Can leaders lose their leadership effectiveness over time? Is that a real loss of leadership competence or perceived decline? What could have caused the loss? In the second phase of my year-long longitudinal study on leadership development in SMEs, I noticed a significant decline in the ratings of some managers from a particular SME according…
Category: Leadership
How well is your organisation navigating the five phases of crisis management in the COVID-19 pandemic?
No one could have predicted the COVID-19, so we thought, apart from Bill Gates in his 2015 TED talk and many others including health officials and experts, politicians, authors and movie directors and apparently a psychic. However, most of us really didn’t see this coming, until after the first case of pneumonia of unknown cause…
Successful Managers Don’t Do What Effective Managers Do?
According to the study conducted by F. Luthans, R.M. Hodgetts and S. A. Rosenkrantz (1988), successful managers and effective managers seem to be spending their time on quite different activities. Their investigation on 450 managers revealed that successful managers spent 48% of their time Networking (socialising, politicking and interacting with outsiders), 28% on Communication (exchanging…
Managing Paradoxes in Leadership with Competing Values Framework
Many have debated on the differences between a leader and a manager (Yukl 2010). . Some suggest that one can’t be both at the same time, whereas others simply view them as different roles that may be executed by the same person. I’m inclined toward the latter, because that’s what my clients seem to be telling…
Is it “Leader” Development or “Leadership” Development?
There has been a great deal of discussion regarding the difference between “leader” and “leadership” development. The former focuses on the individual leader and has been criticised by Gemmill and Oakley (1992) as an “alienating social myth” that creates a learned “helplessness” in those known as “followers”. The latter therefore takes into consideration the entire…
I’m the Boss! Why Should I Care If You Like Me? – Bloomberg
Many people assume that it’s possible for a person to be an effective leader without being likable. That is technically true, but you may not like the odds. In a study of 51,836 leaders, we found just 27 who were rated at the bottom quartile in terms of likability but in the top quartile in…
7 Tips on Leading Your Former Peers
It has been said that up to 90% of mid-level executives have been promoted in the past to lead their peers. Many new leaders struggle with getting comfortable in the new role which requires them to lead their former peers. Here are some lessons i’ve learnt from my own journey in leading my former peers….
10 Powerful Coaching Questions
I’ve found that the right questions asked at the right time brings about breakthrough that no answers could bring. Questions introduce new perspectives, shifts paradigms, explores the unknown and somehow empowers the individual. Here are some of my favorite ones: 1. What is the reality here? 2. What is the one regret you do not…
Determining Competitive Advantage With Sun Tzu’s Seven Considerations
Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of calculations (算) for winning wars. To him, success is straightforward. The more one calculates, the better chance one will win. The calculations are based on seven areas: (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3)…
If You Don’t Have A Person You Cannot Stand in Your Team, Your Team May Not Stand For Long
Time and time again, research has proven that the more heterogeneous a top management team is, the more effective it would be in providing strategic leadership. The heterogeneity in top management teams promotes debate, which often leads to better strategic decisions. In turn, better strategic decisions produce higher firm performance. For example, heterogeneous top management teams…
The Organization Resilience Survey Based On Adversity Quotient
In an earlier post on Organizational Resilience and Adversity Quotient, i mentioned the Organizational Resilience Survey which i had developed. It contains twelve statements according to the C.O.R.E. model. There are three statements that measure each of the Control, Ownership, Reach and Endurance dimensions. The statements and the respective dimensions are listed below: Control 1. …
The Test of Sun Tzu’s Art of War On Concubines
The following is a short biography of Sun Tzu written by Sima Qian, one of the famous historians of China. While it’s authenticity has been debated, it serves as a great story on leadership. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Sun Tzu Wu was a native of the Ch`i State. His ART OF WAR brought him to the notice of He Lu,…
Everyone A Leader 