Great Leaders Read All The Time
Sep 16 2012

They (i.e., Harvard Business Review) say that great leaders read all the time.  That is certainly true of many great leaders (e.g., founder/CEO of WholeFoods) but there are great leaders who probably don’t have the time to read especially with family and work responsibilities, and I think they get some of their information in other ways (i.e., short bursts of knowledge that they have to assimilate over time).  There are tons of not-so-great leaders out there and admittedly they aren’t avid readers.  They have a hard time empathizing with others because they haven’t broadened their knowledge base by relating to other people’s stories from different parts of the world.

When I was working on the series of articles on success, I noticed that most of the leaders I interviewed were very well read and a handful had liberal arts, psychology, or humanities degrees.  You can certainly tell when someone is well read, not just in the latest business trends but also in works of fiction and other great classic literature by the way they interact with people.  I wish I had time to read more novels.  I can’t even seem to make it to my neighborhood mom’s monthly book club!

Here are a couple of interesting but short reads:

The Secret Behind Creativity – discusses ideas on how to be creative

MBA Mondays: Guest Post From Dr. Dana Ardi – from Fred Wilson’s blog.  A guest post by someone Fred respects in the world of HR, culture building, and recruiting/retaining great talent.

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Generation Flux And Women Leaders
Mar 26 2012

Two very interesting reads.  One by Fast Company on the changing nature of our workforce and a redefining of generation based on the way people view their careers regardless of their age.  The other is by Harvard Business Review on whether women make better leaders.  Here they are:

This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business.  Janelle Monney, an executive coach, told me about this article.  I got both exhilarated and mentally exhausted reading it because I was wondering if I could keep up with this career flux until I’m 80 like some of the folks mentioned in the article.  I think it’s because most of the people mentioned in the article didn’t have two little kids fluxing around them while they were bouncing from project to project! :-) I was introduced to Janelle by Peter Strople, an instant-change agent who knows pretty much everyone worth knowing on this planet.

Are Women Better Leaders than Men? “But the women’s advantages were not at all confined to traditionally women’s strengths. In fact at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows” (see charts shown in the article.)

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