Leading Thoughts for March 12, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Tim Elmore on balancing confidence and humility:

“Leading today requires combining these two attributes—confidence and humility. Reality changes so quickly, leaders cannot become arrogant, but must remain in a learning posture. At the same time, team members long for their leader to inspire them with confidence. Bob Iger said, “There’s nothing less confidence inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.”

Source: The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership: Embracing the Conflicting Demands of Today’s Workplace

II.

Hasard Lee on decision-making:

“When we rashly turn over our decision-making to external aids, such as committees or computers, we lose the ability to bring the full power of our brain to bear on a problem. We, in essence, have carved out a hole in our understanding and replaced it with someone else’s solution. If we don’t learn the underlying concepts behind that new infor-ation, then we’re blindly trusting that it’s correct. We lose the ability to quickly reconfigure concepts into creative solutions, which is one of the great strengths of the human mind.”

Source: The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot’s Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions

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Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:57 PM
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The Common Leadership Practices That Cultivate (Or Crush) Hope at Work

THE gap between what leaders say and what they do may be the single greatest destroyer of hope in organizations today. I learned this the hard way—by being that leader whose midnight emails contradicted my daytime messages about work-life balance. Often, without realizing the impact, organizations reinforce hopelessness across culture, policy, and procedure. From leaders and employees alike, I’ve heard consistent stories about what creates hopelessness in organizations. Frequently, it begins with the signals leaders send through their actions, including:

• Learned helplessness modeling: Leaders who themselves display resignation demonstrate that there’s no reason to push for change.
• Inconsistent standards: Different rules applied to different people without clear rationale leave everyone confused and can incite workplace paralysis.
• Information hoarding: Withholding context that would help employees understand decisions can spark a feeling of detachment.
• Mixed messaging: Saying one thing while incentivizing another implies there is no clear path to follow.
• Failure intolerance: Punishing well-intentioned experimentation that doesn’t succeed leads, predictably, to a lack of experimentation.

Leadership patterns influence organizations, quietly shaping what people believe is achievable. I noticed this dynamic unfold while coaching a new director. When our work together began, she approached her role with creative ideas and genuine enthusiasm. She would share thoughtful solutions in leadership meetings and engage her team in meaningful initiatives.

Over the next several months, however, I noticed a change in her approach. She started introducing her suggestions with phrases like, “I know this might be challenging, but…” and became more selective about which ideas she brought forward. During our coaching conversations, she would cautiously assess which situations merited her advocacy.

This shift wasn’t a reflection of her abilities. Rather, it seemed to develop through repeated exposure to subtle organizational signals suggesting that innovation, while publicly encouraged, faced numerous obstacles in practice. She had observed how established executives often highlighted potential problems with new approaches, had seen how resource allocations didn’t always align with stated innovation goals, and now recognized that maintaining current practices often received more positive attention than proposing change.

When there’s a disconnect between what’s communicated in formal settings and what’s reinforced through daily decisions and recognition, even the most highly motivated leaders may begin to question the potential for meaningful progress.

I recognized this same pattern in my own leadership. I found myself regularly telling my team to maintain work-life boundaries that I myself ignored. I’d send emails about wellbeing at midnight, speak about psychological safety in town halls while reacting defensively to challenging questions in private sessions, and emphasize the importance of rest while visibly exhausted. The realization was uncomfortable: what I said and what I did didn’t align, and this gap was gradually eroding my team’s trust in meaningful change.

Even more troubling was the unintended message I was sending: if you want to advance to a role like mine, you too must sacrifice balance and authenticity. Without realizing it, I was modeling the very behaviors I claimed to want to change. This insight transformed my approach. I began to see that creating hope means empowering others to do things differently — and perhaps better — than I had done. True leadership isn’t about demanding what we ourselves can’t demonstrate; it’s about creating conditions where others can surpass our own limitations, building environments more balanced and humane than the ones we inherited.

The path out of hopelessness isn’t paved with motivational posters or forced optimism. It begins with the step of acknowledging reality exactly as it is — including the legitimate reasons for feeling hopeless.

It’s not only okay to feel hopeless at times, it may be necessary. Hopelessness isn’t failure; it’s an honest recognition of reality that creates the possibility for authentic hope to emerge. Leadership expert Margaret Wheatley calls this “facing reality without fear.” It’s the difficult but essential practice of seeing clearly without becoming paralyzed.

Hopelessness can coexist with hope — sometimes within the same hour or meeting. This paradox confused me until I recognized that both stem from how we make meaning of our experiences. We can hold serious concern about climate change while feeling authentic hope about specific environmental programs. We can understand the shortcomings of current structures while building pockets of effectiveness within them.

This coexistence isn’t a contradiction — it’s a natural aspect of human experience.

Many people find that during recovery from professional challenges, they can hold both perspectives simultaneously. While recognizing limitations in certain organizational areas, they often discover new possibilities for contribution by shifting focus to areas where impact remains possible. The concerns don’t disappear, but they no longer define one’s professional approach.

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Jen Fisher is a global authority on workplace wellbeing, the bestselling author of Work Better Together and Hope Is the Strategy: The Underrated Skill That Transforms Work, Leadership, and Wellbeing. She is the founder and CEO of The Wellbeing Team. As Deloitte US’s first chief wellbeing officer, she pioneered a groundbreaking, human-centered approach to work that gained international recognition and reshaped how organizations view wellbeing. From her personal experiences with burnout and cancer to her role as a trailblazer in wellbeing intelligence and co-creator of WellQ360, Jen has dedicated her career to helping leaders build work cultures where people can thrive—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Jen is also the creator and host of The WorkWell Podcast, a TEDx speaker, and a sought-after voice at events such as Workhuman, SXSW, the Milken Global Conference, and Happiness Camp. She has taught at Harvard and UCLA, served as editor-at-large for Thrive Global, and contributed to leading media outlets, including Fortune and Harvard Business Review.

Leading Thoughts for March 5, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Alan Stein on self-awareness:

“It’s called “self” awareness, but the people you choose to surround yourself with play a part in that. A self-aware person is going to invite healthy criticism, and one way to do that is not to shy away from hearing the truth. It’s important to have supportive people who aren’t afraid to tell you things that you need to hear instead of the things that you want to hear.”

Source: Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best

II.

Patty McCord on sharing information:

“If your people aren’t informed by you, there’s a good chance they’ll be misinformed by others. If you don’t tell them about how the business is doing, what your strategy is, the challenges you’re facing, and what market analysts think of how you’re doing, then they’ll get the information elsewhere – either from colleagues, who will often be equally ill informed, or from the Web, which loves nothing so much as a rumor of doom or a juicy conspiracy theory.”

Source: Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:51 PM
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Resolve Your Personal Dilemmas with Greater Confidence

WHILE we all seek expert advice to increase our chances of success, we also encounter situations in which no expert advice can uncover the right decision to make.

For example, expert advice can’t tell someone how to decide between a position in the public sector or a private sector position that pays more but serves the public interest less. Such decisions represent dilemmas — situations that involve competing goals, aspirations, and demands.

Moreover, dilemmas such as this career choice involve values and intrinsic motivations, which expert advice can’t address. An expert can’t tell you how to live out your values. Ultimately, only you can determine how to enact what you see as right, given your choices.

Arriving at the right answer in such dilemmas involves introspection. It requires examining your values and relying on your sense of personal judgment — not only weighing information and drawing conclusions, but also evaluating the ethical aspects of a situation.

A key means to enhance your personal judgment is to understand frames of reference, perspectives, and principles that can balance the competing — and potentially good — outcomes that compose a dilemma.

Employing these six questions enables you to capture perspectives that can enhance your personal judgment when addressing dilemmas:

1. What rules may be relevant to this dilemma?
2. What is the consequence I hope to see resulting from my decision?
3. What virtues (patience, courage, humility, etc.) are relevant to my decision, and what virtues do I want to develop and model through my choice?
4. What rights do the parties involved in the dilemma have, which must be respected? What rights do I have that must be respected?
5. What community values and traditions should my choice reflect or embody?
6. How will each possible course affect the relationships of those involved? What will build trust and fidelity, and what would erode these?

Let’s apply these questions to a specific dilemma: Imagine you are tasked with funding executive MBA programs for three employees in your firm. One employee, a rising star, has been accepted to an Ivy League program. Equipping this employee with a competitive MBA degree would assuredly be a financial benefit for your organization.

Two other long-term, loyal employees who you want to retain have been accepted into a local executive MBA program. Funding their MBAs will reward them for their engagement and commitment.

The cost of the Ivy League MBA program, however, translates to three executive MBA spots at the local institution, which is the amount your budget can cover. You face a dilemma: fund one high potential person and decline assistance to the two loyal, long-term employees, or reduce assistance to the rising star in order to fund all three.

As you apply each of the questions above to your dilemma, you consider:

1. What are the relevant rules? You must stay within your continuing education budget.
2. What consequences do you want to see from the decision? You wish to grow value for your firm while retaining all three executives.
3. What virtues are relevant to your decision? You hope to uphold fairness and honesty.
4. What rights may the parties involved have? Your MBA candidates deserve equal access to resources.
5. What community values and traditions should your choice embody? Your organization values loyalty and recognition.
6. How will each course of action affect relationships? Not funding each of the deserving employees will damage those relationships.

As you can see from this case, applying the questions intended to clarify your perspective leads you to conclude that privileging one individual with a degree at the expense of two other employees doesn’t uphold your organization’s values or the virtue of fairness. You resolve the dilemma by offering the employee accepted to the Ivy League program tuition assistance in the amount equivalent to full tuition at the local university, while also fully funding the two additional employees pursuing their MBAs locally.

This solution allows you to recognize the high potential of the one employee seeking the Ivy League degree and reward the loyalty of the two longer-term employees accepted to the local program. It also respects their right to equal access to company resources.

As this scenario illustrates, exploring a dilemma through six perspectives enables you to exercise refined personal judgment. (If you “pull back the curtain,” you’ll find that these six questions represent six types of philosophical ethical theories.)

Today, we’re increasingly expected to navigate gray areas in which expert advice doesn’t necessarily pertain. Applying the approach outlined here to refine personal judgment calls will help you master this crucial skill for success in business — and more broadly in your life.

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Haywood Spangler, Ph.D., M.Div., is the founder and principal of Work & Think, LLC. He helps clients make complex decisions that include a realistic understanding of uncertainty. His Spangler Ethical Reasoning Assessment® (SERA®) is used across industries and around the world, enabling individuals to combine critical thinking and values to make complex decisions. He’s a keynote speaker, a corporate consultant, a researcher, and an author. His book is Reasoning for Business: The Inquirer’s Guide to Decision Making (Routledge, Dec. 26, 2025). Learn more at haywoodspangler.com.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:47 PM
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First Look: Leadership Books for March 2026

HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in March 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.

Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation by Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Jason Wild

Innovation doesn't just happen. You need to lead it. Discover the three critical roles leaders must play in driving—and scaling—innovation. Constant tech disruption. Unrelenting economic volatility. Radically shifting demographics and work norms. More than ever, we need to innovate amid these daunting global challenges. But do we have the leadership it takes to make this innovation happen successfully? Genius at Scale breaks new ground, showing how moving from generating new ideas to actually scaling them involves cocreation—collaborating, experimenting, and learning with others both inside and beyond the boundaries of the organization. This requires three distinct types of leadership: Leader as Architect, Leader as Bridger, and Leader as Catalyst.

Leading with Strategy: Using Your North Star to Guide Decision-Making by Timothy Tiryaki

A powerful collection of over 50 adaptable strategy frameworks to solve today's most complex business challenges. In Leading With Strategy veteran executive coach and strategy consultant for Fortune 500 firms Timothy Tiryaki delivers a transformative guide that clarifies the complex tradeoffs in today's AI-enabled business environment. Dr. Tiryaki explores the contemporary maze of undiscussed leadership dilemmas that have been surfaced by the latest generative AI technologies and provides unique perspectives on strategic thinking and leadership. At the core of Leading With Strategy are 50 practical visual frameworks. They're dynamic tools designed as adaptable tools for creatively tackling diverse challenges and obstacles. These frameworks go beyond staid, one-size-fits-all approaches to common business problems and help you master essential strategic thinking and execution skills.

Almost Reckless: A Creative and Pragmatic Approach to Taking Risks by Amy Smilovic

“Almost Reckless is not just a book, it's a permission slip. It's about the courage it takes to step off the algorithm's path, the clarity that comes from defining your own principles, and the joy of building something that feels unmistakably yours” saysWill Guidara, bestselling author of Unreasonable Hospitality. Amy Smilovic's cult fashion brand, Tibi, was a thriving $70 million business when she realized she was working toward someone else's idea of success. So she threw out the rulebook of how things should be done and went with her gut instead. Today Tibi is more successful than ever, and all on Smilovic's groundbreaking entrepreneurial terms. In Almost Reckless, she invites you to get comfortable with embracing smart risks in pursuit of your own vision. Sharing her story and drawing on her years of helping others identify their values and principles, Smilovic teaches you to hone your gut, and your trust in it.

The Algorithm: The Hypergrowth Formula That Transformed Tesla, Lululemon, General Motors, and SpaceX by Jon McNeill

From a former President of Tesla comes The Algorithm—the first book written by any of Elon Musk’s direct reports—a transformative guide for leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators who want to emulate the paradigm-shattering approach Musk used to launch Tesla and SpaceX to meteoric success. Jon McNeill had already founded and sold six startups when Sheryl Sandberg introduced him to Elon Musk, who was looking for help at Tesla. McNeill was steeped in the lean principles that had made Toyota a global powerhouse—principles focused on achieving efficiency and optimization by incrementally improving existing systems and processes. What he learned from Elon at Tesla was its antithesis, an approach that required radical rethinking to explode the status quo, attack complexity, and set seemingly unrealistic goals. Elon called this five-step framework “The Algorithm.”

Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters by Anthony Klotz

Most of us are just one event away from leaving our job. Conventional wisdom and lists of the “top reasons people quit their jobs” would have us believe that people quit when the toxic elements of their jobs grow too big or when they spot a better professional opportunity. But that’s only half the story. In reality, quitting is often triggered by a single event, inside or outside our jobs, that stops us in our tracks and causes us to rethink our relationship with work. These events are what organizational psychologist Anthony Klotz calls “jolts,” and they are the most underacknowledged realities in our work lives today. Jolts represent pivotal moments in our careers, and yet all too often, we respond to them in ways that harm our well-being and success. In Jolted, Klotz breaks down the different types of jolts we encounter and provides a road map to help us navigate them in ways that improve, rather than derail, our pursuit of the good life through our work.

The Tyranny of False Choices: A Guide to Authentic Decision-Making by Rey Ramsey

Every day, powerful forces work to narrow your thinking and constrain your options. Institutional gatekeepers, social pressures, misleading narratives, and internal doubts create false either-or scenarios that trap you in cycles of mediocrity and compromise your authentic purpose. Rey Ramsey reveals how to recognize and overcome these thought tyrannies. Through compelling personal stories and proven frameworks, he shows how to harness essential virtues like humility, courage, and perseverance to expand your possibilities and make decisions aligned with your deepest values. This practical guide provides methods for critical thinking, moral compass navigation, and building resilience against manipulation tactics. Whether facing institutional resistance, conformity pressure, or limiting beliefs, you'll discover how boundary-crossing leaders break through barriers and create meaningful change.

For bulk orders call 1-626-441-2024

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“I read books because, at their best, they make me better, more empathetic, more socially aware, more in tune to the stranger beside me. They help me imagine a better future, provide me with answers to my insatiable questions, take me to places I’ll never get to go. ”

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:46 PM
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LeadershipNow 140: February 2026 Compilation

Here is a selection of Posts from February 2026 that you will want to check out:

• Why Being Small Could Be The Best Thing Ever by @PhilCooke
• The Power of Simplicity: 3 Lessons on Why Overthinking is Sabotaging Your Leadership by @BrianDoddLeader
• Effort is necessary. Results count. by @artpetty
• Presidents' Day Doesn't Cut It by @jamesstrock
• 3 Signs It’s Time for Your Next Chapter via @KelloggSchool
• Common Truths in Leadership and Business by @KatColeATL
• Five big mistakes to avoid when changing careers by @artpetty
• Leading with Inquiry (How to Have a Better Dialogue) by @edbatista
• How to Be Great and Be Present More Often by @TomBrady
• 5 Leadership Mistakes That Cost Your Team Championships and Causes You To Miss Your Goals by @BrianKDodd
• 21 Things All Great Leaders Do by @cnieuwhof
• When the 80/20 Rule Fails: The Downside of Being Effective by @JamesClear
• Rethink How You Think Creatively. Creativity isn’t just about talent or taste; it’s about how you think.
• Beyond Slop: Human Participation Is the New Currency of Trust via @LBBOnline
• Norway's Dominance at the Winter Olympics Has a Lot to Do With Youth Sports—And It's the Opposite of America by @BStulberg
• The Mind-Deadening Gravitational Pull of a Leadership Singularity by @artpetty There’s a force at work in too many organizations imposed by senior leaders that gives the appearance of action but reflects cognitive and productive paralysis.
• How Mental Toughness Can Help Leaders Make A Greater Impact by @LaRaeQuy
• How to Facilitate a Conflict on Your Team by @edbatista
• Can You Make Me Better? via @TheDaily_Coach Lou Holtz’s career is proof that all players will listen to leadership under one condition: Can you make me better in all areas of my life?
• What Doesn’t Change via @collabfund
• Why Capable People Underperform by @AwesomelySimple John Spence https://buff.ly/0nsYdr2 Most organizational performance issues aren’t caused by weak execution or lack of talent. They’re caused by unclear expectations.
• Epstein Files Expose Our Oligarchy by @jamestrock
• And then? by Alan Jacobs "You rush through the writing, the researching, the watching, the listening, you’re done with it, you get it behind you — and what is in front of you? Well, death, for one thing."

See more on Twitter.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:54 PM
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4 Timeless Principles to Differentiate You From AI

IN The Next RenAIssance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential, AI expert Zack Kass believes “properly harnessed, AI could democratize education, revolutionize healthcare, and accelerate innovation,” but “for Al to truly serve humanity, we will be forced to solve radical new ethical dilemmas, unprecedented economic disruptions, daunting technical challenges, environmental collapse, dehumanization, the loss of identity, and above all, terrifying uncertainty.”

Yet because AI is not a tangible tech – something we can see – we are naturally suspicious. How does it work? Kass writes that AI systems must begin to “show their work” rather than just spitting out an answer if they are to be trusted. How did you get to the conclusion it came to? What information was considered? How valid is it? We need real-time transparency. “Real-time transparency gives users a window into what the system is prioritizing and why, helping build informed trust instead of blind faith.”

What about the future of work? “Predicting Al’s impact on jobs has become high-stakes roulette, and the bets often say more about the gambler’s worldview than technology itself. Even among industry and economic experts, the topic is very much still up for debate.”

Kass offers a set of four principles meant to guide how we live, work, and lead in the age of artificial intelligence.

1. Go Outside: The physical world matters more than anything else. It is life in four dimensions. Serendipity happens naturally.

The physical world carries variety that no recommender system can deliver. Algorithms collapse toward similarity. Streets, markets, trails, and small talk offer variance and surprise. Serendipity does not follow a schedule. It happens when you are a little off route, a little curious, and fully present. It shakes loose stale assumptions.

It builds resilience. You learn to adapt.

Adaptability will keep you relevant. Anchors will keep you principled. If you confuse methods for values, you will collapse with them. But if you adapt while anchoring in your values, you will find the formula for resilience in any era.

Go outside and be in the world you are trying to serve. Be in it.

2. Learn How to Learn: Study what you want. The process alone will teach you how to learn something else. Learning trumps what you already know.

You will not be defined by what you know, or even by what you have already mastered. You will be defined by your ability to master something new, and your drive to keep doing so again and again. Knowledge expires. Tools expire. But learning endures.

3. Optimize for Human Qualities: Be Human. AI will make human qualities more valuable.

Courage, compassion, hope, curiosity, humor, wisdom, and empathy are measures of human achievement. And soon these “soft skills” may in fact become our primary means of differentiation.

In the age of AI, your humanity is the product. Your bedside manner matters.

4. Lead with Optimism: Lead with optimism. Fear constrains. Choose a can-do approach.

Progress does not happen by default. People build toward the stories they believe. Narrative sets policy. Belief sets budgets. A leader’s horizon becomes a team’s boundary conditions. If we tell stories of decline, we will write rules that constrain. If we tell credible stories of a better future, we will invest, upskill, and move.

Optimism is the way forward.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:16 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 26, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Deborah Gruenfeld on showing respect:

“We often fail to realize that the ability to show respect and even submission can also be a source of power. Deference is treating another person in ways that acknowledge that their expertise and experiences are at least as important as your own. It does not mean you have less power than the person you are deferring to. It means you do not intend to use the power you have against your relationship partner. Deference is disarming, it signals an absence of threat, and it creates a foundation of trust that allows a relationship to form.”

Source: Acting with Power: Why We Are More Powerful Than We Believe

II.

Tony Dungy on putting others first:

“Instead of asking, how can I lead my company, my team, or my family to a higher level of success? we should be asking ourselves, how do others around me flourish as a result of my leadership? Do they flourish at all? How does my leadership, my involvement in their lives—in whatever setting we’re in—have a positive and lasting influence on them?”

Source: The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:39 PM
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