Leadership development

Boris Groysberg, Harvard Business School professor and coauthor of the HBR article Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model. Many star performers hired from outside don’t perform as expected at their new company. So, develop stars within your company; for example, through strong training and mentoring programs.

This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military. Who is the most “clutch” person you know? That’s the question I always get when I talk about how people succeed under pressure. My answer is always a military leader — someone trained to make combat decisions with life-or-death consequences. No […]

Seek, sense, share.

A strong constitution and a juggler’s finesses are assets in what may well be the major challenge of a rising manager’s career.

One of the sillier questions I get asked often is this: can someone learn to be creative or is it something innate? It’s a stupid question for one reason: you never have to choose. Whatever or whoever you are right now, you can learn to be better at whatever it is you do, creative thinking […]

A four-step process.

It takes a concentrated effort, but it's good for the organization.

In the era of remote and hybrid work, their role as connectors is more important than ever. Here’s what they need to succeed.

Every two years my firm, The RBL Group, partners with Hewitt to conduct a study on the Top Companies for Leaders. It highlights those companies that have gone beyond the basics of grooming strong leaders and have come up with new ways to test their employees in the global marketplace. Quality of leadership within a […]

The problem is often their bosses.

To realize their full potential, leaders need to be challenged by multiple perspectives outside their office walls. by Nick Morgan

Within six months of completing the program, 38% of participants earned promotions.

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook. This week’s focus: leadership development.) Startled […]

Persistent gender bias too often disrupts the learning process at the heart of becoming a leader. Here’s how to correct the problem.

This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military. Today’s leaders are continually cajoled to act as “outside-the-box” thinkers. Such pronouncements give the impression the only sound solutions are ones never previously conceived. However, what industry and the military really strive to produce are leaders possessing strong critical and creative […]

I'm worried about Generation X and corporations. As far as I can tell, these two have a tentative relationship at best - and are likely headed for some...

Occasionally I am asked if there are any lessons learned from my work in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya that helped me as a Marine in Bosnia, Iraq,...

Balance the organization's needs with employees'.

To attract and retain great people, several things need to coalesce. From the extrinsic reward of a salary to the more nuanced (and more important) intrinsic reward of people feeling that they have a meaningful role, it requires thought and a proactive approach to keep talent once you’ve got it. One of the most critical […]

Two promising new models blend skills training and work experience.

Carlos Ghosn, a former executive vice president of Renault, became the COO of Nissan Motor Co., a troubled auto company in Japan when Renault bought 38%...

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook based on the idea that connecting people was a fundamentally good thing-and a way to turn a handsome profit. But from...

Leadership is hard. How can you balance compassion for your people with effectiveness in getting the job done? A global pandemic, economic volatility,...

WHAT MAKES A LEADER? CAN YOU REALLY LEARN TO LEAD? You might believe that leaders are born, not made. Perhaps you think that you need to hold an important...

In 1998, the CEO of Whirlpool Corp. decides to change the company's strategy significantly to escape an increasingly unattractive "stalemate" in the appliance...

In late June 2005, UBS Group CEO Peter Wuffli--anointed "Master of Zurich" by the financial press--was returning to Zurich from the firm's latest three-day...

Position yourself for success. Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with "HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself (Vol....

How to lean in at work. Women regularly face unfair challenges in the workplace--from being passed over for promotion to being ignored in conversation....

Hewlett-Packard's proposed $24 billion acquisition of rival Compaq marked the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. The merger was Hewlett-Packard's...

After years of vigorous denials, on January 14, 2013 Lance Armstrong admitted in a television interview with Oprah Winfrey that he "doped" in each of...

After hitting an all-time low in 2008, Domino's Pizza underwent a vigorous rebranding, product development, and embraced innovative technologies to become...

After a decade as CEO, Tim Cook is facing one of his biggest strategic transitions of his tenure. While Apple had performed spectacularly well under Cook,...

Describes James Houghton's actions in assuming the role of CEO at Corning in the midst of a recession. Not only must he turn around operating performance,...

Costco Companies, one of the major players in the wholesale club industry, has developed a new class of membership that offers discounted services--auto,...

Case A, the subject of this particular teaching note, traces Gazi's personal and business journey, and contains ample material to evaluate Gazi as a person,...

Seven years after graduation, an MBA grad accepts the COO position in a company he's never heard of in an industry he knows nothing about. Moving up a...

A new mentorship program launched with early success at Zendesk in the United States and is now expanding to all employees across 15 countries. Women...

Presents a synopsis of High Flyers, by Morgan McCall. Offers a method for identifying and training managers with potential--to build management bench...

Position yourself for success. Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with "HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself (Vol....

Jim Sharpe, 11 years after receiving his MBA from Harvard and working for others, has finally become his own boss and 100% owner of manufacturer of aluminum...

Boris Groysberg, Harvard Business School professor and coauthor of the HBR article Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model. Many star performers hired from outside don’t perform as expected at their new company. So, develop stars within your company; for example, through strong training and mentoring programs.

This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military. Who is the most “clutch” person you know? That’s the question I always get when I talk about how people succeed under pressure. My answer is always a military leader — someone trained to make combat decisions with life-or-death consequences. No […]

Seek, sense, share.

Harvard Business Review publishes new and authoritative ideas for improving the practice of management. Written by leading business thinkers and executives,...

A strong constitution and a juggler’s finesses are assets in what may well be the major challenge of a rising manager’s career.

Harvard Business Review publishes new and authoritative ideas for improving the practice of management. Written by leading business thinkers and executives,...

One of the sillier questions I get asked often is this: can someone learn to be creative or is it something innate? It’s a stupid question for one reason: you never have to choose. Whatever or whoever you are right now, you can learn to be better at whatever it is you do, creative thinking […]

A four-step process.

It takes a concentrated effort, but it's good for the organization.

In the era of remote and hybrid work, their role as connectors is more important than ever. Here’s what they need to succeed.