CEOs often prefer to focus on the positive. After all, it’s a good place to start when it comes to learning lessons and finding takeaways from both successes and miscues. But CEOs also benefit from learning how to recognize when they’re exhibiting bad leadership qualities.

Public speaking isn’t an easy thing for every leader, but you have to conquer the fear factor if you’re planning to represent a business. By focusing on your passion for going into business, sharing authentically, and continuing to practice being in front of a room full of people every chance you get, you’ll be a pro at it in time.

A study by MIT Sloan Management Review shows that toxic corporate culture is the top predictor of employee turnover. In fact, it’s 10 times more important than compensation. Salary didn’t even make the top five predictors.

In February 2022, Netflix released an eye-opening documentary titled “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing”. The documentary is centered around the fall of Boeing after the two back-to-back crashes of their newest 737 Max model — causing the deaths of 346 people on board only minutes after takeoff.

Have you ever been caught in the trap of making tradeoffs between doing well and doing good? A short-term focus on revenue at the expense of all else can be not only stressful and exhausting, but in the long-run hurt profit and growth. There is a better way.

Though they might look like the same people, those who left the office at the start of the pandemic have dramatically different priorities, expectations, and needs than those who are returning today, according to Microsoft’s second annual Work Trend Index.

The old proverb says, “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.”

But too often, managers fall into a habit of simply giving their employees a fish — or in this case, all the answers. “Do as I say, and you will succeed” is, unfortunately, not an uncommon approach to management.

Matt Dailey, a software engineer for a data management company, was managing a team with an engineer who wasn’t performing well. This was clear to Dailey—and to the employee. Yet, as I describe in my new book Mastering Community, Dailey said he “wasn’t bridging the gap of how to make the situation better.” His team missed their deadline.

DISC is an incredibly popular assessment tool for a reason; it’s comprehensive, actionable, and easy to understand. But what happens when your DISC profile reveals that your current position isn’t a great fit?

One of the ways that you can determine this through a DISC profile is by looking at both your Natural and Adapted scores.

I am about to show you that most managers have some mistaken beliefs about the best kind of feedback to give their direct reports. In a survey we shared on Harvard Business Review of 7,631 managers, my colleague Joe Folkman and I asked whether they believed that giving negative feedback was stressful or difficult, and 44% agreed. When talking with managers about giving feedback, we often hear comments such as, “I did not sleep the night before,” “I just wanted to get it over quickly,” “My hands were sweating, and I was nervous,”

Your friend is devastated. She’s just lost her job and looks like she’s about to burst into tears in the middle of the busy coffee shop. You don’t know what to do. You want to help her, but what do you say in this horrible situation? How do you make her feel better right now, and how can you help her get through the tough time to come?

If this year’s resolutions reflect previous years’ resolutions, 80% of people will fail. Why such little success? Unfortunately, the seeds of failure are built into the resolutions themselves. Though crafted with good intentions, these resolutions are all framed as outcomes. For example, losing weight isn’t something you do; it’s an outcome of other things you do (e.g., change your diet, exercise).

Empathy has always been a critical skill for leaders, but it is taking on a new level of meaning and priority. Far from a soft approach it can drive significant business results.

You always knew demonstrating empathy is positive for people, but new research demonstrates its importance for everything from innovation to retention.

As a leader, do you feel like you have to know it all? Or that expressing uncertainty or revising your viewpoints would undermine your effectiveness as a leader?

Unfortunately, this way of thinking can backfire. Nurse-leader and author Karlene Kerfoot, writing about health care, suggested that when leaders become entrenched in their routine thought processes, they are more likely to disregard others’ helpful ideas and innovative models of leadership.

According to a CareerBuilder survey of over 3,600 workers, most people don’t want to be managers. Of the subset who are interested in rising to management, they make up slightly over one-third of organizations (34%). This slim percentage does not provide enough innate appetite from individual contributors to fill company’s need for aspiring managers.

January 20, 2022 Planning for the future of work has always been important. However, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the next big organizational shift—turning a hypothetical future into an immediate reality. In this rapid pivot, organizations gathered key learnings with long-term potential to improve operating models, employee experience, productivity, and more.

After all of the years that I’ve worked in leadership, there is one question that resurfaces again and again: Are leaders born or made?

While you can’t ignore that everyone is born with certain traits that will affect leadership abilities, this is not the end of the journey. Part of the challenge as leaders is to understand what those traits are and how to further develop them.

The reporter gig has its perks. We get a front-row seat to the most influential people on our beats, sometimes the most influential on the planet. We get paid to learn—and share the best lessons with you. Interviewing business leaders in 2021 has given us incredible access to America’s top bosses as they navigated a complex, volatile and remarkable year.

When it comes to leadership development, the business case for investing in the “best” given limited organizational resources appears straightforward: Individuals who have a demonstrated track record of success deserve to be recognized, right? They also seem like sure bets who will benefit the most from development opportunities because they have the requisite experience and capabilities to grow. But the individuals who receive the most development are often the ones who arguably need it the least.

So you want to be a leader, whether that means inspiring an entire organization or managing a small team. But do you know what it takes to succeed?

I’ve spent two decades working with researchers and workplace experts to identify the skills and traits that have gotten people ahead. Drawing from assessments of nearly 30,000 people at entry level, midlevel and C-suite, we compiled high-performance profiles that define what it takes to be great at each of these levels.