The Leadership Professor

I am a firm believer that we can learn much about how to lead from engaging with and in the arts. This post begins a series on the topic. It’s a set of ideas I’ve been thinking and writing about for a long time. Quite simply, the arts “traffic in understanding,” in the words of [...]

The online Economist has a nifty feature that identifies what people are reading and thinking about. Their opinion clouds are constructed so that the larger the bubble and bigger the font, the more interest. I offer two below. The first gives an overall feel for topics of interest. China leads, followed by Israel and then [...]

Oprah Winfrey retires with from her long-running daytime talk show today – and with plans for her next big challenge.   After taping more than 5,000 episodes, she’s relieved to be moving on. In good Oprah fashion, however, she’s down-playing the pleasure out of respect for her show’s staff of 464 people (many of whom are [...]

I live in the Midwest, close enough to Joplin, Missouri to know where it is and to know people who call that city home. The devastation from Sunday’s record tornado was shocking and sad; and the story has dominated TV, online, and print news as people struggle to make sense of the depth of the [...]

Pierre Berge, the long-term lover and business partner of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, has been in the news. Friday marked the U.S. release of a French documentary about the relationship between the two men, and everyone is abuzz about the film’s attention to the frantic 2009 Christie’s mega-auction of the more than [...]

My colleague, Ira Chaleff, an expert on the study of followership, has created a great video to illustrate the importance of leader-follower collaboration and the active role of followership. You can find it on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cswrnc1dggg When sending the url, Ira wrote:   A couple of years ago after returning from Buenos Aires, I took [...]

Media coverage on gender and leadership has been interesting of late. I celebrate reports of women’s  progress – and wonder about the impact of the messaging on men and boys. The world is changing, no question. And so are the skills needed to lead in it. But all the hype can distort reality and make [...]

Happy Mother’s Day! I’ve not thought much about the links between motherhood and leadership, but today gives good reason to. People struggle to understand leadership and how to do it. Take a lesson from mom and a process you’ve known your whole life. You’ll see leadership in a whole new way. Like good mothers, good [...]

Americans have a yearning to believe not only in a hero’s good deeds but in his goodness as a person.[1] The quote is from a provocative piece in Newsweek about Greg Mortenson (of Three Cups of Tea fame) and his quick fall from grace following allegations by 60 Minutes and an expose (Three Cups of [...]