Leadership Articles

Business » Leadership | By Donald Mitchell @ Monday, 3rd March 2008 @ 7:17 AM

There may be no stronger source of unhappy surprise than having the customers\' and community\'s perceptions of your products and services suddenly turn from positive to negative with no warning. Perhaps a television program runs an expose about the safety of your product, testing it in ways that you have never considered or are inappropriate. Or suddenly the government imposes a new standard, and your product has to be phased out in its current form. If you didn\'t anticipate ... more...

Business » Leadership | By Donald Mitchell @ Monday, 3rd March 2008 @ 7:14 AM

Like Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise in the Star Trek television series, movies and books, you should spurn helplessness and believe that there is always a positive way out of a difficult or unexpected situation. Your job is to find and take that way out. As a cadet at Starfleet Academy, the fictional James Tiberius Kirk was once faced with a problem to solve for which there was no positive alternative included. The purpose of the problem was to see how the cadets handled a se... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steve Albright @ Monday, 3rd March 2008 @ 5:52 AM

Recent evidence has shown that there is a Personality Profile for someone who can be called a natural born leader. In this personality profile there are a set of innate characteristics that can be studied and learned by those who feel they are inadequate in a leader ship position. A natural born leader can effectively convey confidence, assertiveness, boldness, responsibility, and leadership. Time and time again great leaders will test high for these psychological traits; the results ar... more...

Business » Leadership | By Donald Mitchell @ Monday, 3rd March 2008 @ 4:26 AM

People who feel helpless often react that way because they cannot locate any acceptable alternatives in their own minds. A good way to circumvent that problem is to find others who have had similar problems, and ask them what they would do in your situation. Undoubtedly, you\'ll get some ideas, and then you can test the more plausible ones on a limited basis to find out which ones actually work. Alan G. Robinson and Sam Stern report that the Japanese national railway company ... more...

Business » Leadership | By Donald Mitchell @ Sunday, 2nd March 2008 @ 7:05 PM

The Helplessness Stall often follows the Wishful Thinking Stall. Here\'s an example of how that can occur. Sales and earnings at a large retail chain had been declining for years. The chain\'s executives were continually forecasting a turnaround that never came -- that\'s the wishful thinking beginning of this painful example. After a decade of steadily sinking performance and continuing layoffs, the company\'s morale had reached the bargain-basement level. O... more...

Business » Leadership | By Perry Burns @ Sunday, 2nd March 2008 @ 6:48 PM

The big buzz in the Learning and Development community is about Leadership development. \"If only we could train good leaders,\" goes the argument, \"we could be beat the world\" This belief is so well ingrained that hardly anyone stops to question it. But when you step back for a second, there are a number of huge questions. For example: 1. If leaders need training, who trained Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin? 2. If leaders can be easily trained, why are there... more...

Business » Leadership | By Donald Mitchell @ Sunday, 2nd March 2008 @ 6:42 PM

That hot-footed cat is ready to jump as soon as its paws get too hot. You should be too. The best ways to be able to move away from a mistake about an irresistible force are to keep your commitments as low as possible for as long as possible and to have contingency plans in place. How can your commitment to pursuing benefits from the irresistible force be kept low, without harming your opportunities? Many people will dive headfirst into the opportunity, but you may be ab... more...

Business » Leadership | By Donald Mitchell @ Sunday, 2nd March 2008 @ 6:41 PM

\"The only limit [to] our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.\" --Franklin Delano Roosevelt Being buffeted by strong and conflicting irresistible forces can be a little bit like being the proverbial little Dutch boy who notices that the dike is leaking. The child can staunch the leak or go for help. Which should be done first? In the story, he stops the leak with his finger and so must wait for someone to come by who can go for help. In reality, many b... more...

Business » Leadership | By Marcia Granger @ Saturday, 1st March 2008 @ 4:32 PM

Leadership is process; it is continually in motion. Management is the product of that process, as well as its saviour. Left to itself, movement would travel on into infinity, there would be no boundary, no brakes. Structure provides movement with a framework within which to move without overreaching itself. Management grounds leadership by setting up and maintaining the systems which provide any organization with coherence, with continuity and sense, with the weight required to prevent it... more...

Business » Leadership | By Bill Loyd @ Friday, 29th February 2008 @ 2:23 PM

Some years ago, I was a general manager for a large restaurant chain. I and the other general mangers were in a restaurant that had just been newly remodeled. As we were getting ready for the meeting someone brought in a box of those powder-sugar covered donuts. The box was placed on a large round booth table and everyone began to take one. At that moment my boss asked me to speak to him for a moment and discuss a potential candidate for general manager out of the assistant managers available. ... more...