Real Leaders

3 Impactful Practices for Navigating Leadership

Women who arrive at the top should be able to thrive at the top. But instead, they’re judged to be lucky to survive — even more so with pandemic pressures overwhelming their already busy family and professional lives. So what does it take for women to flourish in leadership roles today? These two female CEOs, […]

5 Tips for Building a Successful Public-private Partnership for Impact

Everywhere you look these days, companies, governments, and communities are talking about ‘better business,’ what it means, who it affects, and why it’s relevant. One example that shows this ethos in action is TRANSFORM — a unique joint initiative between Unilever, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and EY. The initiative supports social […]

How I Aligned Personal Values with my Staff and my Competitors for Greater Success

For many years, I had been searching for feedback and insight from a group of impact leaders. Other CEO support groups I had joined had a completely different set of motivations and perspectives on leadership and success. Being an impact leader comes with its own unique set of challenges. It’s hard to manage a company […]

Our Belongingness Crisis: How We Organize Ourselves at Work

What do you think is the primary driver of people at work? The conventional wisdom is that it’s either their hopes for the trappings of promotion—more money, status, vacation time, maybe a parking spot—or their need for self-efficacy, creativity, and self-actualization. I’ve asked this and other related questions to over six hundred people in a wide range […]

Will a Return to the Office Harm Diversity or Improve it?

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently claimed that returning to the office will help improve diversity. And if he’s right, that’s an important argument for office-centric work. After all, extensive research shows that improving diversity boosts both decision-making and financial performance.  Yet does office-centric work really improve diversity? Meta Platforms – the owner of Facebook and […]

Your Hiring Brand

Some real-world examples of situations that are negatively affecting your Hiring Brand: Manager turnover. A Midwest company hired a new Director of Human Resources whose LinkedIn profile shows six jobs in ten years.  How would you react to new policies or ideas if you thought the new person would stay only one-two years? Abusive personality. […]

Hiring is the Front door to Your Future Success

Today’s employees want to be validated for what they bring to the company. They want to learn and grow professionally, want more life-work balance, and a manager they can respect.   Importantly, they want to know they are making a difference and contributing to something larger than themselves. Employees are far more open about their needs […]

The Choice to Become a Business That Matters

This is the first of a 4-part series exploring businesses that matter. This is about ambition. Not the kind of ambition that has traditionally shaped businesses (growth at all costs, profit over everything) but a wiser, more profound ambition that reconsiders the very nature of business. Compare the Ford Motor Corporation in 1903 to Zappos in […]

Effective Strategies to Gain Constructive Feedback

Organizations need to incorporate constructive feedback from stakeholders to survive pandemic-related disruptions amid today’s turbulent economy. To meet the expectations of their stakeholders, leaders must ensure that they obtain regular feedback from them, since these people make decisions that determine the success of the organization. Securing constructive feedback is critical in helping you find out […]