153 articles in Leadership
Clayton Christensen applies business theories to life decisions. Uses theories of motivation, strategy, and resource allocation to explore how to find happiness in career, relationships, and staying out of jail. Based on his famous Harvard Business School graduation speech. One of HBR's most popular articles ever.
How to build a personal advisory board for career development. Your board should include a mentor (long-term advisor), a sponsor (advocates for you when you're not in the room), a connector (expands your network), a challenger (asks tough questions), and a cheerleader (provides emotional support). Practical framework for identifying and nurturing these relationships.
Paul Graham's influential essay on why meetings are so destructive for creative workers. Makers need long, uninterrupted blocks of time; managers work in one-hour intervals. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon by breaking it into pieces too small to do anything hard in. Essential reading for anyone managing engineers or designers.
Argues that crisis leadership demands adaptive rather than technical responses, requiring leaders to distinguish between problems with known solutions and those requiring new learning. Offers a practical framework for maintaining composure, diagnosing systemic issues, and mobilizing organizations under extreme pressure.
Examines imposter syndrome—the persistent belief that one's success is undeserved—and its disproportionate impact on high achievers. Offers evidence-based strategies including reframing internal dialogue, collecting objective feedback, and understanding that the phenomenon is nearly universal among ambitious professionals.
Expert performance comes not from innate talent or raw experience, but from deliberate practice: focused, effortful activities specifically designed to improve performance. Ericsson's research shows that experts across fields invest thousands of hours in structured practice with immediate feedback, pushing just beyond their comfort zone. Organizations can apply these principles by designing learning experiences that target specific weaknesses rather than simply repeating comfortable routines.
Based on interviews with 125 leaders, this article argues that you don't need to be born with specific characteristics to lead. Instead, leadership emerges from understanding your life story, practicing self-awareness, and aligning your leadership with your values. A staple in MBA leadership courses.
Draws on research from Hersey, Blanchard, and Goleman to explain how effective leaders flex their style—directing, coaching, supporting, or delegating—based on a follower's competence and commitment. Understanding situational leadership is essential for any manager overseeing diverse teams.
Based on Gallup's study of 80,000 managers. Great managers don't try to fix weaknesses; they capitalize on strengths. They treat every employee as an individual, not using a one-size-fits-all approach. They define the right outcomes rather than the right steps. And they find the right fit between person and role rather than trying to mold people into roles.
Peter Drucker's masterwork on self-management. Know your strengths (use feedback analysis), know how you perform (reader vs. listener, alone vs. team), know your values, know where you belong, and know what you can contribute. Required reading in virtually every MBA program and executive education course worldwide.
Explores Robert Greenleaf's servant leadership philosophy, where leaders prioritize serving their teams before leading them. The article examines how inverting the traditional power hierarchy unlocks creativity, trust, and long-term organizational health.
Drucker distills decades of observation into eight practices of effective executives: ask what needs to be done, ask what is right for the enterprise, develop action plans, take responsibility for decisions, take responsibility for communicating, focus on opportunities rather than problems, run productive meetings, and think 'we' rather than 'I'.
Daniel Goleman's groundbreaking article on emotional intelligence in leadership. Identifies five components of EI at work: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. Argues that while IQ and technical skills are entry-level requirements, emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Widely taught in MBA programs worldwide.
The principled negotiation method from Harvard's Program on Negotiation. Four key principles: separate people from the problem, focus on interests not positions, generate options for mutual gain, and insist on objective criteria. Also covers BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) as the true source of negotiating power. The foundation of every negotiation course taught worldwide.
Chesbrough argues that the closed innovation model, where companies rely solely on internal R&D, is giving way to open innovation where firms leverage external ideas and paths to market. The article presents evidence from multiple industries showing how permeable organizational boundaries accelerate innovation and reduce costs.
Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee on why stories are the most powerful tool for business communication. Traditional rhetoric (data, logic, argument) doesn't inspire action because it's intellectual. Stories engage emotions: they present a struggle between expectation and reality that creates suspense, insight, and identification. Covers the structure of a compelling business story.
Herzberg's landmark research distinguishes between hygiene factors (salary, conditions, policies) that prevent dissatisfaction and motivators (achievement, recognition, growth) that drive true engagement. Improving hygiene factors eliminates complaints but never creates satisfaction; only motivators achieve that. This distinction explains why lavish perks at tech companies often fail to improve retention when meaningful work and autonomy are absent.
Bennis and Thomas explore how transformative experiences (crucibles) shape leaders. Through interviews with leaders across generations, they identify four essential skills: adaptive capacity, ability to engage others through shared meaning, a distinctive voice, and integrity. Widely used in leadership development seminars.
Lencioni identifies five interconnected dysfunctions that undermine teamwork: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. The model reveals how each dysfunction builds on the previous one and provides leaders with a practical roadmap for building cohesive, high-performing teams.
Drawing on Edgar Schein's foundational work, this article explains how organizational culture is formed through shared assumptions, espoused values, and visible artifacts. Leaders who understand these layers can intentionally shape culture to drive strategy execution and employee engagement.