Situational Leadership

Enlist allies when planning merger

February 14, 2018

Q. Our organization is merging with another organization in a few months. I’m on the integration team, and my counterpart at the other organization is starting to boss me around. Any tips on how to assert myself without ratcheting up the tension?

Toss out sexist assumptions

January 15, 2018

Marjorie Kaplan, former head of Animal Planet and TLC for Discovery Communications, describes an example of sexism early in her career, plus the kind of constant noise that still plagues aspiring women.

Looking back at sexual misconduct

January 11, 2018

“Although I followed my employee’s wishes, it left me with a nagging feeling.”

Avoid project management traps

December 21, 2017

Andrew Makar is all too familiar with project management challenges. An information technology consultant, he has learned how to avoid potholes and stay on track.

Keep talking—you just never know

December 14, 2017

Asked how he convinced his friend Warren Buffett to turn over most of his billions in an enormous donation to the Gates Foundation years ago, software pioneer Bill Gates said he never brought it up.

Could Barefoot have gotten luckier?

November 24, 2017

Michael Houlihan didn’t intend to launch a wine company. It all started by happenstance.

My boss, the hypocrite

November 9, 2017

Q: Our CEO is always telling us to be more open about our failures. He wants us to innovate, and he knows that means some botched experiments. But the few of us who have taken high-profile risks have not been lauded; in fact, he’s privately (and publicly) shamed and embarrassed us. Is there a polite way to call someone a hypocrite?

The leadership of ‘Mattress Mack’

October 31, 2017
Jim McIngvale, known as “Mattress Mack,” turned his two Houston furniture stores into shelters after Hurricane Harvey. The social media was tremendous.

Break 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.