Passion and Discipline: Don Quixote's Lessons for Leadership

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Flawed Managers that Flourish

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In 1990, psychologists Robert Hogan, Robert Raskin, and Dan Fazzini wrote a brilliant essay called “The Dark Side of Charisma.” It argued that flawed managers fall into three types: the High Likability Floater , who rises effortlessly in an organization because he never takes any difficult decisions or makes any enemies. the Homme de Ressentiment , who seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. the Narcissist , the most interesting of the three, whose energy and self-confidence and charm lead him inexorably up the corporate ladder. Narcissists are terrible managers. They resist accepting suggestions, thinking it will make them appear weak, and they don’t believe that others have anything useful to tell them. “Narcissists are biased to take more credit for success than is legitimate,” Hogan et al. write, and “biased to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their failures and shortcomings for the same reasons that they claim more success than is their due.” Mo...
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We are what we are - the Lake Wobegon Effect

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The Lake Wobegon effect(1) is the human tendency to overestimate one's achievements and capabilities in relation to others. It is named after the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from the radio series A Prairie Home Companion , where, according to Garrison Keillor, "all the women are beautiful, all the men strong, and all the children intelligent"(2). Keillor’s 1985 novel Lake Wobegon Days describes life in the fictional town situated in the US state of Minnesota. According to Keillor, Lake Wobegon is the seat of Mist County, Minnesota(3), a tiny county near the geographic center of Minnesota that supposedly does not appear on maps because of the "incompetence of surveyors who mapped out the state in the 19th century". The town's slogan is Gateway to Central Minnesota(4). The town’s motto is mentioned on its crest – sumos quud sumos – we are what we are(5). In a similar way, a large majority of people claim to be above average; this phenomenon has been obse...
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Back to the Drawing Board or Square One

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After coming a cropper against spinners who normally struggle to find a regular place in the New Zealand Test squad, the media-hyped Indian batting line-up flopped against pace barring a few exceptions in Australia. The abrupt retirement and return home mid-tour by Ravichandran Ashwin and Rohit Sharma getting dropped (or whatever you may like to call it) from the playing XI in the last Test, rounds up the story. To sum it up in two lines - you cannot entrust to a failed politician the reins of India's cricket team, and the star system has to give way to actually deserving players if Test cricket in India has to survive, or shall we be kinder - go forward. Not only was not Rohit firing, but also others like Kohli and Gill were struggling, when Rohit chose to 'stand down', why no opportunity was given to Sarfaraz or Easwaran? The batting returns of Rohit and Kohli are diminishing, more so in the last few months. They cannot play spin at home or pace abroad. That should be eno...
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