Leadership

From BBC Capital – “It turns out, if you want to really understand why companies do what they do, you have to pay attention to the leaders running those companies, and recognise that they are human too. It’s not an accident that the great strategy treatises of history, from Sun Tuz’s The Art of War to Shakespeare’s Richard III, take readers into the mind of the leader – their frailties as much as their power… What was said by the executives Alan and I spoke to brought home to me a basic truth about CEOs – it turns out they’re no different than you and me. Rather than being unfeeling technocrats, they’re real people, with all the warts and biases and emotions that go along with that. For example, have you ever messed-up something in a big way but when called-out on it, proceed to blame everyone else? That’s just how one CEO evaluated a corporate meltdown that cost him his job. In our interview, he proceeded to tell me that there were “seven reasons” why the company fell apart. First, my chief financial officer let me down; second, our customers were not smart enough to grasp what we were trying to do; third, the regulators were out to get me; and on and on. You get the picture.”

From Washington Post – “…spending two minutes before a stressful event like a job interview holding ‘expansive’ power poses–such as putting your hands on the hips like Wonder Woman–can increase testosterone and lower the stress hormone cortisol. ‘The mind shapes the body,’ she says, ‘and the body shapes the mind.'”

From Forbes.com – “In his TED talk, Julian advises people to remember the word ‘hail.’ It stands for: Honesty. Authenticity. Integrity. Love. He says, ‘The H, honesty, is being true in what you say, being straight and clear. The A is authenticity, just being yourself. The I is integrity, being your word, actually doing what you say, and being somebody people can trust. And the L is love, (in the sense of) wishing people well.'”

From Inc Magazine – ” Our brains are hardwired to make much of modern life difficult. This is especially true when it comes to dealing with uncertainty. On the bright side, if you know the right tricks, you can override your brain’s irrational tendencies and handle uncertainty effectively. Our brains give us fits when facing uncertainty because they’re wired to react to it with fear. In a recent study, a Caltech neuroeconomist imaged subjects’ brains as they were forced to make increasingly uncertain bets–the same kind of bets we’re forced to make on a regular basis in business. The less information the subjects had to go on, the more irrational and erratic their decisions became. You might think the opposite would be true–the less information we have, the more careful and rational we are in evaluating the validity of that information. Not so. As the uncertainty of the scenarios increased, the subjects’ brains shifted control over to the limbic system, the place where emotions, such as anxiety and fear, are generated.”