Do you consider yourself an effective leader? What about parenting? When you think of getting better at something, what's your first instinct? Our default approach is to look outside for help. But an equally fruitful and often better approach is to look inside — the natural process of learning from our| Leading Sapiens
If you're the ambitious type, you've probably had your fair share of leadership books and management training. More than likely you've come across two stalwarts of the leadership literature and their models : emotional intelligence and authentic leadership. A key thrust of these models, including many others, is that there are| Leading Sapiens
“You’ve lost your edge,” the new VP declared. Just eight months ago, the same contrarian thinking had earned my client the company’s innovation award. Same brain, same approach, different verdict. What changed? I’ve been on both ends of the performance/perception spectrum myself. One year I was| Leading Sapiens
Is leadership about substance or perception? The truth is, it's both. You must not only be effective; you must also appear effective. Impression management — first introduced by Erving Goffman — has been widely studied and researched. And it's especially relevant to leadership. In this piece, I dig into Goffman’s framework| Leading Sapiens
Most leaders tend to have a default go-to style with possibly another that they use in extreme situations. Each style has its own set of characteristics.| Leading Sapiens
Identity is often thought as something static from which our actions come. It's more helpful to see it as an effect that follows from our actions.| 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
It's not charisma or innate traits that makes leaders effective. Rather its practices - what are these practices and how are they different?| 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
A deep dive into Amazon's leadership principles, complete with videos and reading recommendations.| Leading Sapiens
