The 5 Elements of a Strong Leadership Pipeline

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By Josh Bersin

Investments in traditional leadership development are often misguided and a waste of money.

It’s not that development itself isn’t important. In a Deloitte study of 7,000 organizations this year, 89% of executives rated “strengthening the leadership pipeline” an urgent issue. That’s up from 86% last year, and the trend makes sense. Organizations are continuously promoting people into management, and those new leaders struggle with the transition. To help them in their new roles, companies spend almost $14 billion a year on courses, books, videos, coaches, tests, and executive education programs — and such spending rose 10% last year.

But there’s little evidence that much of this works. Barbara Kellerman from Harvard, Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford, and numerous other experts have pointed out that the development market is filled with fads — slick behavioral models and fun, engaging tools — that don’t really move the needle. Continue reading →

Workplace Excellence Can Be Contagious

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Image resultby Serguei Netessine

Collective outcomes soar when top performers mingle with less adept colleagues.

Big data is helping us learn much more about what drives sales in the digital environment. The traditional service sector, however, remains very much a “black box”. A physical sales environment, such as a clothing store or restaurant, is subject to even more intangible elements than e-commerce sites or apps – perhaps chief among them are the extremely nuanced and significant interactions between customers and staff. Attributing customer purchases to actions taken by an individual employee is ambiguous enough without considering how additional subtleties, such as cross-employee interactions and influence, may affect outcomes.
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Should You Chat Informally Before an Interview?

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by Brian Swider, Brad Harris,Murray Barrick

 

photo_uniqueJob interviews typically begin with a set of seemingly innocuous questions unrelated to the job: How is your day going? Got any plans for the weekend? How was traffic on your way in?

It is commonly assumed that job candidates and interviewers both prefer to start with these types of questions rather than just diving into the more rigid and formal structured interview topics. After all, small talk is typically how most interactions between strangers begin. Interviewers also believe these little interactions, academically referred to as “rapport building,” help to loosen up nervous job candidates and lead to candid responses in the subsequent job-related questioning. (Note: Although this premise is intuitive, research has yet to substantiate it.) Continue reading →

Avoiding rifts within company leadership

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by Autumn Adeigbo

Do you find it as disappointing as I do when you hear that a company’s co founders have gone their separate ways?

This is especially true when the leadership has put in sweat equity and gotten through the hard stuff: pooling resources, boot-strapping, finding the right funding via investors or loans, hiring and training employees, building a board of directors, and making the company profitable. However sad, these separations within leadership happen all the time. And like a familial divorce- it can be traumatizing for all parties when a company’s foundation crumbles.

So why does it happen so often? Why are some company founders together for decades while others split a year after deciding to work together? I recently experienced a potential rift within my company’s leadership that led me to ask myself this question. It made me think about the subject seriously- because the disagreement I witnessed had the potential to divide the leadership within my company with enduring effects. Continue reading →

Three Questions Humble Leaders Ask

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by Annet Aris

To avoid falling victim to narcissistic tendencies, leaders need to look outside in more ways than one.

My office window looks out on the only grassed square in my neighborhood. The view is wonderful: toddlers stumbling along playing tag, love-struck teenagers flirting shyly, fathers patiently playing ball with their offspring, hopeful they have an Olympics contender in the making.

As a supervisory board member of several companies, I often have to make difficult telephone calls over the course of the day; it may be to address conflicts in the boardroom or discuss tricky takeovers or remuneration issues. In each case, a quick glance out of the window during these conversations provides perspective and significantly improves my mood, which clearly benefits the outcome of the discussions.

It is a shame then that so many directors’ offices are without such a view and are often far away from the ordinary world. Continue reading →