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Tag: Managing yourself

  • Research: When Being Authentic Undermines Your Leadership

    Research: When Being Authentic Undermines Your Leadership

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    Summary.   

    Leaders often assume that revealing a painful setback makes them appear more authentic to their employees. New research suggests the more powerful signal is agency: people respond more positively

    Historically, being a strong leader meant being invulnerable and stoic—showing no signs of weakness. But in recent years, leaders have begun to embrace the idea that presenting an authentic version of themselves to their employees can have a host of benefits including strengthening employee performance and creativity.

  • Optimism Is Now an Essential Leadership Skill

    Optimism Is Now an Essential Leadership Skill

    October 06, 2026

    Optimism isn’t about ignoring problems or pretending everything will work out. It’s about acknowledging challenges while believing that your actions can still make a difference. Psychologist and researcher Michelle Gielan says leaders can cultivate that mindset in themselves and their teams and argues that, when they do, it creates a powerful performance advantage. Drawing on an 11-year dataset of more than 25,000 business professionals, she shares research linking optimism to higher productivity, sales, engagement, and lower burnout. She explains how leaders can use techniques like “power leads” to help teams focus on progress and possibility without losing sight of difficult realities. Gielan wrote the book Resilient Optimism: The Science of Sustaining a Positive Mindset in Tough Times and the HBR article “How Leaders Counter Pessimism in Trying Times.“

  • The Mindsets Leaders Need as AI Accelerates the Pace of Business

    The Mindsets Leaders Need as AI Accelerates the Pace of Business

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    Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy

    Summary.   

    AI is changing not only what leaders need to know, but how they need to think. Yet many are struggling to adapt to the speed, uncertainty, and emotional complexity of an

    AI is accelerating business transformation at an unprecedented pace. Leaders aren’t keeping up.

    Read more on Leadership or related topics Managing yourself and AI and machine learning

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  • What Actually Sets High Achievers Apart?

    What Actually Sets High Achievers Apart?

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    While many high achievers rely on positive internal attributes, including intelligence, passion, and perseverance, research shows that external factors also play a big role in their success. In

    What sets high achievers apart from everyone else?  This is the question that University of Pennsylvania professor Angela Duckworth has spent years trying to answer. While others might have focused on innate intelligence or talent, her research pointed her to grit: a combination of passion and perseverance that allows those who have it—or build it—to thrive.  Her first book outlined how all of us can become more gritty.

  • Bob Iger on Power, Succession, and Leading Disney Through Upheaval

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    Summary.   

    Longtime Disney CEO Bob Iger sits down with Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, to reflect on what it takes to lead a company as iconic—and complex—as Disney:

    Few executives have had to make as many high-stakes calls, over as many years, as former Disney CEO Bob Iger. In this conversation with former HBS dean Nitin Nohria, Iger shares what he’s learned about the decisions that really belong to the CEO: where to spend your time, when to step into a problem, when to get out of the way, how to shape culture, and how to lead when crisis becomes a constant.

  • How AI Is Changing Communication: Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy

    How AI Is Changing Communication: Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy

    September 24, 2026

    AI is rapidly changing how top leaders communicate with employees, customers, boards, and each other. In episode 2 of a special four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, we explore how executives can use AI to improve communication without outsourcing the thinking, judgment, and empathy that make it effective. Stanford professor Matt Abrahams and Zapier CEO Wade Foster discuss how leaders are using AI to synthesize information, structure ideas, prepare for difficult conversations, and rehearse for high-stakes moments. They also explain why leaders should be wary of letting AI write everything for them, how overreliance on AI can create a “comprehension gap,” and why preserving a distinctive human voice may become even more important as AI-generated communication becomes ubiquitous. Abrahams is the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter and host of the podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart. Foster is the cofounder and CEO of Zapier, a software automation company.

    Plus:

    • Why we need clear rules for when and how AI should be used in workplace communication
    • Why AI could make spontaneous, unscripted communication more valuable
    • Why you should use AI to challenge your assumptions, not just confirm them
    • How leaders can hold on to accountability and authenticity
  • Dare to Be Bad at Something (from Fixable)

    Dare to Be Bad at Something (from Fixable)

    September 22, 2026

    Sometimes the only way to win is by finding the courage to lose. Cold Call presents a special episode from TED’s Fixable podcast. In it, the show’s hosts, Leadership Coach Anne Morriss and Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei, challenge leaders to “dare to be bad” in order to free up capacity to excel at more important things. They share insight on the power of a strategic “no,” the value of ruthless prioritization, and how Steve Jobs and Apple delivered breakthrough innovation by strategically underperforming. Frances also explains why you can’t always trust your own instincts, and Anne reflects on the lessons she learned in her early days of parenting.

    You can listen to more episodes of Fixable wherever you get your podcasts or here.

  • What New CEOs Get Wrong About the Job

    What New CEOs Get Wrong About the Job

    September 22, 2026

    Becoming CEO can look like the culmination of a career. But the skills that help someone rise to the top job aren’t necessarily the ones that make them successful once they get there. Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, has spent three decades studying CEOs and working with new leaders as they adjust to the demands of the role. He says one of the biggest surprises for new CEOs is realizing that they can’t—and shouldn’t—run the company themselves. Instead, their job is to create the conditions for their leadership team to run it well. He also explains how CEOs can stay connected to their organizations, build the right leadership team, manage their boards, focus their time, and decide which emerging issues—including AI—actually deserve their attention. Nohria is author of The CEO: The Role, the Reality, the Responsibility.

  • When There’s More Work Than Your Team Can Handle

    When There’s More Work Than Your Team Can Handle

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    When demands increase while resources shrink, leaders can’t simply absorb the extra work or push an already-overextended team harder. Both approaches carry costs:

    When my coaching client, Chris* became chief legal counsel at a financial services firm, he didn’t anticipate how fast the workload would escalate. Within his first year, the company closed three major acquisitions back-to-back, producing an avalanche of contract reviews, compliance filings, and regulatory matters. Every time Chris tried to hand something off, his team would say, “we’re doing our best, but we’re at capacity.” He understood, but since the work still had to get done, Chris absorbed it himself. Working nights and weekends to keep up soon compromised Chris’s ability to drive the very high-level strategy he’d been tapped to lead.

  • What It Takes to Make Progress When the Future Feels Out of Control

    What It Takes to Make Progress When the Future Feels Out of Control

    September 15, 2026

    When the future feels increasingly out of our control, how can leaders and organizations make progress? University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, a pioneer in the study of optimism, resilience, and human flourishing, argues that the answer is agency: the belief that we can influence outcomes and create positive change. He defines agency as a combination of three capabilities: efficacy—the belief that you can achieve a goal now; optimism—the belief that you can achieve it in the future; and imagination—the ability to envision possibilities that don’t yet exist. And he explains how leaders can cultivate these qualities in themselves and their organizations, how managers can help employees overcome catastrophizing, and what AI can—and can’t—do when it comes to one of the most important human capabilities: imagination. Seligman is the author of Agency: The Psychological History of Human Progress.