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.'”