VUSM Faculty Focus

When you’re in the middle of a difficult conversation, it’s common to focus solely on yourself: your ideas, your viewpoint, your feelings. But a “me-centric” approach can backfire. To achieve your goal, you need to think beyond yourself. While crafting your message, you must keep the other person’s feelings and opinions in mind, too. To do so, avoid these common mistakes: don’t assume your viewpoint is obvious; don’t exaggerate; don’t challenge someone’s character or integrity; don’t blame others for your feelings; don’t tell others what they should do; and don’t say “It’s not personal.”

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What has the coronavirus pandemic taught us about ourselves and our relationships? In a deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation, leadership expert Simon Sinek shares his own experience caring for his mental health as the world shut down. He discusses why we need to nurture friendships (in both good times and bad), explains why anyone can be a leader — and reveals the secret to discovering your “why” in life.

Do your employees bring you every little “speed bump” in their day? Here are four strategies for minimizing these interruptions and empowering employees to make their own decisions: 1) Put an emphasis on attention management. Start by identifying whether an “open-door policy” is something that is stated or promoted in your organization. If so, make it explicit with a clear definition. An open-door policy was never intended to mean that anyone is available to be interrupted at any time for any reason. 2) Promote self-confidence in your staff. Set boundaries for your employees, making sure they understand the responsibilities of their role, the types of decisions they can and should make on their own, and the general limits of their authority. 3) Embrace the tough decisions. If there are employees whose judgment you don’t trust, try to understand why, so you can find remedies. 4) Emphasize the idea that mistakes are opportunities to learn. Hold team members accountable to their decisions by using mistakes as teaching opportunities.

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The pandemic has caused many workers to think deeply about what’s most important in their lives and how to spend more of their time focused on what gives them purpose. The more managers understand and help support the existential needs of their employees, the more they’ll be able to retain workers and benefit from a workforce powered by meaning. The author offers three ways to engage and retain employees seeking more meaning in their lives. First, look beyond salary and other material benefits and think about what is going to help workers meet their need for meaning in life. Second, help all your workers, regardless of position, feel like their jobs serve an important purpose. Third, if remote work is going to be common, spend more time than usual focused on facilitating social opportunities and providing mentorship in order to stave off feelings of loneliness.

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How do the world’s best leaders and visionaries earn trust? They don’t just present data — they also tell great stories.

Leadership consultant, Karen Eber, demystifies what makes for effective storytelling and explains how anyone can harness it to create empathy and inspire action.

Chronic complainers in the workplace are toxic not only to themselves but also to the people around them.  A habit often formed in childhood, it arises from a need for validation and attention and over time can alter the neural pathways in the brain and become a part of the personality, which makes it hard to deal with. 

Offering sympathy and solutions is unlikely to change the behavior and if you encounter it in the workplace the best approach is to set limits on the complaining, by pointing out that complaints should be about specific issues that can be resolved.  You should also suggest that the complainer express appreciation and gratitude at moments that they feel the urge to complain.  With coaching and therapy it may be possible for a chronic complainer to shift their pattern of behavior and become more constructive.

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The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we work for good. Can it also change it for the better?

Consultant Patty McCord reviews four key insights employers and employees alike gleaned from their shift to working from home — and shares how companies can use what they learned in lockdown to creatively and innovatively rethink how we do business.

Calls for authenticity at work ask for passionate people with diverse, fresh perspectives who challenge old ways of thinking. But too often workplace culture fails to support the authenticity of professionals of color and other underrepresented groups, leading instead to backlash and fewer opportunities.

Writer Jodi-Ann Burey outlines steps toward exposing privilege and achieving true equity on the job — and implores those in leadership positions to accept responsibility for change.

Remote work is taking its toll in the form of chronic stress and burnout. Cultivating mindfulness in our online environment is a way to combat this depletion of energy. The authors recommend applying three mindfulness principles to your remote work to reduce stress levels and reconnect with your purpose. First, offer your team your presence by eliminating distractions and focusing on how you’re being with the people you’re speaking to. Next, be in the moment by focusing on where you are now, rather than thinking about the future. Finally, enable connection and community by practicing deep listening and paying close attention to inclusion. Remote working doesn’t have to be a barrier to your capacity to deliver leadership presence, empathize and connect with colleagues, and build strong workplace communities.

Click here to read more!

Find inspiration to master 2021’s balancing act: You are looking ahead, while still processing the turmoil of 2020 and taking stock.

There’s no shortage of leadership advice on the internet, but figuring out which resources are actually valuable can feel like information overload. To help you cut through the noise, we’ve curated 10 of our favorite leadership blogs and podcasts for 2021 on leadership strategy and development.

Also, we could not talk about leadership blogs without mentioning our own blogs, the Leadership Examiner Digest and the WDHB Blog. Both blogs offer powerful stories and resources relevant to today’s leaders and organizations. We know that no matter your industry, you’ll find invaluable insights in our blogs, as well as in the 10 that we’ve highlighted below.

Click here for the best leadership blogs and podcasts for 2021! Bookmark these and refer to them often for tangible leadership lessons that you can apply immediately.

What do the world’s top leaders do to make everyone else around them smarter, more engaged, and better and how can you do these things too?

Liz Wiseman is a New York Times bestselling author of three books, and the CEO of the Wiseman Group. She identifies the two types of leaders: the diminishers and multipliers.

There are some leaders who are able to realize and utilize the full potential of their team and then there are others who rely on their own intelligence and abilities to get things done.

Watch the discussion to learn the difference between the two!

It’s a rare and precious thing to have a colleague who knows how to give praise and criticism in a way that’s challenging and caring at the same time. It doesn’t have to be as rare as it is, though. Radical candor can be learned.

Kim Scott will explain a simple tool that will help you say what you really think in a way that helps you build stronger relationships at work.

Kim Scott is the author of Just Work: Get *t Done Fast and Fair as well as Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. Trier Bryant and Kim co-founded the company Just Work to help organizations and individuals create more equitable workplaces. Jason Rosoff and Kim co-founded the company Radical Candor to help rid the world of bad bosses. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies.

At a certain point in life, people transition from “time to live” to “time left to live.” This shift creates a new sense of urgency about identifying the purpose of our existence. And as people confront this challenge, they come up against a set of fundamental human needs that collectively define how we experience the meaning of our existence: belonging, purpose, competence, control, and transcendence.  Thinking about these five pillars of meaning can help you reinvent your life.

Click here to read the article!

Trust is the foundation for everything we do. But what do we do when it’s broken? In an eye-opening talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei gives a crash course in trust: how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it — something she worked on during a recent stint at Uber. “If we can learn to trust one another more, we can have unprecedented human progress,” Frei says.

Frances Frei is a professor of technology and operations management at the Harvard Business School.

While work will likely never go back to our pre-pandemic status quo, the future will be a blended one that leverages the best of what both virtual and face-to-face experiences can offer.  The authors argue that collaboration, innovation, acculturation, and dedication are difficult to replicate virtually and sustain without some face-to-face interaction. But to design in person environments that will be successful in the future, they say, you must create an immersive experience that incorporates elements like purposeful focus, interpersonal bonding, deep learning, unencumbered experimentation, and structured serendipity. While our blended future is still distant, companies will need to start considering what warrants face-to-face interaction and how to make the most of those precious opportunities. 

Click here to read more about our blended future!

Nashater Deu Solheim, a forensic psychologist and leadership coach, says many people struggle to gain influence with those in their organization who don’t report directly to them. That has only become more difficult in virtual office settings. But she says whether it comes to managing up to your bosses or out to your peers and clients, there are proven techniques to understand others’ thinking and win their respect. She explains her framework of preparation, behavior, and communication methods to do just that. Solheim is the author of the book The Leadership PIN Code: Unlocking the Key to Willing and Winning Relationships.

Click here to listen to the Podcast!

Calls for societal change have sparked unprecedented demand to create more diverse and inclusive organizations. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s also the smart thing to do.

Organizations and leaders who can unlock the collective intelligence of all their talent have a much better chance of success. Because inclusive leaders drive individual, team, and organizational performance.

Click here to learn how to find and develop inclusive leaders?

As health care organizations grapple with responding to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and adapting their operations to continue to fulfill other aspects of their care mission, they must also begin to define and prepare for the future of care amid economic, regulatory, and social uncertainties. What might the post-Covid-19 landscape look like? How can health systems address a range of possible challenges? What are the opportunities to revolutionize care?

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Employee diversity and inclusive leadership are goals for most organizations today, but how do we get there? Try a “reverse mentorship” program, which sets up junior team members to guide senior staff. Here are 6 tips to make reverse mentorship work, from executive coach and personal development advocate Patrice Gordon.

Leaders across virtually every industry are pledging to be more inclusive; but if their actions and behaviors don’t support those values, the progress stops there. In a recent study, the authors applied a combination of computational linguistics, vocal mapping, and facial micro-expression analysis to determine what truly makes a leader inclusive in the eyes of an audience.

Here they provide three behaviors that can be learned, practiced, and mastered

Choosing to be seen in the arena is no easy feat. Brown encourages a clarity of one’s own values and having a support person that is willing to pick them up and dust them off when they fail or make mistakes. Brown notes, “if one isn’t making mistakes, then one isn’t really showing up!”

She explores why “not caring what people think” sends a huge red flag as human beings are “hard-wired for connection.” However, when a person becomes defined by what their critics think, they lose their willingness to be vulnerable.

Is it petrifying to show up and be seen? Yes, absolutely. But remember to make space in the arena for the people and part of you that values courage and creativity.

The world is full of leadership programs, but the best way to learn how to lead might be right under your nose. In this clear, candid talk, Roselinde Torres describes 25 years observing truly great leaders at work, and shares the three simple but crucial questions would-be company chiefs need to ask to thrive in the future.

As physicians, we are immediately thrust into a leadership position from the moment we finish medical school. Despite this, most medical students will obtain little formal leadership training. We seek to improve our leadership abilities as burgeoning physicians. We developed this podcast to challenge ourselves to explore ideas in leadership development and how they apply to medical training. We hope to educate and motivate others to further develop themselves as leaders in health care.

Click here to learn more about the podcast.

Communicating in Times of High Stress, Key Tactics for Communication with Employees, Educational Resources to Address Challenges Your Organization is Facing, Patient Transformation, Business Operations, Digital Expertise, and Research Enterprise – these are all topics that are important in managing the healthcare economy.

Click here to read about the top 60 Healthcare Leadership Podcasts in 2020.

“It’s okay to be kind and commanding,” says Sasha Shillcutt (above), CEO of Brave Enough, an organization that encourages women to live authentically and stop apologizing for their strength. Leading an organization with more than 10,000 women, Shillcutt’s mission is to share life lessons learned from falling down and getting back up again.

Click here to read about Grit & Grace – The Art of Being Formidable.

Appointed in 2009 as the inaugural Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity at Case Western Reserve University, Marilyn Sanders Mobley, PhD, provides strategic leadership for the university-wide effort to develop and sustain a welcoming environment for faculty, students, staff, and alumni.

“I believe that diversity is the nation’s unfinished business,” says Sanders Mobley. Dr. Sanders Mobley talks about the diversity wheel with the multiple diversities we all have; age, gender, religion, geographical location etc. She refers to it as a cultural contact lens – we are all constantly reading our environments. The message is to embrace our differences, be inclusive and learn from one another by embracing our individual strengths.

The nearly universal shift to remote work that occurred at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to adapt their collaborative processes or perish. In the months since, business leaders have struggle to not only sustain productivity, but also to preserve company cultures while leading dispersed teams through heightened uncertainty.

Now, as some employees head back to the office while others remain at home, collaborative processes must continue to adapt.

Click here to read about redefining collaboration during COVID.

The world has seen so much change. Emotions are running high. Uncertainty has led to fear. People are struggling to perform at their best.

Leadership has never been more “real”. As structural supports (role clarity, authority, approval processes and business planning cycles) are stripped away, what is left is trust, communication and empathy.

Click here to watch the Webinar!

With the widespread advances of COVID-19, companies and organizations around the world have been thrust into working remotely. Team leaders understand this is necessary for the well-being of their employees, as well as to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. But as many are discovering, having a virtual team is very different from working face-to-face—and requires a new set of leadership skills.   

Click here to review a list ways to form an effective team while working at a distance.

When you can’t look someone directly in the eye, things get much more challenging.  Yet leading virtual teams is the future.  Studies show that 25% of jobs involve teaming from distant locations.  That number is only going to grow.

Click here for 12 powerful tips on how to lead a team you often can’t see!

Emily is an executive coach and software engineering manager. She has led teams and advised other managers for years. She’s seen the difference a truly passionate leader and manager can make for their team and the world around them.

Like a lot of managers and coaches, she’s had a front row seat to the patterns that cause a lot of leaders to overwork and over stress. She is the author of the guide The 7 Leadership Lies and she’s the host of the Emotional Leadership podcast. She’s also a member of the Coaching for Leaders Academy.

In this conversation, we discuss some of the common lies that leaders tend to tell themselves that lead to frustration and impostor syndrome. Then, we explore better ways to frame these beliefs, to lead with more confidence and effectiveness.

Steve Blank is a Silicon Valley serial-entrepreneur and academician. He is recognized for developing the Customer Development methodology, which launched the Lean Startup movement. Steve is also the co-founder of E.piphany.

His Google Tech talk, The Secret History of Silicon Valley, offers a widely regarded insider’s perspective on the emerging Silicon Valley’s start-up innovation. He’s also published three books: The Four Steps to the Epiphany*, Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost, and The Startup Owner’s Manual*.

In this conversation, Steve and I discuss the steps that leaders should take when making pivots. We explored the importance of creating a Minimal Viable Product or Minimum Viable Service, followed quickly with customer discovery, rapid testing, and refinement.

Companies are counting on their future leaders to manage with more speed, flexibility and trust than ever before. But how can middle managers climb the corporate ladder while also challenging the way things have always been done?

Leadership expert Elizabeth Lyle offers a new approach to breaking the rules while you’re on your way up, sharing creative ways organizations can give middle managers the space and coaching they need to start leading differently.

We’re taught to believe that hard work and dedication will lead to success, but that’s not always the case. Gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation are among the many factors that affect our chances, says writer and advocate Melinda Epler, and it’s up to each of us to be allies for those who face discrimination.

In this actionable talk, Epler shares three ways to support people who are underrepresented in the workplace. “There’s no magic wand for correcting diversity and inclusion,” she says. “Change happens one person at a time, one act at a time, one word at a time.”

You can’t control the weather, but you can adjust your sails.

And that’s what we are trying to do, right now. The pandemic is worsening in some parts of the world. Phase 3…Phase 4…back to Phase 3. State to state, region to region, it’s a patchwork of different economic realities, which seem to shift like the wind.

Click here to read a blog post by Korn Ferry CEO, Gary Burnison. He is the author of Leadership U: Accelerating Through the Crisis Curve.

In this talk, Sasha Shillcutt covers how when we are vulnerable in sharing our professional (and personal) failures, we become more resilient. We allow ourselves to learn from our mistakes, we open diversity in solutions by talking to others, we avoid failure blindness, and we release self-shame. She discusses how perfectionism leads to burnout, through our inability to accept that failure is part of growth. This talk will encourage resilience and inspire the audience to see failure as a path to resilience.

Sasha K. Shillcutt, MD, MS, FASE is a tenured Associate Professor and the Vice Chair of Strategy and Innovation in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). Sasha is a board-certified anesthesiologist, is a testamur in the Special Competence in Adult Echocardiography (ASCeXAM), and has certification in advanced perioperative echocardiography (Advanced PTEeXAM) through the National Board of Echocardiography. Sasha is a wife, mother, physician, clinical scientist, national educator, writer, and speaker.

In 2016, Sasha was awarded the national American Medical Association’s “Women Physician‚ Inspiring Physician Award” by her peers.

The coronavirus pandemic is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in health care, says emergency physician Esther Choo. Sharing insights into how health workers are responding to the outbreak, she explains what makes this public health emergency different from others — and provides a few simple things you can do to help.

Watch to the end to hear about Choo’s work deploying mobile ICUs across the United States as hospitals start to reach capacity.

Millennials are contributing a lot to the world, and we’re not just talking about Instagram photos of coffee. Dr. Daniel Wozniczka talks on how millennials are the key to the future of a better world for medicine.

Dr. Daniel Wozniczka, M.D., is a Chicago physician with a passion for creating real world solutions which improve healthcare for both patients and physicians. Along with practicing medicine, he is currently completing his MBA and MPH degrees at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He believes the upcoming generation of physicians will completely revolutionize medicine as a whole both locally and globally. He has firsthand healthcare experience not only in Chicago, but also in Sub Saharan African, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

The disruptive nature of the global pandemic has created a rapidly changing environment with long-lasting implications for health care far beyond the immediate crisis.

It is unlikely that we will simply revert back to normal; new ways of thinking will be required and the ability to adapt to new realities and prepare for an unknown future will mean the difference between success and failure. The challenge calls leaders to navigate uncertainty while restructuring care in an abruptly transformed health system.

Click here to read about leading beyond the pandemic.

Professionalism of clinicians and healthcare leaders during the pandemic is paramount.

Healthcare systems are not known for being nimble, and large organizations, used to rolling out changes over months to years, are being asked to make changes on a scale of hours to days. Many of us are experiencing a sense of whiplash from the changing guidelines, and as recommendations for personal protection are being relaxed for political/financial/pragmatic reasons and against scientific evidence, moral distress is peaking. Many with personal health risk factors, sick family members, or a myriad of other reasons, are weighing whether it is safe to go to work, and if not, how to protect the careers they have spent decades developing.

Right now we need leadership who can rise to the occasion, be supportive of their workforce, and take the long view amidst crisis. Now, more than ever, we must not sow discord among ourselves, but instead support our colleagues as much as possible while many of us face some of the most difficult choices of their lives.

Click here to read about professionalism during crisis.

How to Save a Meeting That’s Gotten Tense

It can be surprisingly easy to bring order to a chaotic meeting — and to turn conflict back into conversation — if you know how. Perhaps you don’t have an angry mob yelling at your meeting but there are lots of crises that managers face when a meeting goes off the rails.

Click here to read the article!

Despite having her right leg amputated at age five, Bonnie St. John became the first African-American ever to win medals in Winter Olympic competition, taking home a silver and two bronze medals at the 1984 Winter Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria. In recognition of this historic achievement, Bonnie was quoted on millions of Starbucks coffee cups and was honored at the White House by President George W. Bush. Bonnie has achieved the highest levels of success in a variety of endeavors throughout her life.

In addition to her success as a Paralympic athlete, she is a best-selling author, a highly sought after keynote speaker and leadership consultant for the Fortune 500, a television and radio personality, and an experienced conference facilitator. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University, and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, taking an M.Litt. in Economics.

Upon her return to the United States, Bonnie was appointed by President Clinton as a Director for Human Capital Issues on the White House National Economic Council. In 2015, Bonnie was inducted into the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) Hall of Fame.

Today, Bonnie travels the globe speaking, leading seminars, and researching her various writing projects. She frequently donates personal appearances at schools, homeless shelters, community groups, and other organizations in hundreds of locations while traveling for corporate clients.

The celebrated author of six books, Bonnie co-authored her most recent #1 best-seller, How Great Women Lead, with her teenage daughter, Darcy. Together they traveled around the world on an extraordinary mother-daughter journey into the lives, and life lessons, of fascinating women leaders including Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, fashion designers, CEOs, women’s rights activists, and many more.

Bonnie St. John has been featured extensively in both national and international media including: The Today Show, CNN, CBS Morning News, NBC News, PBS, NPR, and The New York Times, as well as People, “O”, Forbes, Success, and Essence magazines, to name just a few. NBC Nightly News called Bonnie, “One of the five most inspiring women in America.”

Nilofer Merchant suggests a small idea that just might have a big impact on your life and health: Next time you have a one-on-one meeting, make it into a “walking meeting” — and let ideas flow while you walk and talk.

Our biases can be dangerous, even deadly — as we’ve seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in Staten Island, New York.

Diversity advocate, Vernā Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the groups that make you uncomfortable. In a funny, impassioned, important talk, she shows us how.

History has shown us that many great leaders have emerged from adversity. This pandemic has created one of the most volatile global economies of our time. How can we take advantage of the challenges of this environment to bring out the best of ourselves and our teams? How can L&D leaders play a key role in supporting their workforce, shaping leadership, and providing a clear picture of opportunity into the uncertain future?

Click here to read about supporting your team in the current climate as well as access leadership resources via Harvard Business.

Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems. In this talk, she describes two ways to think about a problem that’s slightly too hard for you to solve. Are you not smart enough to solve it … or have you just not solved it yet? A great introduction to this influential field.

Virtual career fairs and events, fully-remote recruiting, more personalized career paths, and greater insights into candidate experiences are quickly becoming the new normal in a post-COVID-19 world.

Click here to read about recruiting strategies during a Post-COVID19 world.

This article is part of a series Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges. It draws together McKinsey’s collective thinking and expertise on five behaviors to help leaders navigate the pandemic and recovery.

Separate articles describe organizing via a network of teams; displaying deliberate calm and bounded optimism; making decisions amid uncertainty; and communicating effectively.

Leadership communication styles have a huge impact when it comes to motivating employees and empowering them to do their best work. After all, as mentioned in the International Journal of Management & Business Studies, great communication can “not only help teams to complete their projects successfully, but also enable organizations to achieve success and growth.”

Click here to read about four examples of powerful and effective leadership communication strategies.

Featuring: Heidi K. Gardner, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School

Before the COVID-19 crisis hit, most companies were already suffering from the dark side of collaboration: over-committed organizations, with people stretched thin across multiple teams and projects at once. Now with the shock of coronavirus, leaders need strategies to help their teams stay focused on preserving business momentum while working from home.

In this webinar you will learn how to:

• Adapt the “Four Ms” of leading over-committed teams—measure, map, manage and motivate—to remote work
• Handle the new and competing tasks that this emergency will generate across the business
• Combat the tendency for stress to increase stereotyping and bias, which undermine diversity efforts and dampen team morale
• Make the new environment familiar with simple, practical tactics to help team members make sense of each other’s behavior, which minimizes the inevitable distractions of working from home and related potential for misunderstandings.

Korn Ferry’s CEO offers five reasons why it’s good to highlight the things that go well during these difficult times.

Click here to read the post!

In such uncertain times, we look to our leaders, but how do you manage an organization through COVID-19—a crisis unlike any we’ve ever experienced?

Professor Dutch Leonard, Harvard University, and CMCO Brian Kenny use Zoom to discuss crisis management and what actions leaders can take now.

As the world grapples with the fear and uncertainty associated with the COVID-19 global pandemic, it also offers a rare opportunity for business leaders to rise to the challenge. Organizations need strong and inspiring leadership to help teams navigate these turbulent and unpredictable times.

In this webinar you will learn how to:

• Lead with transparency and honesty
• Establish a routine to create order
• Integrate recovery periods and tools for releasing fear
• Prepare a long-term plan to deal with the waves of the crisis
• Communicate strategically by incorporating learning and collective purpose

As a leader, you’re committed to transparency in running your department, division, or center. But that’s not as easy as it sounds. What about introducing a major change or initiative? Or announcing a layoff? How to manage the flow of sensitive information without causing confusion or mistrust.

During this podcast, you will learn the process of communicating the most sensitive information with perfect confidence that you’re communicating the right information to the right people at the right time.

Business today is a complex undertaking. Accomplishing tasks an staying focused on achieving your goals requires grit and persistence. An adaptive mindset helps you focus through the distractions, information overload, demanding pace, and the accompanying stresses that can often pull you off task.

In this course, you’ll learn to develop personal resiliency, adaptability, and perseverance. You’ll explore the resources and people it takes to sustain perseverance, and you’ll discover actions to help you build a work-life balance, sharpen your focus, and foster the resilience perseverance to  face and overcome setbacks.

Click here to access the module.

Susanne Madsen is an internationally recognised project leadership coach, trainer and consultant. She is the author of The Power of Project Leadership (now in 2nd edition) and The Project Management Coaching Workbook.Working with organisations across the globe she delivers leadership development programs and executive coaching to help project and change managers step up and become better leaders.

Listen to Susanne Madsen discuss how to manage different personality types within an organization.

Leadership training is currently reinforcing bad behaviors, not fixing it. We’re spending more and more hours and more and more money on these training boot camps, yet somehow things aren’t getting better. So what is the problem? In this video, I’ll break down 5 key ways we need to change our leadership philosophy. These are easy, actionable things you can do today.

Many wonder about the differences between leadership and management. Are they mutually exclusive? Do professionals have both qualities—or do they learn one or the other over a long period of time? These questions are just the tip of the iceberg. In this article, we will take a look at both.

Click here for the article!

Resilience is our ability to bounce back from adversity. It’s what allows us to recover from change or hardship, whether in the workplace or life in general.

Today, as we adapt to unprecedented social distancing requirements in our professional and personal lives, changes seem to come at lightening speed — and our resilience is tested more than ever.

As a leader, it’s important that you demonstrate resiliency for your co-workers. That’s because in difficult times, your people are looking to you for emotional strength and courage. They’re looking to you to set the direction and light the path. If you’re resilient, you’ll project a positive outlook that will help others maintain the emotional strength they need to commit to a shared vision.

Click here for a list of ways to practice resilient leadership in your daily routine!

In this episode of the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast, John Maxwell teaches what you should put before you and what you should put behind you during times of crisis. What you put before you is what you focus on, and what you focus on expands.

Mark Cole is joined by Chris Goede for the discussion portion of this episode to talk about John’s lesson. They remind us the importance of values-based leadership when so much is uncertain and hard decisions need to be made. Mark points out that business always follows values, but values don’t always follow business, while Chris Goede distinguishes between values and beliefs and how changing beliefs is a sign of growth.

A BONUS resource for this episode is the What You Focus on Expands Worksheet, which includes fill-in-the-blank notes from John’s teaching. You can download the worksheet by visiting MaxwellPodcast.com/Expand and clicking “Download the Bonus Resource.”

What’s the difference between heroes and leaders? In this insightful talk, Lorna Davis explains how our idolization of heroes is holding us back from solving big problems — and shows why we need “radical interdependence” to make real change happen.

Suzi McAlpine, leadership consultant, discusses “Three Things Leaders Should Prioritize Now (and always actually).”

Leaders faculty difficult decisions when faced with crisis. Dr. Carol Taylor, author of “Leading a Turnaround and the Joy of a Third Class Ticket” found in Thriving Leadership, edited by Karen Longman, discusses her leadership journey on Episode 55 of Coaching For Leaders.

Click here to view a micro-video on Resilient Leadership by Cy Wakeman!

Leaders at all levels are being challenged today by the multitude of business leadership issues arising from the Coronavirus epidemic. The challenges are significant – from how one takes care of their employees, to how to best communicate with your customers or clients, to how to stay on top of the situation from day to day.

Click here to listen to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #96: Crisis leadership in the time of COVID19.

What does strong crisis leadership look like? What makes a strong crisis leader?  How do you develop a strong crisis management team? What role does emotional intelligence play in crisis leadership?

Click here to listen to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode 55: Crisis Leadership Roundtable.

Change is hard? Not necessarily. Our research shows that change is only hard for the unready. Change is only painful for people who attach their happiness to a preferred set of circumstances.

Employees who live in a state of readiness don’t ascribe to the belief that change is hard. They are willing. They are advocates. They are all in. They’re ready for the future. They’re not blind to the realities of making change work or the obstacles of new processes or projects. They’ve made the choice not to argue with reality, because arguing with reality only generates anxiety. They’re too busy ensuring a successful outcome and adding value because they’ve anticipated what’s next.

Roselinde Torres is a senior partner and managing director at the consulting firm, BCG. A senior leader in the firm’s “people and organization” practice area, she is also the company’s resident expert on leadership, a topic she has studied her entire career.

Questions she likes to ask include, “what innovative methods can help prepare the next generation of leaders?” and “how do we enable leaders to unlearn past modes and habits of success?”

Click here to listen to Rosilend Torres’s Ted Talk on “What It Takes To Be a Great Leader.”

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

Crisis Leadership: 18 Questions to Ask your Team to Thrive During Difficult Times

When you face a crisis, communication becomes even more important. Your team will have questions, concerns, wild thoughts, and mistaken assumptions.

The only way to clear them up and keep your team focused and effective, is to be their pressure relief valve, a good listener, and to keep your word.

In Cy Wakeman‘s ever-popular book, Reality-Based Leadership, she reveals a modern leadership philosophy with counterintuitive wisdom from what many of us have been taught in our human resources and employee development training courses. We are certainly in challenging times in our business world today. We have been in challenging times in the past and we will be faced with challenging times again at some point in the future. Here’s the reality check – The fact that times are challenging is not the source of our pain. The source of our pain is the absence of great leadership and employee performance based in reality.

The revolution begins with a few good leaders practicing the Reality-Based Leadership Philosophy. A Reality-Based Leader (and employee) is one who is able to quickly see and graciously accept the reality of the situation, conserve precious team energy, and use that energy instead to impact reality. Better yet, a great Reality-Based Leader anticipates the upcoming changes and capitalizes on the opportunity inherent in the situation without drama or defense.

Click here for the top 10 ways leaders can ditch the drama and turn excuses into amazing performance.

What makes a great leader? Management theorist Simon Sinek suggests, it’s someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws staffers into a circle of trust. But creating trust and safety — especially during an crisis — means taking on big responsibility.

Join Simon Sinek, management theorist and author of the classic “Start With Why” and “Leaders Eat Last” as he discusses leadership and trust during a time of uncertainty.