When you transition from team member to manager, you aren’t just moving to a higher league; you’re playing in an entirely new game. How do you avoid mistakes? By embracing your rookie status. My research team and I did an extensive study of how inexperienced professionals perform relative to their experienced counterparts. We found that…
Do you trust the people on your team? It’s an uncomfortable question to ask, because as good leaders, we work hard to create a supportive environment and earn the trust of the people who report to us. But what if you don’t trust them? In our executive coaching work, we’ve discovered some patterns when it…
Volkswagen’s brazen and bizarre “Diesel-gate” deception beggars belief. This sustained and sophisticated software scam suggests truly pathological levels of managerial desperation and contempt: desperation around a failed promise of clean diesel technology and unsubtle contempt for unsuspecting regulators and customers alike. Precisely how gullible did these wizards of Wolfsburg think people would be? That’s why…
Even in societies and organizations that value gender equality and invest in initiatives to reach it, women are underrepresented in most senior-level leadership positions. Why does the gender imbalance in high-level positions persist? A series of recent studies that we conducted with Caroline Wilmuth of Harvard Business School points to a new explanation: Men and…
It’s no longer unusual for teams within organizations to span different countries and cultures. While there are many benefits to this, one of the challenges for leaders of these global teams is navigating everyone’s vacation schedules. Employees within a single team may have completely different holiday calendars, laws and customs. Most people are familiar with…
Institutional investors are increasingly interested in putting their money into social impact, but a gap remains between them and the people on the ground. Scale has always been a challenge for impact investors. Both users and providers of capital suffer from size issues: The kinds of problems being solved on the ground, while noble and…
For anyone interested in human behavior and decision making, Sept. 15 will likely be a day to remember. On that day, President Obama ordered government agencies to use behavioral science insights to “better serve the American people.” In his executive order, Obama instructed federal agencies to identify policies and operations where applying findings from behavioral…
Disaster can strike at any time. While crisis manuals are lengthy, they should have three key pillars. On 11th March 2011, the public announcement protocols gave Kazunobo (informally known as “Kaz”) and his investment banking team approximately one minute of advanced warning before the magnitude 9 earthquake whose epicenter was some 450km away began to shake…
Do you ever feel that people have the wrong impression of you at work? Maybe you’ve been pegged as arrogant after you advocated for your project or as a pushover after a negotiation gone awry. How can you change others’ perceptions of you? It can be frustrating when others don’t see us as we intend….
The decisions facing business families can be gut wrenching – and the implications of these decisions can be huge both for the future of the family and also of the business: “Who should the next CEO be – my daughter or my son?” “Should we buy our cousin out of the business?” “Can nonfamily directors…
