Situational Leadership

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Break a big challenge into little chunks

October 6, 2017

“We were only one-tenth of where we needed to be in terms of making progress on this initiative. Our chief operating officer advised me, ‘We’ve got to take on this problem in bite-size chunks.’”

The lesson of a toilet paper snafu

September 28, 2017

Nat Greene was stumped. “I had been trained not to guess, and when one stops guessing, real problem-solving begins,” he says.

Solving ‘unsolvable’ problems

September 15, 2017

One feature of good leadership is that only the intractable problems come to you. As long as you don’t micromanage, you should only be asked to solve problems your people can’t solve themselves.

As a 17-year-old, Dan Ariely suffered burns over 70 percent of his body in an accident. His willingness to look past his dread of reliving his own horrific experiences has enriched his life in myriad ways.

Calls can get info; faces get action

August 21, 2017

“Despite my pressing them repeatedly to tell me why this had occurred, I never got anywhere and they stopped returning my calls… [T]wo days later I was on a plane to Tokyo to meet with the partner.”

A wellness program saved their sanity

July 25, 2017

After Mark Bonfigli and four colleagues co-founded Dealer.com in 1998, they poured their heart and soul into the startup. And they paid the price. They drove themselves so hard that they became ill.

Do you crack under pressure?

July 21, 2017

Many otherwise strong leaders have a glaring weakness: They buckle under pressure. To withstand pressure, you need to adopt the right attitude. Here are three keys to persevering when it counts.

Cite hard numbers to prove your worth

July 13, 2017

Q. I’ve been a midmanager here for 10 years. Recently, I got a new boss who’s decades younger than me, and I’m suddenly an outcast. I’ve been treated terribly by this person, even though I’ve been supportive and made his job easier. When I asked what gives, he said, “You have to prove your relevance to me.” Outrageous!

Your priorities vs. appeasing higher-ups

June 22, 2017

Q: I keep getting grief from my board for not developing my managers, but there are only so many priorities that I can address at once. How can I satisfy the board without dropping the ball on some other top priority?

Tolerate mistakes–but only once

June 19, 2017

Like any CEO, Amy Rees Anderson wishes that employees wouldn’t make costly errors. Yet she’s willing to look past well-intentioned mistakes as long as they turn into learning opportunities.