Category: Power

On Comparing Yourself to Others

We all know that com­par­ing our­selves to oth­ers comes with per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al risks, the main one being that as indi­vid­u­als we can devel­op a sense that we lack some­thing that oth­ers have — and this is bad for our con­fi­dence, sense of dig­ni­ty and self-respect. But despite this aware­ness, for many if not most… Con­tin­ue read­ing On Com­par­ing Your­self to Others

On the Balcony of One’s Own Life: The Personal Side of Adaptive Leadership

One of my favorite Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cles is “The Work of Lead­er­ship” by Ronald Heifetz and Don­ald L. Lau­rie. Writ­ten over twen­ty years ago, it crys­tal­ized the dif­fer­ence between adap­tive prob­lems fac­ing orga­ni­za­tions and more rou­tine, tech­ni­cal ones, a dis­tinc­tion that remains emi­nent­ly use­ful. Adap­tive chal­lenges are the ones that don’t have easy or… Con­tin­ue read­ing On the Bal­cony of One’s Own Life: The Per­son­al Side of Adap­tive Leadership

On Personal Authority, Freedom and Connection

I start from the idea that a per­son­’s growth as a leader is relat­ed to under­stand­ing and tran­scend­ing old­er con­di­tioned emo­tions and con­di­tioned respons­es, espe­cial­ly those pat­terns of think­ing, feel­ing and action that induce us to play small­er or larg­er than we are. Take, for exam­ple, a leader who hap­pened to grow up in a house­hold… Con­tin­ue read­ing On Per­son­al Author­i­ty, Free­dom and Connection

The Uses of Power

On one hand, the pow­er an orga­ni­za­tion’s lead­ers hold is cru­cial to achiev­ing pos­i­tive results and impacts. But it’s also true that that pow­er can also lead to chal­leng­ing dilem­mas, espe­cial­ly when it impru­dent­ly meets its coun­ter­part, resis­tance. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the com­mon expe­ri­ence of man­agers who must imple­ment some kind of orga­ni­za­tion­al change —… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Uses of Power