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This article was written by Laura Villacrusis-Weaver, a leadership consultant with The Refinery Leadership Partners, an international consulting company, in co-operation with Refinery co-principal Rosie Steeves (rosie@refineryleadership.com). For more ideas about leadership development, visit www.refineryleadership.com. This article was previously published in Business in Vancouver in July 2008. A leader I used to work with amazed me once when he showed me his personal leadership journal. His journaling wasn’t what amazed me--many leaders try this simple, yet powerful development activity--but that the journal itself was so thick and well-worn. He’d been writing in it at least once a week, he told me, for six years. Many leaders start journaling with the best of intentions. They get into it for a while, at least until “real work” gets in the way and their journal is relegated to a desk drawer, mostly blank and completely forgotten. But my old co-worker would neve...

Writing in the Spring 2008 issue of MIT - Sloan Management Review , George S. Day and Paul J. H. Schoemaker talk of vigilant leaders. Vigilant leaders are those who make a practice of being abundantly alert and deeply curious so that they can detect, and act on, the earliest signs of threat or opportunity. They seek to nurture equally vigilant employees by modeling such behavior and by providing incentives for managers to look for — and interpret — weak signals. While such icons as Andy Grove and Jack Welch exemplify vigilant CEOs, the trait remains in short supply. That is a conclusion the coauthors reached after surveying 119 global companies about their overall capacity for diligence. Among their findings: Just 23% of the businesses were run by CEOs who tried to pick up weak signals from the periphery. Most leaders, they theorize, rise to the top by demonstrating superior operational skills. To help leaders recognize and develop the habit of vigilance, the researchers examine in det...

As every company knows, employees are its greatest resource. It's more than a shame, then, that many workers are either not encouraged or afraid to speak up and communicate ideas at work. Employers are losing valuable knowledge and experience, and their companies are weaker for that loss. Latent voice episodes and Upward voice Latent voice episodes describe those moments at work when someone considers speaking up about an issue, problem, or even an improvement opportunity. How do people think about speaking up? The episodes are called "latent" because they are potential communications that may or may not in fact occur. Understanding the factors that encourage or inhibit people speaking up at work with the relevant ideas and concerns they have is the focus of this research. Upward voice refers to communications directed to someone higher in the organizational hierarchy with the perceived power or authority to take action on the problem or suggestion. T...

Do Indian CEOs and business leaders operate in a way that is markedly different from those in other parts of the world? What is the source of their competitive advantage? Can other managers learn from their experiences? Four Wharton professors – Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh (now dean of the Nanyang business school in Singapore) and Michael Useem – answer these questions in a new study titled, "The DNA of Indian Leadership: The Governance, Management and Leadership of Leading Indian Firms," co-sponsored by India's National HRD Network. Based on interviews with 100 CEOs of leading Indian companies, the researchers concluded that while top Indian leaders do share several attributes with their U.S. counterparts, they also have distinctive characteristics. In contrast to U.S. business leaders, Indian CEOs tend to be more preoccupied with internal management, long-term strategic vision and organizational culture. Financial matters, on the other hand, are ...

Companies worldwide face a looming leadership crisis due to the retirement of baby boomers (see text at the end of this post) and rapid growth in Asia with half fearful they cannot develop the skills they need, a study released on Thursday (Oct 18 2007) said. The survey by IBM's consulting arm interviewed 400 HR executives from 40 countries and suggests companies are putting growth strategies at risk if they cannot identify and develop the next generation of leaders. Baby boomers will drain companies of valuable knowledge when they retire, while multinational firms need to find people to lead their businesses in booming markets such as India and China , the study said. "You've got this perfect storm of leadership crisis that is hitting the mature and maturing markets," said IBM's Eric Lesser, one of three co-authors of the study "Companies are really crunched both in terms of their current capacity of leadership and also their ability to develop lea...

PLUGGING INTO PEOPLE'S MINDS AND HEARTS The criticality of the human element is today more pronounced than ever before. What sparks and sustains the success of an enterprise is its people. This is a universal truth. It’s no different in India . Leadership is all about plugging into the minds and hearts of people, about rallying them around to a compelling and exciting vision of the future. It is about upping the quality of imagination of the organisation. It is about encouraging a spirit of intellectual ferment and constructive dissent so that people are not bound by the status quo, and mavericks are given space and free play. It is about building the highest levels of empathy, without compromising on fairness and running a popularity contest. As I look ahead, I believe the war for talent will intensify and that could become a major speed breaker. There is an acute competition – rather a scramble for inducting and retaining people with the competencies apposite for a globalis...