It's easy to assume that leaders derail due to obvious flaws—poor judgment, unchecked ego, toxic behavior. But most leaders don't derail because of recklessness. They derail because they lean too hard on the very strengths that got them there. Like a rope fraying one thread at a time, this| Leading Sapiens
Organizational life can be a confusing muddle, especially if you are trying to get better at playing the game. Take the leadership genre for example. You might come across books that cover any of the following: power, building better teams, culture, emotional intelligence, war and strategy, psychology, authentic leadership, biographies| Leading Sapiens
Understanding and leveraging language is critical to leadership effectiveness. There are aspects of language that are hidden in plain sight.| Leading Sapiens
Changing/quitting careers in midlife is hard. A collection of 35 of the most useful frameworks when changing or quitting careers in midlife.| Leading Sapiens
Contradictions are rampant in organizations. Understanding the different types can give leaders leverage and prevent frustrations.| Leading Sapiens
Leaders have to master the basics of the human OS. We examine these core attributes that underlie all frameworks of human peak performance.| Leading Sapiens
Our habitual ways of looking at time in linear, spatial terms can limit us. Human time is different from mechanical clock time. Do we know the differences?| Leading Sapiens
It's easy for leaders to delve in content and control. But what is more effective is CONTEXT. Why do they keep ignoring context? Why is control easier?| Leading Sapiens
Leaders have to be masters at developing themselves aka self-development. Why is self-development so critical to effective leadership?| Leading Sapiens
The ladder of inference is a powerful tool to make better decisions by uncovering hidden mental models and understanding how we reach conclusions.| Leading Sapiens
We don’t usually think of courage in the context of careers and organizations. But this is a mistake. Courage is more fundamental than we think, and equally relevant. The key is to understand the specific type of courage required, and how it applies to an ordinary work life. Ordinary| Leading Sapiens
Context is a powerful tool in leadership but goes underutilized and misunderstood - a deep dive into why mastering context is essential to effective leadership.| Leading Sapiens
Framing is a key skill to create psychological safety and improve performance. But most leaders are unaware or don't know how to get better at it.| Leading Sapiens
Leadership development is usually about positive abilities. Negative Capability is often forgotten but equally critical. What is it and what prevents it?| Leading Sapiens
Ever wonder why that particular initiative of yours never got traction? Organizational politics kills more initiatives than people realize, and happens both at leadership and individual contributor levels. Understanding some of the dynamics can help to better navigate the terrain. Three organizational layers and their experiences * The individual contributor: You| Leading Sapiens
The systems thinking iceberg is a useful thinking model for leaders when dealing with intractable problems that never seem to go away. Part of the challenge is what the model calls “events” — surface level issues that are constantly on our radar — which are essentially fire-fighting, but that never really address| Leading Sapiens
Leadership reflection is a critical mechanism to accelerate self-development of effective leaders.But it gets ignored due to stereotypes.| Leading Sapiens
Why do we need props like vision, mission statement, and goals? Our orientation towards the past and future radically influences present actions.| Leading Sapiens
Setting high standards is well understood. But a critical step often gets left out. Bezos captured this key idea in his 2017 shareholder letter.| Leading Sapiens
Paradoxes are built into the nature of management and leadership. Understanding them beforehand can be extremely useful in avoiding frustrations.| Leading Sapiens
The "if...then" way of thinking about cause and effect is common in business. Circular causality is often missed in the decision making process.| Leading Sapiens
Our actions, and by extension performance, stem from thinking that is based on a set of hidden mental models. How do you uncover these mental models and change them? One way is to understand and practice the concepts of single-loop and double-loop learning. Professional sports teams use postgame films and| Leading Sapiens
Most common discourse on mental models takes an additive approach. But this tends to be half-baked, often useless in practice. There is equal value, even more so, in a subtractive approach to mental models. The key is in understanding the difference between hard and soft mental models. How is the| Leading Sapiens
Implementing a framework of conversations can improve leadership communication and effectiveness. Closure conversations are one such type.| Leading Sapiens
What's the role of confidence in leadership? Is it a requirement for being an effective leader? How confident are you about your confidence? Confidence, on sale Looking at the brochure of one leadership program, it seems confidence is necessary to be an effective leader and that all successful leaders are| Leading Sapiens
Conversations are the building blocks of effective leadership and organizations. Getting better at this core skill is often ignored because we don't have an actionable stance.| Leading Sapiens
Leaders are often cautioned to watch their actions and behavior because it sets an example and gets replicated through the organization. Which begs the question: why do people copy leaders? The common explanations tend to be psychological. But it goes beyond simple carrot and stick notions from behaviorism. There's a| Leading Sapiens
The default way of looking at leadership ability is in terms of skill, style, or talent, which in turn drives actions and behaviors. But skills and talents are not sufficient for effective leadership. There’s another simpler but necessary step — the decision to lead. In this view, leadership is a| Leading Sapiens
Understanding the different types of goals can dramatically increase how effective we are at goal setting. It's more than the generic SMART goals framework.| Leading Sapiens
Most managers suck at giving effective, constructive feedback. Equally, most of us are bad at receiving and processing constructive feedback. This is a lost opportunity for everyone. Edgar Schein, professor emeritus at MIT, was one of the foremost experts in organizational behavior and interpersonal interactions. He articulated a set of| Leading Sapiens
Johari Window is a 2x2 matrix that captures how we communicate based on self-knowledge and how others see us. It’s a disclosure-feedback model of awareness based on principles of feedback and learning. It can be used for increasing levels of openness, self-awareness, and self-understanding. This makes the Johari Window a particularly relevant tool for leaders and managers.| Leading Sapiens
How can you run more effective meetings? One way is to study folks who are masters at running effective meetings, and get paid for it — professional facilitators. Roger Schwarz is one of the world’s leading experts on facilitation. He has a set of what he calls ground rules for| Leading Sapiens
In The Fifth Discipline, there's a useful primer on systems thinking that I keep going back to. Senge calls it the laws of the fifth discipline, or in other words, laws of systems thinking. [1] Senge's ground-breaking book was published in the early 90s, and yet in the ensuing decades,| Leading Sapiens