Archive for category: Leadership

By Julie Bawden Davis

Truly effective leaders possess more than drive, ambition and charisma. While those traits are important, it’s leaders who’ve reached the pinnacle of self-fulfillment and acceptance who are the most dynamic and successful. Great leaders also have a high degree of emotional intelligence, which comes from being self-actualized.

Self-actualization, the final stage of noted American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, refers to the point when you realize your true potential and seek personal growth and self-fulfillment.

While not all great leaders have learned to be self-aware, many of the most recognized are those who’ve achieved self-actualization, says Jill Salzman, co-host of the …read more

By David Niu

Raise your hand if you’re a leader who thinks, “The faster we grow, the less time we have for meetings.”

At one time, my hand would have shot up, since I used to think this way. But I had it all wrong. As Verne Harnish, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm, claims, it should be the exact opposite—the faster you’re growing, the more meetings you need to keep your people in sync, since everyone is running around like crazy.

But these meetings shouldn’t be hour-long, slog-through-an-agenda kind of …read more

By Alexandra Levit

In her book The Culture Map, global workplace expert Erin Meyer talks about one particular keynote speech she had to give to an audience in Brazil. Her remarks were slated to last 60 minutes, but the client said she could take all the time she needed.

Meyer didn’t quite believe him. After all, during just about any keynote address in America, you can expect a firm index card countdown:

“10 minutes remaining”

“5 minutes remaining”

“2 minutes remaining”

At “0 minutes remaining,” you’d better get off that stage!

Meyer took 65 minutes to give her Brazilian speech and had a great time responding to …read more

By James O’Brien, PhD

Savvy business leaders understand that staying engaged with your employees cuts waste and boosts productivity—and that monetary benefits emerge from both of those results. To get to that point, however, small-business owners have to establish powerful channels of communication with the workers they’re seeking to engage.

“Employee alignment needs to be a top priority,” says Andre Lavoie, CEO of ClearCompany, a talent management software company. “Companies literally depend on this kind of alignment to succeed, and employees depend on it for their own engagement and personal success.”

A key part of the process that leads to greater employee engagement is …read more

By Angela Stringfellow

Psychology plays a part in almost every aspect of business. From helping target and refine your marketing message to gaining a deeper understanding of human behavior—both internally among your staff and externally with your customers and competitors—psychology is an area of study business leaders need to be tuned into if they want to run successful companies.

Just how useful can it be to dig deeper into this subject? Quite a bit, experts say. A number of areas of psychology directly relate to business leadership, including organizational psychology and leadership psychology, which study the ability of individuals to effectively lead groups of …read more