Author: Samuel B. Bacharach
In the last few days, a lot has been made about “leading from the center.” A lot has been said about the virtues of trying to hold your team together, but hold it tighter at the core.  “Leading from the center” is not just a metaphor or analogy, but a practical decision about where and when you spend limited resources in a limited period of time.  The center is now in vogue.  …

Author: Jim Biolos
The seemingly failed bailout requests by our nation’s auto makers shows why proactive leadership must be an imperative for all current and future executives.
When it comes to the US automobile industry, there have always been five important stakeholders:  the US congress, the American public, the United Auto Workers union and its legion of workers, oil companies, and the auto company’s shareholders.  The leaders of each car company needed to make its case to …

In leadership training, we spend an awful lot of time on the role of the leader.  In leadership training and development we deal with the burden of leadership.  It seems that the one assumption that we fail to entertain is the possibility that it may be more difficult to follow than to lead.  While social science has a long and sometimes perilous tradition of taking parallels, metaphors, analogies from the physical sciences, a recent study …

One of the challenges of teaching undergraduates about leadership is to get them to think about leadership as something that is not external to them, but something that they do for themselves in their life.  Leadership, specifically proactive leadership, is about their capacity to move their own agenda forward.  For undergraduates, that is their career.  The problem, of course, is how to get them to focus on the leadership talents they need to move their …

Attack Politics: Negativity in Presidential Campaigns since 1960
Emmett H Buell Jr. and Lee Sigelman
University Press of Kansas, 2008
“Attack politics” or, if you will, negative politics is part of political scene.  This book examines political campaigns from 1960 to 2004, drawing out who attacked whom, how frequently attacks were made and on what issues, and at what point in the campaign.  Extracting 1124 campaign statements from the New York Times from 1960 to 2004, the authors …

In training leaders, we’re often too busy having them read the newest management book or about the newest fad discussed in MBA courses.  In truth, most leaders read about leaders, not books about leadership.  In this piece by John Meacham, potential leaders will get insight into what others are reading and have read.  This isn’t to suggest they should be reading the same material, but it is to suggest that they should explore themselves and …