, and learning-focused. The sweet spot is where we don’t just have smart people around the table—it’s where we can readily access their smarts.

Duncan: How can a team maintain focus on that sweet spot?

Weber: What holds us in this sweet spot is balance between two critical things. First, candor. The conversation is open, honest, forthright, and direct. But unadulterated candor isn’t always productive, so in the sweet spot it’s balanced with lots of curiosity. People are open-minded, inquisitive, interested in new ideas and contrasting perspectives. This is what holds us in the sweet spot—balance between candor and curiosity. And when we leave the sweet spot, it’s almost always because we’ve let go of one pole or the other.

We can define conversational capacity, therefore, as the ability to work in the sweet spot in difficult circumstances. A team with high conversational capacity can stay focused on learning and do good work in difficult situations because team members don’t allow their defensive reactions to pull them off center.

Duncan: Why else is conversational capacity so important?

Weber: It’s a pivotal variable in both personal and team performance. Any team, for example, is a mix of people with different personalities, educations, life experiences, cultural backgrounds, and areas of functional expertise. High conversational capacity coupled with these differences can be a source of strength because the differences can be leveraged for learning. On the other hand, low conversational capacity coupled with these differences can produce a vulnerability to defensiveness and dysfunction.

Duncan: What are the telltale signs that a team doesn’t yet have this capacity?

Weber: When conversational capacity is lacking, there are two telltale symptoms—

• Undiscussable issues. When candor is low, we avoid or downplay difficult topics and problems. Then they’re more likely to come up in the hallway than in the meeting.

• Unproductively discussable issues. When curiosity is low, people butt heads, argue, dismiss one another, and stop listening. So while issues may come up, they’re not addressed productively. This means they boomerang around to another meeting, or the issue is re-assigned to the undiscussable list—“I’m not bringing that up again. I’m not stupid.”

These symptoms provide a clear signal that the conversational capacity of a team is inadequate. They’re important signals to recognize because no amount of technical sophistication or good intentions will compensate for a team’s inability to balance candor and curiosity under pressure. Even if a team is staffed with skilled people who trust, like, and respect one another, and even if they have all the technical pieces in perfect place—strategy, structure, processes, and policies—the team still won’t perform if their conversational capacity is too low.

Duncan: Why doesn’t conversational capacity come naturally?

Weber: That’s a great question. Balancing candor and curiosity is simple in concept but tough in practice for a daunting reason—human nature works against us.

We’re born with two powerful tendencies—emotional reactions—that throw us off balance in surprising and disturbing ways. And what makes these tendencies so hard to manage that they’re grounded in the fight-flight response—powerful, knee-jerk reactions to a perceived threat, be it physical or social. When our need to “minimize” the level of tension, discomfort, embarrassment, or risk is triggered, we tend to leave the sweet spot by becoming less candid. When our need to “win”—to be right, to get our way, to convince others to see things our way and agree with us—is triggered, we tend to leave the sweet spot by dropping curiosity.

There are stunning examples of this, such as co-pilots not speaking up when they see a pilot making a grave mistake, or surgeons fist-fighting in an operating room because they disagree over who gets to perform the procedure. But it’s usually not that extreme. When conversational capacity is low it’s more likely that we’ll not address an issue in a direct way or we’ll not listen, not be open to other views, or we’ll shut one another down. Either way, learning is hampered and performance suffers.

So the discipline of conversational capacity involves learning to recognize when our emotional reactions threaten to separate our behavior from our intentions and then to act more deliberately despite them. The goal isn’t to stop being triggered, it’s learning to act intentionally even while you’re being triggered. This is why conversational capacity has been referred to as “operationalized emotional intelligence.”

Duncan: You say relationships based on trust, loyalty, and respect—the holy grail of many team-building endeavors—offer no guarantee of high conversation capacity. Why? Is it because “nice” comes at the expense of candor?

Weber: That’s part of it. Good intentions are never enough. An intentional conflict is a clash between our good intentions and our need to be comfortable or right. I want to bring up a tough issue but I don’t want to rock the boat, or I want to be a good team player but I want my colleagues to realize I’m right and just do what I’m telling them to do.

When we like, respect, admire, or love someone, it can create a huge intentional clash.

In my work with executive teams, for example, people report that it’s often much harder to raise a difficult issue with a boss they respect and admire than it is with a boss they loathe or fear—especially if they’re concerned they might upset the person, damage the relationship, or look stupid in their eyes.

I’ve also seen teams that get along well—where there is great trust, camaraderie, and respect—but they aren’t as candid as they need to be. I observed a team that suffered from this problem. They prided themselves on their close, collegial, warm relationships, but then no one would bring up tough issues because no one wanted to screw up a good thing. They were nowhere near the sweet spot because, without consciously realizing it, they placed a greater value on collegial relationships than candid conversation. They sacrificed their candor on the altar of “agreeableness.”

Duncan: Why does conversational capacity seem to be under-appreciated in many organizations?

Read more

Drawing on her experience as both a psychologist and one of the earliest executive coaches, Frankel explores how childhood conditioning, workplace culture, and social expectations shape leadership behavior. She argues that while being “nice” is absolutely valuable, it is not sufficient for career success if it prevents women from speaking up, setting boundaries, taking visibility seriously, or claiming their place in leadership conversations.

Whether you are an emerging professional, an experienced leader, or someone committed to creating healthier workplace cultures, this episode offers direct and actionable insights into leadership, communication, and career growth.

• Being “nice” is valuable, but it is not enough for career success — Women often need to pair kindness with complementary leadership behaviors such as visibility, assertiveness, and boundary-setting.

• Many career-limiting behaviors operate unconsciously — Childhood messages, workplace expectations, and social conditioning can quietly shape how women communicate, participate, and advocate for themselves.

• Leadership visibility matters — Speaking early in meetings, being physically present, and intentionally building relationships all contribute to executive presence and long-term opportunity.

1. Pay attention to behaviors that may unintentionally minimize your presence — Waiting too long to speak, sitting at the periphery, or avoiding visibility can quietly reduce influence over time.

2. Practice setting boundaries through negotiation rather than automatic refusal — Clear communication and realistic expectations often work better than simply saying yes or no.

3. Focus on progress rather than perfection — Excellence matters, but repeatedly exceeding what the situation actually requires may drain time and energy unnecessarily.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

“People are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”

That may sound like a line from a comedian. But it’s actually from Bertrand Russell. You know—the British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, essayist, social critic and Nobel laureate. Not known for comedy.

Intentionally or not, Russell provided a fair description of what often occurs in organizational cultures: Rules masquerade as reason. Sketchy thinking becomes strategy. Hair-brained ideas become products destined for the discount warehouse. Unchallenged nonsense evolves into the status quo. People go along to get along.

Such unproductive environments are rarely the work of a single person. This kind of imprudence is nearly always a group activity, a collusion of silent partners.

The result is what management innovator John Brandt calls Nincompoopery.

Yes, it’s a made-up word. But of course all words are made up. And this one aptly describes behaviors that can frustrate managers, demoralize employees, and run customers to the competition.

Brandt offers some excellent antidotes in Nincompoopery: Why Your Customers Hate You—And How to Fix It.

Rodger Dean Duncan: You say individual nincompoops are not the big problem, it’s the nincompoopery—i.e., the meta-foolishness—of the companies and systems in which people are forced to work. Give us a couple of high-profile examples of nincompoopery in the workplace.

John R. Brandt: When the Segway was introduced, the company predicted sales of 10,000 per week—at $5,000 each. Unfortunately, as cool as a stand-up, self-balancing, motorized scooter may be, most people couldn’t imagine why they needed one. Segway ended up lowering its prices and focusing mainly on police, industrial, and tourism markets—and sold 24,000 over the first five years (or roughly 2,576,000 fewer units—and about $13 billion less in revenue—than expected), at lower margins.

This is innovation nincompoopery on a grand scale. Too many leaders believe that innovation is only or mostly about technological wizardry. It’s not. In fact, if your technological innovation is too early—before customers see a clear need and payoff in adopting a new technology, which experience has taught them is likely to be painful, prolonged, and often unrewarding—you’re in big trouble. There’s no lonelier feeling than trying to convince customers to buy something they’ve never heard of and don’t understand, while commanding a premium price. Evangelism has its rewards, but they’re usually redeemed far in the future, or after you’re dead. Neither time frame is helpful in delivering profits today.

Another great example of how important (and lucrative) it can be for companies to manage and minimize their own nincompoopery is what McKinsey & Company calls the “moment of truth.” This is when there’s an opportunity for something to go dramatically right with a customer, or, perhaps more often, immediately after something goes drastically wrong. How we respond—with empathy or apathy— will shape our relationship with that customer forever.

A study in Europe found that 87% of bank customers who had positive experiences during moments of truth (a check put on hold, a bank error, receiving financial advice) increased their share of wallet with the bank. Just as telling: 72% of customers who had negative experiences downsized their relationships with the bank. Banks—and other companies—win or lose based on how well they minimize nincompoopery.

Duncan: Why—and how—do smart, well-intentioned people fall into a pattern of nincompoopery? What are the early warning signs?

Brandt: Part of it is human nature. We get comfortable, we fall into routines, and we find ways to slip past our own unease at the fact that things don’t work as well as they should. Or, even worse, we start ignoring or ridiculing the frustration of our customers.

How many times have you heard someone say, in jest or not, that their job or business would be terrific—if it weren’t for their cranky, stupid customers? Newsflash: Those customers aren’t stupid, but they are cranky because not only are you screwing up, you’re not listening to them even as they try to help you. A customer complaint is a gift, because the customer is saying that he or she cares enough about you, and what you do, that he or she wants you to do it better. You’ve been given a chance to deepen your relationship with that customer.

So the clearest warning sign of impending nincompoopery is when senior leaders create a culture in which legitimate concerns or complaints, whether from customers or employees, aren’t heard or tolerated. This can be due to active suppression, as leaders stifle dissent or disagreement because they see them as challenges to authority. Or it can be slower and more insidious, as leaders avoid the place where real work is done (the production line, a service call) and where real customers live and work (in homes or businesses).

Net promoter scores and customer satisfaction surveys are no substitute for listening to real people who buy things from you, and the employees who help them.

Duncan: What do you see as some of the trends that make it challenging for leaders to avoid nincompoopery?

Brandt: Think about the amount and speed of change we’re wrestling with: The original telephone needed 50 years to move from 5% to 50% reach into US households. Smartphones went from 5% to 40% in four years—during the worst economic downturn in 70 years.

Globally, the number of Internet users reached 3.9 billion in 2018, roughly half the world’s population. Yet even as we connect to others, we’re individually dazed and confused. With more than seven billion smartphones in use today, we’ve created an environment in which we and our employees can, if we want to, work 24/7, checking our phones up to 150 times a day. We think we’re all more productive, thanks to connectivity and multitasking, but research says we’re not. In fact, we lose up to 40% of our productivity by switching between tasks. The more we switch, the worse our performance.

And that’s just scratching the surface of what we’re trying to manage. Employees and managers are overwhelmed, which can lead to decision fatigue and paralysis—and nincompoopery.

Duncan: What sort of “audit” can be done to identify and begin the eradication of corporate nincompoopery?

Brandt: It comes back to listening. If your organization doesn’t have a program in which every employee—from CEO or owner to frontline worker—spends at least some time with a customer at least once per year, you can’t expect to outperform competitors, or maybe survive. And this time can’t be spent selling or attending the big game. You have to figure out how to work directly alongside the customer, in his or her workplace or home, observing how he or she operates in his or her own environment. This is the only way to identify nagging problems and new challenges that you can solve, as well as finding out how badly you’re currently goofing up on your responsibilities.

Small companies, which are often closer to their customers than large companies, should have a huge advantage here, though they often squander it.

Duncan: What can an individual worker do to avoid falling victim to corporate nincompoopery?

Read more

In this conversation with Rodger Dean Duncan, Zane explains how instinct shapes everything from consumer behavior and leadership influence to political movements and personal branding. Drawing on decades of experience with companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Bain & Company, she argues that sustainable growth comes not from overwhelming people with facts, but from intentionally shaping the positive associations that live in the unconscious mind.

Whether you are leading a business, building a personal brand, introducing change inside an organization, or trying to communicate more effectively, this episode offers practical insights into how instinctive influence really works.

• People make decisions instinctively before they rationalize them consciously — Facts and logic still matter, but subconscious associations often determine which ideas, products, and people instinctively feel right.

• Strong brands build large positive “connectomes” in the mind — Sustainable influence comes from continually reinforcing positive associations while carefully layering new ones over time.

• Persuasion works best when people feel ownership of the idea — Leaders gain more traction when they involve others early, invite collaboration, and build familiarity gradually rather than presenting fully polished solutions.

1. Pay closer attention to the subconscious associations connected to your leadership, team, or organization — People often respond to emotional and instinctive cues long before they analyze facts.

2. Introduce important ideas earlier than feels comfortable — Building familiarity gradually can create stronger buy-in than waiting until every detail is fully perfected.

3. Reinforce what people already value while introducing change — Radical shifts often create resistance, while thoughtful evolution helps people stay connected to the familiar.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

Enjoy the little things, because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.

That may sound like a line from a syrupy greeting card. But it turns out to be an important ingredient in workplace issues like engagement, wellbeing, productivity, and even profit.

Star Dargin knows a bit about the rough-and-tumble of competitive business. Earlier in her career, she led hundreds of professionals in producing a bestselling software product that generated more than $500 million in annual revenue.

Then she left engineering to become a leadership coach.

Dramatic career shift? She doesn’t think so. In fact, she points out, both engineering and leadership coaching focus on making intangibles tangible.

Over the past two decades, Star has worked with hundreds of clients including high-tech firms and NASA. Her emphasis today is on gratitude.

Yes, gratitude.

As a conscious practitioner of gratitude, Star has done extensive research showing gratitude’s considerable benefits beyond the obvious “feel good” factor. She shares many of her discoveries in Leading With Gratitude: 21st Century Solutions to Boost Engagement and Innovation. Her suggestions for personal and workplace behavior make good sense.

And, yes, they can brighten your day.

Rodger Dean Duncan: Many people intuitively understand that gratitude is a key to happiness and good relationships. What’s the science supporting gratitude’s role in effective leadership?

Star Dargin: The study of leadership is as old as humans, but only recently is the business world recognizing the value of gratitude within it. It’s difficult to quantify the relationship between leadership and gratitude because there are hundreds of definitions of leadership—and because effective leadership changes over time and cultures. It’s always evolving.

There are many leadership studies that recognize gratitude as a trait of successful leaders, albeit sometimes disguised as appreciation. Brené Brown is my favorite scientist who has done research on effective leadership.

In earlier works, Brown says, the definition of leadership intersects with the definition of vulnerability because leadership is the ability to flourish in a state of flux, to manage people through uncertainty. Brown adds that, through her studies, she has found that the quickest way to become more vulnerable is to have a strong gratitude muscle, making this trait foundational for effective leadership.

Gratitude is a positive in the workforce in many different ways. Current science shows that gratitude improves our personal and social lives, health, and wellbeing. People who are grateful live longer, heal faster, have less depression and fewer suicidal thoughts. For instance, research has found that waitresses who are authentically appreciative get larger tips and board game players who are shown gratitude win more often because they take more risks. You can start to connect these types of gratitude studies to the development of more effective leadership skills.

Duncan: The notion of gratitude seems to be ingrained in many of the words found in leadership literature—words like engagement, celebration, recognition, and appreciation. What are the advantages of using the word gratitude explicitly in discussing leadership practices?

Dargin: It’s very true that gratitude is ingrained in many leadership practices today, often by using different terms. In fact, I’ve pulled over 50 books on leadership off my shelves and, in all of them, words such as appreciation, recognition, positivity, and thankfulness appear. Yet, these are all flavors of gratitude without being gratitude themselves. What do I mean?

Engagement has become the gold standard because, when an engaged employee feels appreciated, it can be measured and tied to return on investment, or ROI. While that makes it an important and complicated word related to gratitude, it is still not gratitude since an employee can be engaged without having gratitude.

Celebration and recognition are similar in that they are ways a leader can express gratitude, but are not gratitude itself. Plus, not every individual gives or wants to receive gratitude the same way. For example, calling out an individual accomplishment publicly can be highly motivating for some and painful for others. This makes learning the various way of giving and receiving gratitude important in the workplace.

Duncan: What about a simple thank you?

Dargin: Saying thank you is certainly another option, but not all thank yous express gratitude.

For example, I’ve identified three types of thank yous. The first is cultural, learned, and ingrained in many of us since birth. In the U.S., for instance, this type occurs when we thank someone who gives us a gift, even if we dislike it. My German friend even complains that when she goes back home, she has to remember to stop saying thank you so much.

The second type of thank you expects reciprocity. In other words, you give it to get something in return. An example is bringing food to an optional meeting in exchange for attendance.

The last type of thank you is the only one that actually expresses gratitude. You are truly grateful and say thank you consciously and authentically, with nothing expected in return.

In essence, explicitly using the word gratitude in an authentic way cuts through the heaviness of other gratitude-encompassing words like engagement. It is simple and comes from the heart, so why not say, “I’m grateful” instead of using these other words?

Duncan: How does gratitude manifest itself in the observable behavior of an effective leader?

Dargin: Leaders operating from gratitude are more engaged and innovative. Rather than blaming or becoming defensive, fearful, or avoiding, they listen better and are more open and accepting. Their behavior also becomes one of natural curiosity, making them generally more creative in their collaborative problem-solving efforts. The bottom line is improved when leaders are most productive. This happens when leaders are creative and engaged. Of course, productivity leads to more gratitude, which creates a reinforcing cycle of positivity.

As an example, one of my coaching clients was a brilliant and talented technical director at a large international company. However, one of the biggest challenges he faced was working with a CIO who had a different personality type than his. He believed the CIO was belittling and undermining him. This difference meant that he didn’t feel gratitude, so he avoided the CIO and even considered leaving the company.

Through some tough coaching sessions, we were able to shift my client to a place of gratitude, a place where he could see a few things to be grateful for about the CIO and the situation. As a result, he has become more innovative and started finding ways to interact with the CIO. It didn’t happen overnight, but my client is fully engaged at the company and is no longer thinking about leaving.

Additionally, after teaching communication classes for decades, I noticed that no matter what technique was applied, unless you came at it with a positive mindset, it didn’t work as well. Starting from a place of gratitude always seems to improve communication, regardless of which technique is used.

Duncan: How can an organization make gratitude a more central part of its culture—and what are the benefits?

Read more

In this conversation with Rodger Dean Duncan, Harter explains why so many organizations continue to struggle with disengagement despite overwhelming research showing what works. He explores the critical role managers play in shaping culture, why traditional performance reviews often fail, and how continuous coaching conversations build trust, accountability, and productivity.

Whether you lead a global organization, manage a small team, or simply want to create a healthier and more productive work environment, this episode offers practical insights grounded in decades of research and real-world application.

• Great managers drive engagement more than any other factor — Gallup’s research shows that roughly 70% of the variance in team engagement can be traced directly to the manager and the quality of daily leadership behaviors.

• Continuous conversations outperform episodic performance reviews — High-performing cultures are built through frequent coaching discussions rather than quarterly or annual evaluations that arrive too late to be useful.

• Hybrid and remote work require intentional relationship-building — Psychological distance increases quickly without consistent, meaningful weekly conversations and carefully planned in-person collaboration.

1. Evaluate whether your management conversations are continuous or merely episodic — Waiting for formal reviews may allow problems, confusion, and disengagement to grow unchecked.

2. Identify the barriers preventing people from doing great work — Burnout often stems less from long hours and more from frustration, unclear expectations, or lack of support.

3. Make weekly connection a leadership discipline — Even brief but meaningful conversations can strengthen trust, alignment, accountability, and engagement over time.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

Are you a clutter bug?

Has that treadmill become no more than a place to hang laundry?

Is your garage so crammed with litter that your car spends every season out on the driveway?

Does your basement resemble an archeological dig?

What about your home office? Is the file you desperately need for the next Zoom call buried under that stack of catalogues from a store where you haven’t shopped since 2009?

In your heart of hearts do you realize you have a problem with “too much stuff” but you just can’t seem to get a grip on how to manage it?

Yes, you are a clutter bug.

You could benefit by a piece of advice from Wendell Berry. He says, “Don’t own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.”

Who is Wendell Berry? He’s an environment activist. How ironic.

An excellent source of specific “how to” advice on simplifying your life is Tracy McCubbin. She’s owner of a home organization company called dClutterfly. Her books are Making Space, Clutter Free and Make Space for Happiness. She’s regularly featured in major media including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NBC and others.

McCubbin has identified seven “emotional clutter blocks” that contribute to the landfills in people’s home and work environments. Be honest, do any of these sound familiar?

#1 My Stuff keeps me in the past. Children’s artwork (but no more children). Outdated clothes that no longer fit. Garden tools that are no longer used.

#2 My stuff tells me who I am. Stacks of shipping boxes, evidence of excessive online shopping. Multiples of items. Brand flaunting.

#3 The stuff I’m avoiding. Unfiled paperwork. Unopened mail. Unfinished projects. Unreturned items.

#4 My fantasy stuff for my fantasy life. Lots of items you’ve never used. Clothes with the tags still on. Exercise equipment that’s never been assembled.

#5 I’m not worth my good stuff. A closet full of designer clothes, but your clients wear only sweatpants. Unlit candles, unused bath salts, packed away china and silver.

#6 Trapped with other people’s stuff. Multiple sets of china. Boxes of memorabilia. Inherited furniture that no one sleeps/sits on.

#7 The stuff I keep paying for. “But I paid a lot for that.” “I don’t want it to go to waste.” “That could be useful someday.”

McCubbin says that during her first five years as a professional organizer, she heard the same stories over and over and noticed a pattern.

“Everyone has at least one clutter block,” McCubbin says. “And most people have more than one. As your life changes, so will your clutter blocks. When we can identify what’s holding us back, then we can break free of our clutter.”

Most people think they need much more than they actually do, she says. “Think about when you travel. You don’t spend the trip longing for the stuff you have at home. You get by perfectly with what’s in your suitcase. It’s a lesson in how little we actually need.”

So why is it so common for people to find themselves burdened by clutter?

“It’s a one-two punch of over-acquiring, buying because we think the stuff will fix us and then not being able to let go because we’ve created an attachment (emotional, sentimental or economical) to our stuff,” McCubbin says.

She says everyone has voids to fill: not feeling loved, low self-confidence, sadness, grief. “Whatever that void is, we’ve tried to fill it with stuff. We buy, keep, and collect because we think things will make us all feel better. But the stuff doesn’t fix us. In fact, it does the opposite. The more clutter we have the less likely we are to connect with others. We tend to hide behind our clutter, thereby missing out on true connection with friends and family, which is what will ultimately help us fill our voids.”

In what ways have easy-to-use shopping venues (think Amazon Prime) contributed to people’s challenges with clutter?

“Before online shopping, you actually had to put pants and drive to a store,” McCubbin says. “Now, shopping is available at all times and with only a keystroke. Also, now that we rarely spend with actual cash we don’t feel the actual cost of buying, it just gets thrown on a credit card and the dollars get moved from one account to another.”

Online shopping plays into the reward center in people’s brains, she says. They get a hit of dopamine when they put something in their cart, when they click buy now, and then when the package gets delivered. So online shopping has become another way we chase the dopamine high.

Social media platforms play a role in the clutter epidemic. Back in the days before social media (can you remember?) we had radio and only a handful of TV channels. So when commercials were playing we knew we were being targeted by marketers. But social media hums along 24/7 with influencers masquerading as our friends.

“We’re constantly being marketed to and we’re losing our media literacy,” McCubbin says. “Also, everyone’s home looks “perfect” on social media, so we think if we buy what they have, our homes will be perfect too. The pressure to buy is coming at us from all directions now.”

Read more