Leadership development may be the most important thing any company does. That’s why, every week, I review blogs and other publications that cover leadership development to find the very best leadership development posts. This week, you’ll find pointers to posts about
From Tim Laseter: The Line between Confidence and Hubris
“You can identify early signs of failure or success from a prospective CEO’s behavior.”
From Lisa Sterling: For 2017 I Wish For Effective Leadership
“My professional holiday wish list is quite short this year. I really only have one wish. However, my one wish has wide-reaching influence on many workplace aspects, from the employee experience to bottom line business results, so it is an important one. I wish for organizations of all sizes to take serious stock in developing effective and empowered leaders at all levels.”
From Dan Hawkins: What Does It Mean to Be a Strategic Leader?
“Companies love to label or typecast leaders over time. As an executive coach and former CHRO, I wish I had a dollar for every time we labeled a senior leader as not being ‘strategic’ enough to get to the next level. Some consultants often use elaborate assessments to create a false sense of precision of their potential. Often when succession planners and executive assessment pros cannot articulate improvement opportunities, we default to the generic, ‘he lacks a strategic mindset’ excuse. Strategic focus is the most mystical and illusive leadership capability in the corporate world, but we need to better understand, define, and develop what it means when we say our leaders need to be more strategic.”
From Dan Ciampa: After the Handshake
“Whether new CEOs are hired from the outside or promoted from within, they should be aware of a daunting statistic: One-third to one-half of new chief executives fail within their first 18 months, according to some estimates. Some of these flameouts can be attributed to poor strategic choices by the new leader, and some result when the board makes an imperfect choice—overestimating a candidate’s abilities and potential or hiring a leader whose skill set doesn’t fit the context. Sometimes the new leader is obviously responsible for a handoff gone wrong, and other times the board is rightly blamed. But a close look shows that it’s rarely that simple. When a succession fails, the responsibility is almost always shared.”
