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04.27.26
Do You Want to Impact Others Through Leadership?
MY go-to definition of leadership is “helping others do better.” I use it because it is simple, inclusive, and focused on the practical impact leaders have. Leadership is ultimately about having a positive effect on other people, teams, and organizations. But my best advice for achieving that starts by looking inward. By leading oneself—what I call ‘personal leadership’—a leader is better able to affect others positively. In more than three decades of research and teaching on leadership, the most powerful tool for personal leadership that I have come across is to leverage the leader’s own values. Doing this requires an upfront investment by the leader in work to clarify their top values, and an ongoing effort to keep those values salient and accessible, so they can be recalled at key leadership moments. Below, I offer concise advice on how to build this tool by clarifying your own values. But first, I’ll share some of my favorite evidence that the tool works. How Do You “Be Authentic?” Authenticity has been called the gold standard of leadership. Everybody wants it in themselves and in the people they follow. But just how do you ‘be authentic?’ If I asked you to be authentic, what should you do? I found one answer to this question through an experiment with my colleagues Yoonjin Choi and Sheena Iyengar. We studied how mid-career managers communicated with their teams by asking them to write and deliver a motivational speech to a camera. For half of the leaders, randomly selected, we presented them with a summary they had previously created in a workshop of their own top values. We asked them to keep their values in mind when they wrote their speech; we emphasized that they did not need to talk about their values unless they chose to. After the subjects recorded their speech, we asked them how they felt. Those who had been reminded of their own values reported feeling more authentic. Feeling authentic is nice, but does it translate into more effective leadership? It does, as we learned when we had the speeches evaluated by other managers and by communications experts. Those audience members did not know that some speakers had been asked to think about their values. Nevertheless, the audience rated the values-alert speakers as being more authentic. And they reported higher trust in those speakers. Would you like to be viewed as more authentic and more trustworthy by others? Keep your values top of mind. Here’s how to do it. Clarify Your Values I’ve taken more than ten thousand leaders from around the world through interactive workshops to help them clarify their top values. At the heart of the process is a simple truth: values are principles of evaluation. Through them, we decide whether a person, an idea, or a project is good, bad, or important. If you reflect on something you view as good and important and ask why, your answers will point to your values. Try this: Think of someone you view as an outstanding leader. Now ask yourself what about that person’s leadership best explains why you view them so positively. Try to identify a single word (such as “empathy”), but if you need a couple of words (such as “good communication”), that is OK. If you see this person as a truly outstanding leader, there will be more than one positive quality you attribute to them, so ask yourself what else makes them outstanding in your view. Repeat that question two more times, until you have four answers. These answers point to values you hold. You can refine them further and make them more useful as a tool, with one more step that aims to zero in more precisely on the exact words that best describe your values. For each of your four values, identify some synonyms. A chatbot can be useful for this step; if one of your answers to the reflection was “excellence,” you might ask it to give you six synonyms for excellence. Say one of the synonyms is ‘quality.’ Ask yourself: If I had to choose between ‘excellence’ and ‘quality,’ which would I choose? If your answer is excellence, ask the question again, replacing quality with the next synonym. If your answer is ‘quality,’ treat it as the better expression of your value and compare it with the next synonym. Go through this process for each of your four values. You’ll finish with a list of four values that are each very important to you. Put Your Values Within Reach Now you have a list of your top values, like the ones the leaders in our experiment used to tap into their authenticity and build trust. To turn that list into a tool, make it concrete in a form you can consult at key leadership moments. Many leaders who have gone through my values workshop keep their values on a card in their wallet. Others save them as a picture or note on their phone. Still others put them on a handy object, like a coffee mug. The key is to keep your values close at hand, so you can consult them when you want to be at your best as a leader. Beyond authenticity and trust, evidence suggests that thinking about your values can also make you happier, more ethical, more resilient, more open, and more motivated. When your values are clear and close at hand, leading yourself becomes the first step in helping others do better.    Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:47 AM
04.26.26
2026 State of EQ Report Finds Human Skills Drive Performance in AI Economy
 While Companies Race to Adopt AI, Many Lack the Skills to Make It Work
AI isn’t the top workplace advantage, human skills are. TalentSmartEQ, the world’s premier provider of emotional intelligence (EQ) solutions, has released its 2026 State of EQ Report, examining how leaders and organizations navigate rising economic uncertainty, rapid change and the acceleration of AI adoption. The report reveals that the human skills required to make technology effective are now the strongest predictor of organizational performance in an AI-driven world.
Drawing insights from nearly 700 leadership, HR and L&D professionals and EQ data from more than 23,000 individuals, this year’s report shows a widening gap between companies’ technological ambition and their human readiness to execute.
“Technology has dominated the workplace conversation, but data continues to show that technology doesn’t create performance, people do,” said Howard Farfel, TalentSmartEQ CEO. “As AI adoption accelerates, the organizations coming out ahead in 2026 are deliberately building the people skills that allow leaders and teams to think clearly, stay steady under pressure and execute when conditions are uncertain.”
Four themes that will define a company’s performance in the next three to five years:
Build the “Human Skills Stack”
When asked which skills will matter most in the years ahead, the top response was keeping up with technology, followed closely by adaptability to change, critical thinking, emotional intelligence and communication. Together, these capabilities form an integrated “human skills stack” that enables technology to deliver results. EQ sits at the center, shaping how leaders respond when priorities collide, feedback is difficult, customers are frustrated and decisions must be made with incomplete information. Technical capability only creates an advantage when human capability keeps pace.
Rising Uncertainty and Change are Testing Leaders
Economic uncertainty is now the top factor expected to impact businesses in the coming years. Organizational change is no longer occasional: 54% of organizations report experiencing frequent or constant change, up from 45% in 2025. However, only 41% say they are well-prepared to handle changes or disruption. How leaders manage this constant pressure is emerging as a key performance differentiator.
Internal Alignment is the Hidden Performance Constraint
While external forces dominate headlines, the report finds that the most significant barrier to execution is internal alignment. Misalignment is a natural consequence of sustained change, ongoing uncertainty and the quality and consistency of communication. When alignment breaks down, teams slow decision-making, execution falters and trust erodes.
Leaders are Working on the Wrong Things
TalentsmartEQ’s 2026 State of EQ Report reveals a disconnect between leadership intent and real-world impact. Data from TalentSmartEQ’s multi-rater assessment shows fewer than 5% of leaders share the same top three development priorities as their raters, and 45% show no overlap between the behaviors they want to improve and the behaviors that their teams say limit their effectiveness. As a result, well-intentioned development investments often fail to produce measurable performance gains.
To gain additional insights into challenges and strategies shaping organizations, download the free 2026 State of EQ.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:52 AM
04.23.26
Leading Thoughts for April 23, 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: Rachel Barr on recall: “When we switch from books to screens, we’re also changing how we interact with information. Which introduces a new variable time. Online searches deliver results instantly, but this speed can flood our working memory—the brain’s sketchpad for holding and manipulating information in real time. Working memory has its limits, and scribbling too many notes too quickly can mean the ideas get muddled and lost. By contrast, the slower pace of searching through a book naturally aligns with the brain’s capacity to absorb information. The act of searching creates a pause that allows working memory to empty its contents, shuffling some of those items onto the next stage of processing to become short-term memories. The lesson here isn’t thar the internet is a threat to memory; it’s that it operates at a faster pace than we do.” Source: How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend Robert Greene on learning by doing: “The problem with formal education is that it instills in us a passive approach to learning. We read books, take tests, or maybe write essays. Much of the process involves absorbing information. But in the real world, we learn best by doing, by actively trying our hand at the task. The brain is designed to learn through constant repetition and active, hands-on involvement. Through such practice and persistence, any skill can be mastered. Find the deepest pleasure in absorbing knowledge and information. Feel like you never have enough. Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion.” Source: The Daily Laws 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 11:20 AM
04.16.26
Leading Thoughts for April 16, 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: Nir Eyal on change: “Positive thinking alone so often fails to create lasting transformation. Simply telling yourself you have control isn’t enough. Your brain needs direct evidence that change is possible. Every small victory that proves our actions matter helps build beliefs that override our default passivity.” Source: Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results Paul Ingram on values-based leadership: “Individuals are more motivated when they are responding to intrinsic motivations, such as when they are acting in accordance with their values. Leaders who affirm their values tap into this benefit, but they also invite others to think about their own priorities. Good leaders know that it is better to explain your thinking, and let followers reach their own conclusions as to how to behave, than to issue commands. Values-affirmed leaders are more likely to give their followers this opportunity.” Source: What Do You Really Stand For?: The One Question That Will Transform Your Work and 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 08:11 AM
04.14.26
7 Essential Elements for Managing Your Greatest Asset – Your People
YOU can have an amazing business plan and strategy, but if there are issues with recruiting and keeping your people, your strategy will fail. Finding the right people and incorporating essential elements so that they will stay, are key to managing your organization’s greatest asset — your people. It starts with hiring for fit. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you could have two companies in the same industry in adjacent buildings. They may have very similar business models and customer bases; however, the two owners have very different values and personal philosophies — which lead to very different cultures and, therefore, very different strategies and plans. The target candidates for each company will be very different given the values and cultural differences. The way candidates are sourced, hired, trained, deployed, engaged, and evaluated might be very different. I know of two competing companies in which one has a strict uniform policy, and the other doesn’t. Can you see how that would affect everything? Looking back at my career, I can remember working for companies where I didn’t fit in. I can also recall places where I felt fully engaged. From a talent management perspective, it’s necessary to clearly define — and relay as early in the recruiting process as possible — what it means to “fit in” with your company. Strategies and plans can then be formulated to increase the company’s chances of attracting and hiring the candidates that fit that definition. Some organizations think that fitting in somehow happens by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you successfully define the criteria and apply it in the selection process, employee retention will go up. As a result, all the associated time, effort, and costs of employee turnover will evaporate. This is how you begin to build your amazing culture based on sincerity and integrity. One way to define the culture fit for your organization is to ask employees their top three reasons why they work here. In one organization where we asked the question of the employees, one word, “community,” came up in every response even though they hadn’t discussed the assignment with each other. We then crafted an employer brand with the word “community” as the centerpiece. From the top to the bottom of the organization, everyone agreed that the employer brand was them. From that point forward, candidates could review the employer brand and know whether they’d fit in. If not, they knew not to bother applying. Aligning the 7 Elements for Success From my years of experience, I’ve identified seven elements associated with exceptional talent management: plan, attract, invest, deploy, engage, reward, and retain. Each of the seven elements must have a strategy that fits with the other six to provide the needed talent results. Too many organizations try to implement strategies for each element as if they were silos and essentially end up canceling each other out. Whenever conflicts exist among the seven elements, you won’t get the overall talent results you want and need. As you examine the seven elements, think about how each connects to the others. 1. Plan: This involves creating tactical plans that define what skills are needed, when, where, and their associated cost. This is a huge area of opportunity in most companies. Many organizations trade planning for fighting fires. Don’t overcomplicate it —keep it simple. 2. Attract: What avenues or sources will you use to attract talent? I’ve found that many companies have no idea about the variety of avenues available. They don’t understand or use their employer brand, or know how to recognize their target candidates when they walk in the door. 3. Deploy: Onboard employees in the organization, establishing employee connections and maximizing the opportunity for success. It’s critical that organizations do this on a consistent basis over time and across departments. 4. Engage: Define the norms, principles, and behaviors that your company embodies and reinforce them within the organization. 5. Invest: Analyze new skills and competencies you must develop in your people and know how they’ll be delivered. Your greatest asset is made even greater when you invest in them. Knowing what needs to be taught and the best way to do so provides personal and professional development — a key component in reducing turnover. 6. Reward: Establish how you will measure and reward success, alongside identifying future leaders. This, when combined with the earlier elements, enables your organization to realize infinite advantages. 7. Retain: Finally, agree on the strategies and processes used to retain employees who perform at the desired level. This element is the final scorecard of the other six elements. The more you can get each element to work well and work together with the other elements, the more your employee turnover rate and associated costs will nosedive. Together, the seven elements provide the formula for effectively managing your greatest asset — your people. And the end result: your people are as invested as you in building your business. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:50 PM
04.10.26
Why Managing Attention Is the Key to Effective Leadership
IN MANY organizations, productivity is flat while stress and burnout are climbing. While many blame the unmanageable workload, the problem is really the overwhelming thoughtload. Thoughtload is the invisible tax on performance and productivity that comes from a treacherous triad of rising cognitive demands, escalating emotional burdens, and declining energy reserves. As thoughtload increases, it’s less likely that team members will be productive, creative, or collaborative. Managers need to support their teams in reducing each component of thoughtload, but first, they need to address their own chaotic experience. It’s impossible to manage the madness if you’re creating it. Focus Your Distracted Attention While the endgame is for you to reduce your team’s thoughtload, you cannot manage the madness if you’re caught up in it. Just think of all the ways your thoughtload impacts your team members. If your attention is diluted across a vast range of issues and initiatives, your team won’t know what to prioritize. If you’re nervous, impatient, demoralized, or hostile, you’ll pass that emotionality on to your people. If you’re run down, exhausted, and uninspired, how do you expect your direct reports to have pep in their step? You need to tackle your thoughtload first. But where to start, given that your attention, emotions, and energy are so intimately intertwined? I always tackle attention first, because you have no hope of taming emotions or restoring energy if you don’t manage your attention. The Achievable Ambition: Focused and Flowing Before we talk about how to effectively focus your attention, let’s agree on what “good focus” would look like. I’m not promising you that you can achieve Zen master status, but I’m promising you that you can create a world where you experience periods of deep concentration, leading to productive work and a sense of accomplishment. What if you could experience this:
Science Synopsis What’s going on in your body and mind when your attention is distracted? To put it simply, your brain is a mono-tasker, not a multi-tasker. For the most part, you can pay attention to only one thing at a time. Sure, you can walk and chew gum, but that’s because you don’t need to pay conscious attention to do either. If you switch out gum chewing for walking and texting, you’ll get a different result. Your attention goes to texting, not walking, and you’re okay until there’s a bump on the sidewalk. While you feel like you’re multitasking, what you’re actually doing is toggling—switching your attention from one thing to the other. It turns out that toggling is inefficient:
And multitasking doesn’t just slow you down; it gets you down. Attempts to multitask are associated with increased stress, heightened anxiety, and even temporary depressive symptoms. When it comes to thoughtload, multitasking is part of a vicious cycle. When you’re anxious about how much you have to do, you tend to multitask to alleviate anxiety. Ironically, instead of helping you plough through more work, multi-tasking can make you less productive, leaving you with more to do, which in turn makes you even more stressed. Brutal! If multitasking doesn’t work, why do we keep attempting it? That’s another aspect of the vicious cycle. The more tired and overwhelmed you are (the energy component of thoughtload), the poorer your brain is at calibrating what you should attend to and what you should ignore. Instead of focusing on the most important thing, you prioritize based on more primal criteria like recency (What was the latest notification to ping?), fear (Who’s the scariest person breathing down your neck?), or comfort (What’s the easiest or most fun thing you could strike off your to-do list?) When you make one of these suboptimal prioritization decisions, you dig yourself into a deeper hole. Bad attention choices lead to poor outcomes for your emotions and your energy. A Better Alternative What does science tell us about a better alternative? Most of us work more effectively when we focus on one thing at a time and work uninterrupted for 30 to 45 minutes. Between blocks, we need a 5- or 10-minute rest to reset, and then we’re able to do another sprint. After two or three blocks, we need a longer break. One series of studies showed a range in the most productive durations with sprints ranging from 52 to 112 minutes with the accompanying rests of between 17 and 26 minutes. Working this way, in a series of sprints and rests, we get more done, with higher quality, and less stress. But before you start hacking productivity like a tech bro and thinking that your goal should be eight (or eighteen) hours a day of uninterrupted, heads-down focused productivity, note that you’re probably built for at most four hours a day of this quality of work. Your brain doesn’t stay at peak performance for longer than that. Another thing to understand about your brain is that different tasks require different brain processes. Task batching, that is grouping similar activities, reduces the cost of switching and decreases errors. When speed is the goal, put like with like. In contrast, to increase creativity or provide some mental relief, deliberately switch tasks to something with an entirely different vibe. Armed with that understanding of the value of focus, let’s talk about what you can do to reduce your thoughtload by managing your attention. Here’s what I’ve seen when it comes to your focal point: Focus on activity, become a busy person. Focus on outputs, become a productive person. Focus on outcomes, become an effective person. Sure, being productive is better than being busy, but if your productivity isn’t leading to changes in your outcomes, what’s it worth? Being effective is what it’s all about. When you pay attention to being effective, you don’t need to be as productive because all those things you were churning out that weren’t making a dent aren’t required anymore. When you don’t need to be as productive, you can be less busy because fewer outputs mean fewer tasks. That’s the first step in managing your thoughtload—choosing your quest and aligning your attention to accomplish it. Once it’s clear, find a way to keep your quest top of mind. The work to confront how your environment and even your own delusions direct your attention to all the wrong things can be intense and excruciating. And it’s not lost on me that your boss, who is slagging you for not making more progress, is the person most likely to be swamping you with low-value activities. (If that’s the case, your boss needs this process as much as you do. Work through it together.) You have things to accomplish. Real things. Meaningful things. The better defined they are, the easier it is to see what’s essential versus what’s trivial and wasteful. When you do more of the former and less of the latter, your team will benefit and both you and your boss will get kudos. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:56 PM
04.09.26
Leading Thoughts for April 9, 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: Greg Satell on change: “It is never enough to merely state grievances to challenge the status quo. To create meaningful change, you must put forward an affirmative vision for what you want the future to look like. This is not about messaging. It’s not enough to merely express your grievances more artfully. You have to define an alternative that is actually better, not just for those who agree with you, but for the vast majority of those who will be affected by the change you seek.” Source: Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change Richard S. Tedlow on seeking truth: “Denial is a powerful impulse, but we are not entirely powerless to resist it. Through self-knowledge, openness to criticism, and receptivity to facts and perspectives that challenge our own, we can arm ourselves against denial. This is easier said than done.” Source: Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face—and What to Do About It 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 03:16 PM
04.02.26
Leading Thoughts for April 2, 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: Frank Barrett on Provocative Competence: “Leadership as design activity means creating space, sufficient support, and challenge so that people will be tempted to grow on their own. The goal is the opposite of conformity: a leader’s job is to create the discrepancy and dissonance that trigger people to move away from habitual positions and repetitive patterns. I’ve come to think of this key leadership capacity as ‘provocative competence.’” Source: Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske on self-awareness: “Developing your sense of Self-Awareness not only helps you gauge how you are likely to react in a given situation, but it can also provide some in-sight into the people around you. Having a stable sense of self can therefore ground you in situations when many other circumstances are beyond your immediate control.” Source: The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success 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 07:05 AM
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