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01.09.25
Leading Thoughts for January 9, 2025
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Jack Trout on being a doer: “The best leaders know that direction alone is no longer enough. The best leaders are storytellers, cheerleaders, and facilitators. They reinforce their sense of direction or vision with words and action.” Source: The Power of Simplicity: A Management Guide to Cutting Through the Nonsense and Doing Things Right Jack Welch on simplicity: “For a large organization to be effective, it must be simple. Insecure managers create complexity. Real leaders don’t need clutter. People must have the self-confidence to be clear, precise, to be sure that every person in their organization—highest to lowest—understands what the business is to achieve. But it’s not easy. You can’t believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry that if they’re simple, people will think they’re simple-minded. In reality, of course, it’s just the reverse. Clear, tough-minded people are the most simple.” Source: Noel Tichy and Ram Charan: Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence: An Interview with Jack Welch, Harvard Business Review Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.   Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:56 AM
01.02.25
Leading Thoughts for January 2, 2025
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Brian Tracy on zero-based thinking: “To simplify your life, zero-based thinking is one of the most powerful strategies you can learn and apply on a regular basis. Here’s how it works. Ask yourself, ‘Is there anything I am doing right now that, knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t get into again if I were starting over today?’” Donald Miller on creating meaning: “We build lives of meaning by stating an ambition, by enduring challenges, and by sharing our lives with others. The single characteristic that sets heroes apart is that they are willing to accept a challenge that will ultimately transform them. Heroes take action, which is why they are so good at experiencing meaning.” Source: Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful Life Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:15 AM
01.01.25
First Look: Leadership Books for January 2025
HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in January 2025 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.
There are more pieces of digital data than there are stars in the universe. This data helps us monitor our planet, decipher our genetic code, and take a deep dive into our psychology. As algorithms become increasingly adept at accessing the human mind, they also become more and more powerful at controlling it, enticing us to buy a certain product or vote for a certain political candidate. Some of us say this technological trend is no big deal. Others consider it one of the greatest threats to humanity. But what if the truth is more nuanced and mind-bending than that? In Mindmasters, Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. With passion and clear-eyed precision, Matz shows us how to manage psychological targeting and redesign the data game. Mindmasters is a riveting look at what our digital footprints reveal about us, how they're being used—for good and for ill—and how we can gain power over the data that defines us.
Changing how we work can feel overwhelming. Like trying to budge an enormous boulder. We’re stifled by the gravity of the way we’ve always done things. And we spend so much time fighting fires—and fighting colleagues—that we lack the energy to shift direction. But with the right strategy, we can move the boulder. In Reset, Heath explores a framework for getting unstuck and making the changes that matter. The secret is to find “leverage points”: places where a little bit of effort can yield a disproportionate return. Then, we can thoughtfully rearrange our resources to push on those points.
Whether you’re a leader, a member of a team, a spouse, or a parent, this engaging and rigorous exploration unpacks the science of inspiration. Through compelling stories, fascinating research, and practical tips for addressing the common dilemmas we face daily, Inspire reveals how all of us, regardless of status or circumstance, can be more inspiring more often. Social psychologist and leadership expert Adam Galinsky has spent three decades building a method for determining when we are inspiring versus infuriating, and where various leaders—presidents, CEOs, coaches, teachers, parents, and a wealth of others—currently land on that spectrum. .
In an era where the foundational elements of business are being disrupted, Essential emerges as a crucial guide for leaders navigating the profound changes reshaping industries and markets worldwide. This book, penned by a team of seasoned business and leadership strategists, offers a radical and necessary perspective on management transformation, emphasizing the importance of human-centered leadership in meeting the full potential of the technology age. Essential is not just a book; it's a roadmap for 21st-century leaders facing existential challenges in a rapidly evolving global market. Perfect for managers, executives, directors, founders, entrepreneurs, and any business leader aiming to steer their organization towards success in a transformed landscape, this book provides the tools and insights needed to lead with conviction and humanity. Whether you're looking to redefine your leadership approach, adapt to the transformed market, or leave a lasting legacy, this book offers a compelling case for why now is the time for a leadership reinvention.
Business is on the cusp of a profound transformation. Conventional work models are failing to adapt to the evolving needs and expectations of the modern workforce. Simultaneously, the emergence of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, coupled with web3 innovations, including the metaverse and decentralized work models, is unlocking a new realm of possibilities. It raises the question: Is the era of traditional employment over? The tools of tomorrow will amplify human potential, from collaborating in virtual spaces through digital avatars, to managing transactions transparently on blockchain. Those who embrace these technologies—and the ways people want to work—will unleash unprecedented levels of productivity and innovation. But those who don't risk losing out on the best talent, and even becoming obsolete.
   
“You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses. You have to be good at reading, and read good things.” — Paul Graham, Y Combinator co-founder
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:40 PM
12.31.24
LeadershipNow 140: December 2024 Compilation
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:15 AM
12.27.24
5 Leadership Lessons: Tony Blair on Leadership Essentials
TONY BLAIR wrote a book about leadership in government. However, his practical ideas on leading in the 21st century apply across the board. Leadership, both good and bad, leaves clues for us to study how other leaders have handled problems and challenges common in all leadership situations. On Leadership does just that. It is the unwise leader who thinks they know everything. Learning from others’ mistakes and successes is the best way to guard against leadership hubris. Below are a selection of Blair’s thoughts on leadership.
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:12 AM
12.26.24
Leading Thoughts for December 26, 2024
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Joe Davis on engaging the skeptics: “Have you ever been in a room, presenting an idea for change, and someone says, ‘Oh, that will never work’? Or you’ve solicited feedback as you work through your options, and you hear the ‘No, we cannot do that’? Your instinct might be to be defensive or just ignore them, but their perspective and experience, if you can embrace it, will strengthen your position. Asking for more information about why they feel the way they do, and then listening carefully to what they say, can be the best course of action.” Source: The Generous Leader: 7 Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone’s Gain Behnam Tabrizi on the challenge to breaking organizational inertia: “Besides the inertia of size and complexity, human nature is the main obstacle to change. People are conditioned to give away their own power. From being entirely dependent as infants, to partially dependent as we grow into adulthood, we are tempted to continue that pattern. We often abdicate our own thinking to the books we read and the lectures we hear; we leave the dictates of morality to religious leaders and our diet to doctors. Essentially, we’re too afraid to think for ourselves. In the workplace, we’re comfortable ceding our power to the bureaucratic hierarchy so we can settle into a predictable, stable set of routines and tasks.” Source: Going on Offense: A Leader’s Playbook for Perpetual Innovation Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:42 PM
12.25.24
10 Books You Should Read This Winter 2024
THE WINTER months are the perfect time for a little binge-reading. While I can’t promise that any of the titles suggested are cozy reads, they will get you fired up. Personally, I would start with Productive Failure and Mindshift. Like The Illusion of Innovation by Elliott Parker, they will get you thinking in new ways and set you up for the others. Use this list to create your own winter reading plan. Here are ten suggestions to begin the new year intentionally.
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:38 PM
12.20.24
Be Powerful & Em-Powerful!
EMPOWERMENT has turned into a buzzword that’s lost its meaning. We all know what being powerful—or, euphemistically, influential—looks like. But to be empowering—how clear is that? Worse than unclear, empowering is widely misunderstood. For forceful leaders, it’s seen as giving power away; giving power to your staff means giving up your power. It’s easy for forceful leaders to feel that granting power to others takes away from their own power or that they are somehow rendered “passive,” as one forceful leader put it. Power is simply a means to the end of getting things done. It shouldn’t matter whether it’s your power or “Other” power. You can grind grain into flour by your own hand using a mortar and pestle, which human beings learned to do at the dawn of agriculture. Or, as people discovered centuries later, you can spare yourself that manual labor and produce a lot more grain if you hitch horses or water or wind power to the mill. Three Types of Empowerment #1. Delegation. Delegation of authority is letting your people do their jobs. Delegation of authority is certainly not abdication. It’s taking an active role in arranging for some other source of power to be transmitted to the grinding stone. It is spooling out authority and then staying engaged to the degree necessary. #2. Taking counsel. Empowerment isn’t just granting power down. It’s also accepting power up. Because every leader is fallible—at risk of making costly errors of judgment—there is great merit in taking counsel from your people, selectively, of course. Perhaps your ego rebels just a bit, and you can’t help feeling that taking your team’s counsel on decisions that are yours to make is somehow a sign of weakness. Quite the contrary, within bounds, accepting power up actually extends your personal power. Done well, it fortifies your judgment—makes it stronger. #3. Picking strong players. To tap effectively into Other power, you must put strong, capable people on your team in the first place. You can only be as em-powerful as your people’s skills and energies allow. If you were deciding on a place to build a windmill, you’d settle for nothing less than a consistently windy place. Many leaders fail to put high-quality people on their team. Either they are poor judges of talent or, out of insecurity, they shy away from appointing the best people. Leaders may also fall down on the back end of staffing out of misplaced loyalty or being afraid to let go of people who’ve lost effectiveness or who turn out not to be good picks. To Empower Means Grappling—With Yourself Do you recoil at the idea of sharing power, thinking, “Never. I’d be a wimp?” Indeed, empowerment is sometimes viewed as “soft” and, therefore, something to be avoided if you want to be a strong leader and you want to be viewed that way. If that’s what you believe, you’ll never be good at empowerment. Likewise, if you fear that empowering others makes you a managerial weakling. That prejudice, that fear, stands in your way. To get it out of the way means grappling with yourself because it isn’t always easy to correct an entrenched belief or allay an unwarranted fear. Why not see your way clear to be both powerful and empowerful? It’s a struggle with yourself well worth waging. (For more on that subject, see my new book, GRAPPLING: Leaders Striving To Be Better, short stories that bring executive coaching to life.) Why not have both sources of power fully available to you, direct and indirect power. However naturally powerful you are—however well you take charge, make decisions in a timely way, set high expectations, and hold people accountable—it pays big-time to also be em-powerful. That way, you extend your power and amplify your impact. What’s more, you afford other people the opportunity for one of life’s deepest satisfactions—to use their powers fully.  Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:29 AM
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Mindmasters
Reset
Inspire
Essential
Employment Is Dead
Here is a selection of 
Leaders have the courage not to go with the flow. They speak up when others stay silent. They act when others hesitate. They take the risk, not because they fail to identify it as risk but because they believe a higher purpose means the risk should be taken. The Leader sets out for the people what they need and not simply what they want. Otherwise, the Leader is just a follower.
If You come across something unpleasant or cruel that has been written about you: DON’T READ IT! If it’s a horrible headline, ignore it. If it’s an awful article, don’t look at it. None of this means that you shouldn’t listen to sensible and serious criticism. You should. You can learn from it. But you won’t learn anything from the stuff that’s vomiting forth, that’s written for clicks, that delights in its nastiness, that takes pleasure in the hope it is inflicting pain. And if you let it get to you, then you have lost, and ‘they’—whoever at any given time ‘they’ may be—have won. Treat the handling of criticism not as about the receiving of a blow, but as the willingness to be knocked down by it. See refusal and defiance as victories. Because they are.
When things are going really well, that’s the time to worry about what could go really wrong. Hubris, in its most egregious form, combines overbearing arrogance with malevolence. But hubris can also stem as much from ignorance as vice. The sin lies in these characteristics: thinking you know more than you do; a belief that you have the power to affect a situation that you can’t, or at least not in the way you want; an overly exuberant conviction that you can overcome the odds, however much they may be against you; a faith that by sheer force of conviction you can triumph over an embedded reality.
Since leaving office, I have met a big swathe of the business community, including, for fundraising purposes, a significant number of billionaires. I have noticed, however, that in some that success has given them a sense of self-belief that makes them think they’re not only good at the thing that made them rich, but smarter than anyone on other things. The political world contains similar offenders. You win great victory or manage to ascend somehow to the top of what the nineteenth-century Conservative prime minister Benjamin Disraeli called “the greasy pole.” You conclude that you’re a genius. You figured it all out. You came through. You beat the rest. You forget that it isn’t only about ability; it is also about circumstance, the door of opportunity opening in a timely manner, the poor quality of the opposition and, of course, luck.
A Leader should never bear a grudge. Grudges are wasted energy. They are pointless and mentally time-consuming. They are bad for the esteem in which others hold you and in which you hold yourself. They’re also a sure way of converting someone who dislikes you into someone who hates you. Leadership is best exercised when the senses are cold, not hot; calm, not stormy; detached from personal rancor; when the teeth are not grinding or gnashing and the eyes are seeing the whole picture, not the small corner to which they are drawn by irritation or anger. There is nothing wrong with emotion—we’re human. But emotion should not discolour. It should not warp.
