Welcome to this week’s edition of Elite Leadership Insights: Weekend Reads, a resource for you to utilize as you continue your leadership journey and packaged so you can casually read them over the weekend. We curate these articles from leading business and academic organizations. Continuous learning is a critical part of leadership improvement. Feel free to share this with your team. Enjoy and have a great weekend!
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Don’t miss the bonus articles at the bottom of this post!
Here are this week’s Weekend Reads. Enjoy and feel free to share this with your colleagues.
10 Rules for Coaching Your Team to Greatness, Entrepreneur Media, September 4, 2023. A good boss should be more like a coach. Whether you’re leading other people or managing a team of one. Whatever you ask of those under you, you have to be willing to do the same. You cannot just stand on the sidelines giving orders. You must get into the arena with the rest of the team.
5 Leadership Lessons From The Next Generation, Forbes, September 4, 2023. Leadership is about inspiring others to do their best in pursuit of a common cause. That’s simple to say, but much harder to achieve. This is because leadership usually involves motivating a diverse group of people, with different agendas, ideas and skills, to work towards a shared goal – a goal that some of them might not even care that much about.
Leveraging the ‘Great Stay’ With Learning, Chief Learning Officer, September 1, 2023. The tide is turning in the job market. The historic levels of job hopping and quits we saw during the “Great Reshuffle” have subsided as more professionals stay put in their roles for longer in a moment many are now dubbing the “Big Stay.” LinkedIn data shows the rate of people staying in roles for less than a year has sharply declined, down nearly 30 percent compared to last year as of April. Federal data shows a similar trend, with quit rates falling to pre-pandemic levels.
Incorporating DEI into Decision-Making, Harvard Business Review, September 1, 2023. Most people believe in promoting DEI in the workplace. But implicit and unconscious biases — not to mention the constant juggling of priorities required at work — can lead to inequitable decision-making. In this article, drawing on recent research, the authors suggest that this problem can be addressed by making DEI more immediately obvious, or salient, to managers immediately before they need to make consequential decisions about such matters as hiring, promotions, and performance evaluation.
Spotify’s CEO Just Taught a Powerful Lesson in Leadership. It Starts With Just 9 Words, Inc. Magazine, September 5, 2023. “I’m really glad when my team … proves me wrong.” That’s how Spotify CEO Daniel Ek began a recent tweet. Ek explained that when his team pitched the idea for “Discover Weekly,” a weekly, curated playlist of 30 songs delivered to Spotify listeners, he didn’t think it was special. But as the team kept building, excitement grew. And when Discover Weekly launched, it became a hit. Today it’s one of the top features on Spotify. That experience taught Ek a powerful lesson.
THIS WEEK’S BONUS ARTICLES
Identify Critical Roles to Improve Performance, MIT Sloan Management Review, August 14, 2023. Leaders like to show that they value employees. They proclaim that everyone on the team is critical to the organization’s success. As uplifting as that sentiment is, it simply isn’t true. Talent can be a source of competitive advantage only if great people are in the most critical roles. Having stars in jobs that aren’t critical is just a waste of talent.
5 Ways To Be A Stand-Out Leader And Excel In Your Career, Forbes, September 1, 2023. There are lots of ways to describe stand-out leaders. It goes without saying that leading with empathy contributes to success for today’s top brass. But what if adding two other unlikely bedfellows to the mix could help you shine from the crowd and build a stronger career. One is fearlessness—the ability to go against the grain and stick your neck out. The other is the ability to harness your anger and use its strength to lead your team without becoming a maniacal jerk.
PODCAST: How Do You Develop Leadership Skills?, Chicago Booth Review, September 1, 2023. Airport bookstores are full of volumes claiming to reveal the secrets of effective leadership, and yet business leaders often don’t seem to be getting any better at actually leading. Some people seem to be born leaders, but many executives really struggle with exercising authority, connecting with their reports, and motivating their teams. In this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, we present a discussion exploring how people can become better leaders.
PODCAST: Surviving the Attention Economy: How to Keep Audiences Engaged, Knowledge at Wharton, September 5, 2023. Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger talks with Knowledge at Wharton about his latest study, which offers important takeaways for marketers, advertisers, influencers, and anyone who wants to craft more compelling written communication.
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