Can balancing advocacy with inquiry be implemented at an organizational level? Turns out, you can. Roger Martin is one of the world's foremost experts on strategy and a former dean of the Rotman School of Management. He shares an example at P&G where giving equal importance to inquiry in| Leading Sapiens
Learning to learn is a critical meta-skill. But too often highly educated professionals do the exact opposite often unknowingly.| Leading Sapiens
Confidence is overrated. A more effective, scientifically-grounded approach to improve performance is self-efficacy. We often hear about the importance of confidence. "Believe in yourself," the advice goes. Although intuitive, it's not as helpful. What exactly is confidence? Is it innate? Or can you work at it? Self-efficacy is a more| Leading Sapiens
Why do some people thrive in complexity while others buckle under pressure? A key factor is the level of cognitive flexibility. In this piece, I examine what cognitive flexibility means, why it’s critical to leadership, and strategies for building it. A World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report ranked| 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
We are being constantly told to be better communicators. As part of this push, courses and programs tell us to become "active" listeners. But this active approach towards listening can actually be counter productive and make our communication worse, not better. Consider some of the common recommedations of active listening:| Leading Sapiens
The framework of ethos, pathos, and logos was developed in the 4th century BC by Aristotle. It’s a simple but also robust model for effective persuasion and communication that has withstood the test of time. And yet most leaders are either unaware or it, or don’t really know| 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
What makes someone "leadership material"? This often depends on who's making the call and what their Implicit Leadership Theory is - we all have one.| Leading Sapiens
Self-doubt is not an impediment to be eliminated as is commonly thought of. It's a condition of the game and can even be a positive indicator.| 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
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
Most advice on leadership communication focuses on getting better at advocacy – crafting the message, effective delivery, and so on. What leaders forget is to balance their advocacy with equal amounts of inquiry. How are the two different and why does it matter? I take a closer look at the critical| Leading Sapiens
Leadership reflection is a critical mechanism to accelerate self-development of effective leaders.But it gets ignored due to stereotypes.| 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
When we communicate, there are several layers of invisible filters that can muddle the message. Knowing the most common communication filters we use can help avoid the traps of miscommunication and make sure our message gets across. Why we use filters One key aspect of leadership is that your words| 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 art of observing the observer| thelsweekly.substack.com
Understanding systems thinking is a must for modern leaders. In Reading the Room, David Kantor outlines a list of leadership capacities based on systems thinking and structural dynamics. They are particularly useful as a reference for developing your own leadership philosophy, practice, and model. Some of the terms Kantor uses| Leading Sapiens
Leaders are paid to think clearly. And a big impediment to clear thinking is what CBT/REBT calls Cognitive Distortions: errors in thinking or thinking traps we commonly fall for. Most high-performers are not pathological, but instead fall for them when upset or in high-stress situations. In this post, I| 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
A deep dive into Amazon's leadership principles, complete with videos and reading recommendations.| Leading Sapiens
Almost everyone has the term “problem-solving” featured prominently in their resumes. Conversely, barely anyone uses the term “problem-setting”. Except in complex domains like leadership, problem-setting is often more critical than problem-solving. What is problem-setting, how is it different from good old problem-solving, and why is it critical to effective leadership?| Leading Sapiens