Tag: leadership effectiveness

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You are Your Leadership Superpower!

The world needs bold leadership more than ever.  Yesterday’s solutions have fueled today’s problems. A devastating pandemic. Economic crises. Widespread cynicism. Inequities. Divisions of all kinds. Are you ready to seize the opportunity to make a real difference?  How are you preparing to do your part?

Acquiring the right stuff is developmental and deliberate. Like good wine, leadership skills and savvy mature over time. Experience helps. Seek it out.  Pair it with the skills of reflective practice[1]. You’ll consolidate your strengths; deepen your understandings of human nature and the world; and avoid the same mistakes. Most importantly, harness the leadership superpower that is only yours for the taking – the creative energies of your true self.

Ocean Vuong, professor, MacArthur genius award-winning poet and essayist, and author of the New York Times best-selling novel “On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous”, rings a bell at the beginning of every class.[2]  More accurately, he invites the bell.  The bell, in Vietnamese Buddhist traditions, is always ringing somewhere.  We mute its manifestation – as we do so much of the world – through our tacit, selective screening of the information and experience available to us[3].  

The bell is a prompt for Vuong – a reminder to stop the automatic pilot of life and to call back with honor the first version of ourselves that brought us to this moment.  Long ago and without much clarity of what it would really mean or entail, a more trusting, younger version of each of us took a risk. It made a decision about what we wanted to do with our lives and launched us on the complex journey that has brought us to today. No deep understanding of the sacrifices or steps required. Little appreciation for the full consequences of choices. It stepped out and propelled us forward into the unknown with energy, excitement, and hope.

Western traditions, Vuong reminds, tell us to forget that former self. It was the child that had to be improved upon. Untrained. Immature.  Inexperienced. Unskilled. The long-decomposed acorn ignored in praise of the mighty oak.  

Wrong, says Vuong. That younger self deserves to be appreciated and remembered. It is the pioneer of our present whose “epicentric moment” of choice so long ago brought us here and nowhere else. It is also the direct link to the reservoir of strength, courage, risk-taking, and openness that lies deep within. Honor that self in all its contributions and bravery!  Invite it, advises Vuong, as a fruitful collaborator in our current success.

Few have Vuong’s gift for poetic meditation. But we can all heed the wisdom of his call.  We are our lived experiences. All of them – the successes and failures, moments of pride and shame, the parts of our past that lift us up and those we hide in fear that others might see us as less. Our experiences have forged our unique world view. Understand it! They have given us a set of skills, values, and understandings unlike anyone else. Claim them! Our lived experiences define what we alone can bring to the table – what we must bring to the table – if we are to join effectively with others in search of new paths to lead us from these troubled times.  Our authenticity is our leadership superpower if we are not afraid to use it.   

[1] Donald Schon (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (first edition). New York: Basic Books.

[2] Ocean Vuong spoke on April 8, 2021 at the Radcliffe Institute.  It is available at     https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2021-ocean-vuong-virtual

[3] Joan V. Gallos (2008). Making Sense of Organizations: Leadership, Frames, and Everyday Theories of the Situation. In Joan V. Gallos (ed.). Business Leadership.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

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Your Leadership Matters: Start by Building Resilience

The Leadership Professor announces her new blog, Your Leadership Matters.

She brings wisdom and strength from a journey rivaling that of Odysseus and celebrates new understandings garnered through her travels. Our current times require nothing less than high-impact leadership, and The Leadership Professor stands ready to serve as your guide so that you can rise successfully to the challenges ahead.

Leadership is all about making a difference on things that matter and the world a better place for us all. It comes in many forms and shapes – from creating and managing complex systems that do justice to employees, local communities, tasks at hand, and the environment to naming the injustice in an observed micro-aggression at the local supermarket against someone deemed different.

We all have opportunities to lead – whether we sit at the head or the foot of the table. The trick is to be ready when opportunity calls. So, where do we begin?

In my work, people regularly ask what it takes to lead well. The list is long, but at the top is resilience.

Resilience is the ability to adapt and strengthen in the face of challenge, uncertainty, failure, or trauma. It is a learned skill that builds with use. It includes steps like:

  • recognizing you always have a choice in interpreting and responding to events (even when you feel you don’t)
  • learning to keep things in perspective – for most situations, good enough is indeed good enough
  • looking for creative ways to make challenges work for you (and not add to your burdens)
  • practicing new behaviors and responses, and
  • reflecting on how well all this is working for you.

Think about a recent situation that was deeply challenging for you.  How well did you stay centered and focused? Agile and creatively flexible?  What made the situation so challenging for you?

How, for example, did you frame the event? Disaster? Opportunity? End of the world? Intriguing fun? Bump in the road? How did your framing fuel your energy and reactions?  Enable you to see and understand what was really happening for you and others? How quick were you to think of creative options to make the situation work (beyond blaming others, remaining perplexed, or expecting others to fix things – and getting mad when they didn’t)?  How easily did you let go of any angst or anger?

Do you see any similarities between your strategies in that situation and in others at work or at home? 

We can never control the demands of others – and as much as we’d like demanding others to make the world right or simpler for us, they often can’t or won’t.  But we can control how we understand and respond to their demands. And sometimes just remembering that is enough for us to take a step back and a deep breath, to recognize that we have control over how we interpret events despite our frustration, and to think creatively about how to turn a crummy situation into something good – or at least something manageable.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at U-Mass Medical Center, has a wonderful reminder about life: You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

That spirit, sense of personal agency, and confidence are at the heart of leadership effectiveness – and make for a happy professional (and personal) life.

It’s easier for some to approach life and work this way than for others – genes, early life experiences, brain wiring, past trauma, and educational experiences make a difference. The good news: wherever we start, we can all get better.  Being resilient lets us live more complex, global lives gracefully; and it’s less costly to body, soul, and relationships.

Resilience at its core involves learning to “wear life loosely”[i].  We’re more creative problem solvers when we do. How do we build the capacity to wear life loosely yet productively? As someone for whom resilience did not come naturally, I’ve studied and thought deeply about that. Five suggestions from my work:  

Start with what you know you can control or change – you. It is easy to hope that others will change. We know from research that’s a common, first response for us all. But you have the best control over the process when you focus on changing yourself, your response, your way of framing the situation. This is not to say that you should cocoon, pull back, withhold your preferences or observations, or refuse to engage challenging others or ineffective situations. It is more a question of how, when, and why you do that work – and a reminder that you stand a better chance of influencing others when you know what you want and when you are trying patiently and openly to make things work.

Embrace your control over your full range of choices and options.  It’s easy to feel stuck – as if there’s only one way out or only one way to understand a sticky situation. It’s always harder to think of options – so much of life rewards us for being on automatic pilot. Resilience comes from being a stronger, more deliberate, and broad thinker – no one-trick pony – and from having the confidence in knowing that you are.

How do you develop those capacities? Practice them. Be playful. Take a minute now and then to ask yourself questions like, So what else could I do now? What other options do I have? How else could I respond? What else is possible? Why else might others be acting as they do? Once you get into the hang of it, these kinds of questions become second nature. They also enable you to see a broader and richer world.

Learn to reframe. That means being able to stand back and look at a challenge from multiple angles and perspectives before jumping to the conclusion that you know what’s really happening (for you and others). This is especially important when you feel high stress, anger, anxiety, or other deep emotions.

If I tell myself I’m stuck, I am. If I say that I’m lost or overwhelmed, I will be. When I see an opportunity, it’s always there.

When driven blindly by feelings, we react. It may feel good to vent, but to what end? Professionals have confidence that they know how to respond. The difference between reacting and responding is huge. What are the stories that you tell yourself in the face of frustrating or over-whelming situations?  Try an alternative framing. You’ll see your mood lighten and options grow.  

Accept: not everything is equally important. This may sound trite, but think about how often you have gotten yourself into a major stew over the small stuff.  We do it all the time.

Despite what you may have been told by well-meaning grammar school teachers, not everything is worth doing well – and some things are not worth doing at all.

Sure there are consequences to your choices. Choose to not do something, and you haven’t done it. This is where knowing yourself comes in.

What’s really important to you? Where do you not want to miss anything or make a mistake? What are the issues or areas where you can cut yourself some slack? Be less perfect?  Punt without shirking your responsibility to self or others? 

That’s the essence of managing work-life balance and overload – and you hold the key to that.  As you climb in responsibilities, you will never be able to do everything – and you’ll never be able to do all that you do perfectly.  How can you learn to accept that in yourself?  How can you use the supports and resources you have to share the load? Build networks of trust? That’s not easy for people with high expectations and needs for control, yet it’s essential.      

Laugh.  A good sense of humor is mandatory for resilient leaders – and that means laughing at yourself, your mistakes, and your foibles. It’ll help keep things in perspective – and you’ll have a grand time.

Onward!

[i] B. Siegel (1993). How to Live Between Office Visits: A Guide to Life, Love and Health. New York: HarperCollins.

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Grow Your Brain: Lead Yourself to Increased Leadership Capacities

Research, published in the new book The Emotional Life of your Brain by Richard J. Davidson (with Sharon Begley), has good news. We can change our emotional styles and become more self-aware, attentive to context, and resilient – core skills for surviving and thriving in the rough-and-tumble leadership world. All it takes is systematic mental practice.

I’ll let you read the neurophysiology and brain science and just cut to the chase here. By thinking – and thinking alone – adults can expand areas of the brain to broaden their cognitive and emotional capacities.

This gives us more control than previously believed over what Davidson and Begley call the Six Key Elements of Emotional Style: our resilience in the face of disappointment, outlook on life, self-awareness, social intuition, attention, and sensitivity to context.

To quote the authors: “Mental activity, ranging from meditation to cognitive-behavior therapy, can help you develop a broader awareness of social signals, a deeper sensitivity to your own feelings and bodily sensations, a more consistently positive outlook, and a great capacity for resilience.”

Too negative an outlook on life or situation? Embrace the essentials of “well-being therapy” and focus on ways you can be more grateful, generous, appreciative, and upbeat. You’ll have significant growth in the brain areas used, giving you quicker and more automatic access to these positive responses over time.

Not very self- or other-aware? Slow down and ask yourself to focus on the feelings, discomfort, or concerns of another. It’ll increase activation of the circuitry involved in taking in pain and distress more carefully and broaden your capacities to see life more richly and compassionately.

Too self-aware and filled with the internal chatter and self-evaluations that keep you spinning your wheels? Learn to observe your thoughts or feelings non-judgmentally and choose to put them aside.

Mindfulness and meditation help here. [See the blog archives for past posts of mindfulness and the work of Ellen Langer.] With practice, you’ll develop the hard-wiring and self-control needed to pause, acknowledge a setback or disappointment, have a good laugh at how quickly your mind wants to perseverate and magnify a mere bump in life’s road, and stop yourself from spiraling downward.

The authors claim that locating the base of emotions at least partly in the brain’s seat of reason is a major break from conventional wisdom in psychology and neuroscience.

I’m thrilled their work affirms human capacities to develop the emotional and cultural intelligence needed for effective leadership in an increasingly diverse world. How do you want to lead? Respond? Be? Make it happen. That’s hugely empowering – and productive for us all!

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What we need to learn to succeed

A respected colleague (and my former professor) Richard J. Light (Carl H. Pforzheimer Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of the book “Making the Most of College”) names five things that successful people say they need to advance their work and careers in today’s global world.

1. the ability to synthesize information

2. the skill of writing extraordinarily well

3. the ability to do research on many different topics

4. the ability to speak at least one foreign language

5. an understanding of other cultures.

I think Light’s got it about right. How do you measure on each?  What are you doing to enhance your capacities in areas where you need to grow? 

In talking with executives recently who wanted to know where to begin in taking their education and executive development to the next level, I made a simple suggestion: read, read, read.

Cognitive development is guaranteed – and you’ll increase your reading speed and comprehension with every page. Seeing your progress on both is satisfying, as our Executive MBA students can attest. You have control over the delivery system and focus of the content – read when you can and what you want.  And continuing to form new neuronal circuits are vital as we age and for responding to an increasingly complex world.

Want a good suggestion for your next good read?  I suggest: America and the Crisis of Global Power by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. It’s a book you won’t want to put down – and probably shouldn’t.  [Here’s a review to give you a sense of the reasons why.]

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Leadership, Gender, and Confidence: Another Take

Another take on leadership, gender, and confidence from Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt, authors of the new book, Break Your Own Rules: How to Change the Patterns of Thinking that Block Women’s Paths to Power – and good advice for women and men seeking to increase their impact. 

The book is a fascinating read – and a recommendation that women finally discard the rules that have traditionally guided their leadership (and have been seen as women’s “strengths”). Women are a mere 11% of senior leadership in corporate American, and that number hasn’t changed in 30 years. The authors suggest it’s time to think seriously about how to make that change happen. 

Their advice: out with the old, please, and in with the new.  Reframe the everyday beliefs that women bring about how to lead and do themselves in the workplace.  For example:

Traditional approach: focus on others — New advice: take center stage

Traditional approach: seek approval — New advice: proceed until apprehended

Traditional approach: be modest — New advice: project personal power

Traditional approach: work harder — New advice: be politically savvy

Traditional approach: play it safe — New advice: play to win

Traditional approach: it’s all or nothing — New advice: it’s both-and

I’m not doing he book justice, but I want to get back to the confidence theme from my last post:

In a recent post of the HBR site, the authors assert they found – and “by a wide margin” – that the primary criticism men have about their female colleagues at work is that the women exhibit low self-confidence.

imageThe authors concede this may partly be perception — men can interpret a willingness to share credit or defer judgment as a lack of confidence. But they also note that there is plenty of research that suggests women feel less self-assured at work. See yesterday’s blog post, for one example. Another is a 2011 workforce study by Europe’s Institute of Leadership and Management that reports:

Men were more confident across all age groups: 70% of the men reported high or very high levels of self-confidence, compared to 50% of the women

Half of women managers admitted feelings of self-doubt about their performance and career, 31% of men reported the same

Lack of confidence makes women more cautious in applying for jobs and promotions: 20% of men said they would apply despite only partially meeting its job description, compared to 14% of women.

The authors turned to their own data and identified four specific low-confidence behaviors cited by male and female managers alike:

Being overly modest. Men are more willing to take public credit for their successes. Women believe their accomplishments should speak for themselves. They may – or they may be overlooked by all the busy people around them.

Not asking. Not asking means you’ve lost the chance to get what you need.  No more need be said on that one!

Blending in. The authors note that some women go to great lengths to avoid attention in the workplace. They want to do their work, stay professional, and wait to be appreciated.  A perfect strategy for remaining invisible!

Remaining silent. Don’t speak up and you won’t get in the conversation – or the game.

The author’s conclusion: Career momentum is not just about adding job skills. It’s about changing everyday thinking and behaviors.  Amen! 

Glad I could bring you these helpful insights. I ask you to share them – and this blog site – with others interested in improving their leadership.  I’d love to attract more readers – and I have plenty more to say about how to lead and how to lead for greater impact.

So how am I doing?  I’m practicing the suggested new behaviors!  Are you?

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Managing the Occupational Hazard of Leadership

Leadership is emotional work. “There’s no leading without bleeding,” Jerome Murphy, professor and former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, writes in the most recent Phi Delta Kappan.[1] “No matter what we call it — stress, agitation, loss, frustration, fear, exhaustion, shame, confusion, sadness, loneliness, hurt — there’s not an executive alive who can lead without experiencing emotional discomfort.” Anyone who has led – from the head or the foot of the table – knows exactly what Murphy means.

Leaders can’t escape this occupational hazard; however, they can be their own worst enemy in responding to it – turning inevitable job discomforts into personal anguish and self-doubt that erode focus and energy.

“In the privacy of our minds, we can make things worse by fighting our discomfort, getting hooked on our troubling thoughts, and scolding ourselves for falling short. As a consequence, we can sidetrack our work and lose sight of what really matters to us.”

The stage is set for unproductive denial (and an investment of psychic energy pretending we’re not uncomfortable) or negative self-talk (and worries about whether our discomfort is a sign that we’re a flop or, worse yet, no leader at all). “In the grip of mind chatter that sounds like a Greek chorus of naysayers, it’s not unusual to rehash the past, fret about the future, and hang ourselves out to dry,” concludes Murphy.

There are more productive ways to respond, and Murphy draws from psychology and Eastern thinking to suggest six.

1.  accept the emotional discomforts at the core of leading: “In doing so, we can hold them more lightly, believe them less resolutely, and take them less personally.”

2. acknowledge distress without clinging to it: “We can have our thoughts rather than be had by them.”

3. focus on changing behaviors, not feelings: “We can accept what we’re experiencing at the moment while still working to make things better.”

4. treat self with compassion, kindness, and care. “Both intuitively and through scientific research, we know that self-compassion is central to well-being.”

5. accept human imperfection: “Self-criticism is often accompanied by an irrational but pervasive sense of isolation — as if ‘I’ were the only person suffering or making mistakes.”

6. keep faith in core values: They remind us what’s at stake and put the inevitable discomforts in leading from and toward them in perspective.

Mindfulness training can help cultivate these habits of the mind. The leadership payback is clear: increased capacities for situational diagnosis, task focus, calm value-centered action, and resilience.

Our internal dramas may still be intense, warns Murphy, but we’ll witness them from a safe, nonjudgmental place where we can respond wisely.

[1] Jerome. T. Murphy. Dancing in the rain: Tips on thriving as a leader in tough times. Phi Delta Kappan (September 2011), 93 (1): 36-41.

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Naming the Elephant in the Room: Discussing the Undiscussable

Sometimes, a group will get stuck until someone is willing to name the “elephant in the room:” the uncomfortable topic that everyone is aware of but no one wants to talk about.

That topic can be about content or about how the group is working (or not working) together. Fear of conflict or unpleasant interactions often leads us to avoid sensitive topics or to beat around the bush so much that no one gets our message. Some of the most powerful contributions to teamwork involve the willingness to express uncomfortable truths.

You enhance your abilities to discuss the undiscussable when you:

Attend to process and content. You won’t recognize that the group is stuck unless you keep an eye on how the group is going about its work and on its progress.

Use yourself as a barometer. Use those knotty feelings in the pit of your stomach as a red flag that something’s off. Step back and ask yourself why the feeling?

Build in periodic reflections. Leadership guru Ronald Heifetz calls this “getting to the balcony:” stepping out of the fray on the dance floor and giving yourself a different perspective on the action. You’ll give yourself a better chance of seeing the big picture.

Search carefully for the elephant. This requires three things: (1) determining the obvious truth being ignored or unaddressed, (2) figuring out how to present the information so that others can hear and test your observation, and (3) determining when naming the issue will be most helpful to the group’s progress. [Review the last post on skilled candor: those skills can help here.] 

Avoid the sledgehammer. It can be easier naming the elephant with a less direct route. Humor, a well-formed question, or using yourself – expressing your uncertainty or lack of clarity as a way of engaging others in an exploration they might be hesitant to initiate — can accomplish the task with grace.

Frame the elephant in a larger story. Explain not only what you see but why discussing it can help the group make progress. You may see this more clearly than others.

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Strong Advocacy: Perfecting Your Skilled Candor

If asked, most of us would say that it’s good to speak up, tell the truth, and say what we mean. Yet we often fall well short of candor for two main reasons: fear and lack of skill. We’re afraid we’ll hurt ourselves or someone else. Do we tell the boss something he doesn’t want to hear? Do we tell our colleagues something that will upset or anger them? Should we admit we’ve made a mistake? Even if willing to speak up, if our attempts at candor are awkward, confusing or inflammatory, no one is helped.

A key element of skilled candor is describing your reality, not “the reality.” Speaking up openly and honestly isn’t the same as venting, shooting from the hip, bluster, argumentativeness, or attack – all of which prime others to resist rather than understand your message. It helps to remember the distinction between your truth and the Truth. When you say, for example, “This is how I see it,” you’re describing your reality. When you say, “This is how it is,” you claim to know not just your perception, but the Truth. No one knows your reality better than you, but anyone can claim to know the Truth at least as well or better than you do.

To describe your reality you need to know it and accept it as your unique take on the situation. A first step is reflection – looking within and asking yourself what you are thinking and feeling and why.

If, for example, you’re in a meeting and find yourself thinking, “This is all stupid. We’re going nowhere.” you could say that, but you’d be making a claim about the Truth that has little chance of being a productive contribution and may be very different from what others are experiencing. A brief reflection on what’s happening for you might reveal that you’re feeling confused and have lost track of what the conversation is about. That lets you say something like, “I don’t know how anyone else is feeling, but I’m lost. I don’t know where we’re going. Is it clearer for you than for me?” That statement shares your reality while giving others permission to see it differently. And it ends with a question asking others to take stock on how things are going.

You can strengthen your capacities for skilled candor when you:

Know yourself. Regular practices like journaling, meditation, or activities that encourage mindfulness build your capacities for self-reflection. Mindfulness is an important leadership skill, essential for monitoring your ongoing assessment of process – how you think things are going in your interactions with others – as well as content – the progress you believe you and others are making on the substance of the task at hand.   

Slow down your reactions. Recognize that they are just that – your reactions.

Cool your inner critic. Resist jumping to fast conclusions and ask yourself why when you do.

Use “I” statements, if necessary, to develop the right habits of the mind. It may feel awkward at first, but it’ll keep you honest and focused on what’s happening for you.

Leadership is all about effective relationships and strong communications. So remember, the goal in all this is to find ways to engage others in honest conversations that enable you and others to learn — about what’s happening for individuals, about what’s happening in the exchange, and about how to work more  effectively together. 

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General Michael Hayden: It’s All About Fit and Compassion

The Washington Post has a site “On Leadership” that provides a variety of interviews and discussions with leaders across sectors and organizations. Topics vary but all connect to the central issue of how to lead.

A good one is the interview with General Michael Hayden, former Director of both the CIA and the NSA. Hayden talks about the very different styles he brought to both organizations because each needed something very different from him at that point in the organization’s lifecycle.

Hayden demonstrates the keen diagnostic eye, respect for others, compassion, and savvy for determining how best to leverage his impact that are essential for any leader’s success. He also understands well the symbolic power in the leadership role.

A tip from the General for your repertoire:  When making decisions about how to spend his time, Hayden always asked,  “Is this request or event something that the Director alone must do?” 

But keep in mind, sometimes those “must do” things are not the big, flashy events or decisions.

Hayden, for example, knew that he alone could ease the psychological burden of a CIA being battered daily in the media by going down to the cafeteria and simply eating with folks. Ad so he did. 

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The Arts Can Teach Us to Lead, Part 4: Fiction as Great Teacher

What are you reading this summer? The question is important for your leadership development. I suggest fiction. It’s a powerful and enjoyable pedagogy.

When we read fiction, author Annie Dillard reminds us, we slow life down: study it and our reactions to it.

Good fiction lets us view events from multiple perspectives – our own, the writer’s, and the various characters in the story – increasing our understanding of human diversity; the impact of time, culture, and experience; and the frames of reference we use to make sense of all that.

It offers a behind-the-scenes look into the complexities of organizational life. In today’s world, educators and authors do a disservice when they convey the illusion of simplicity or control with models and theories that portray the workplace as linear, rational, neat, and tidy. Human nature is complicated, and social processes like leadership and management are steeped in ambiguity, confusion, and choice. Good literature acknowledges that and plays out human nature in its fullness.

Internal struggles, confusion, ambiguity, and doubts of the soul are all par for the course. Leadership looks more like the gritty and human process that it is – and less glamorous and heroic – when seen through the difficult choices of compelling characters.

The health sciences have known this for a long time. They have a strong tradition of encouraging the use of literature – the reading and writing of it – for growth: the medical humanities are a well-established curricular tradition in medical education. Leadership education could borrow a page from their play book.

Harvard Professor of Medical Humanities and Psychiatry emeritus Robert Coles sees it like this: fiction and storytelling deepen the inner life of those who work at life’s harsh boundaries, offering insights into the role of learning and growth from disappointment and suffering, providing historical perspectives on the meaning of care and service, and more.

Reading fiction nurtures skills in observation, analysis, diagnosis, empathy, and self-reflection – capacities essential for good healthcare givers and for good leaders in any field.

Where to start? Anything that appeals to you – contemporary or classic. It’s the process of reflecting on the story, its characters, their struggles, and your reactions that matter.

Dip a toe in the water with business ethicist Joseph Badaracco’s Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature. The book uses nine pieces of literature to examine challenges that test a leader’s soul. Read and think about a suggested work, and then use Badaracco’s chapter on it to stretch your own thinking.  The book offers its own self-study course, modeled on Badaracco’s long-term Harvard Business School course.

Or do something similar using On Leadership that captures lectures by organizational theorist James G. March  from his famous Stanford course on learning about leadership through the classics using works like Shakespeare’s Othello, Shaw’s Saint Joan, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Cervantes’s Don Quixote.

“Literature is an extension of life not only horizontally, bringing the reader into contact with events or locations or persons or problems he or she has not otherwise met,” reminds philosopher Martha Nussbaum, “but also vertically, giving the reader experience that is deeper, sharper, and more precise than much of what takes place in life.”[1] 

[1] Nussbaum, M. (1990). Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 48.