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
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
The term “psychological safety” is often misleading. When managers hear safety, many dismiss it as a soft style that implies complacency. Meanwhile, psychology implies too much mumbo jumbo. High-profile figures like Elon Musk advocating for a “hardcore” style perpetuate this misconception. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship| Leading Sapiens
Traditional management emphasizes strict control, clear hierarchies, and uniform processes. This approach, rooted in industrial-era thinking, promises efficiency and predictability. However, loose-coupling is a compelling alternative to traditional tightly-coupled approaches. In this piece, I revisit Karl Weick’s notion of loose-coupling in organizations and its impact on control and flexibility.| Leading Sapiens
Traditional authority—titles, commands, and rewards—has lost its edge in the modern workplace. What compels people is trust, respect, and admiration. This is the essence of referent power—a subtle but effective form of power that inspires loyalty and performance without coercion. It is effective but rare. In this| Leading Sapiens
Understanding and using power is key to effective leadership. The French-Raven model of power bases is a good primer on the different types of power. This post introduces this foundational framework of power and the 6 types: coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, referent, and information power. In 1959, social psychologists John| Leading Sapiens
The ongoing turbulence at Twitter under the mercurial and coercive leadership of Elon Musk is perhaps one of the biggest and costliest social science experiments ever attempted at scale. Musk has broken almost every rule of well-understood and well-researched aspects of organizational performance. Peter Drucker is widely considered as the| Leading Sapiens