Great Leaders Know When to Forgive. Leaders must be firm and foster accountability, but they also must know when to forgive past wrongs in the service of building a brighter future.
One of the most courageous acts of leadership is to forgo the temptation to take revenge on those on the other side of an issue or those who opposed the leader’s rise to power. Instead of settling scores, great leaders make gestures of reconciliation that heal wounds and get on with business. This is essential for turnarounds or to prevent mergers from turning into rebellions against acquirers who act like conquering armies. Nelson Mandela famously forgave his oppressors. After the end of apartheid, which had fostered racial separation and kept blacks impoverished, Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected President.
Forgiveness can be costly, like the massive amounts of debt forgiveness toward countries like Greece to help create a stable foundation for restoring growth to Europe. The handyman, the genius and the mad scientist. 3 Questions That Will Motivate Your Employees. We all want to be motivated -- and, as entrepreneurs, we love the idea of being able to motivate others.
That’s great in theory, but it’s not always clear how to accomplish this within the day-to-day grind of a fast-moving business. What’s a busy entrepreneur to do? It’s a widespread problem: According to Gallup’s most recent engagement research, 71 percent of Americans are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work. Those workers are less likely to be productive.
The traditional methods -- higher pay, for example -- produce mixed results. So if the evidence is convincing, that higher pay doesn’t motivate, what does? Richard Branson on Conducting Business Abroad. Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers.
Ask him a question and your query might be the inspiration for a future column. Q: I will be taking my first business trip next month, to visit potential suppliers in China. Business News & Strategy For Entrepreneurs. Why Diverse Teams Create Better Work. A diverse workplace might ultimately create better results, a new study suggests.
The study, detailed by NPR, looks at the work of scientific researchers and finds that papers written by multicultural teams were cited in other research more often than those written by homogenous groups. In the world of research, citations are seen as a metric of quality. Ethnic diversity wasn't the only harbinger of success. The same study also found that groups with members from geographic areas--perhaps three cities in the same country--also created better papers than those with members from the same place. "It's a matter of looking at individual teams and making sure they're different perspectives, different points of view, different backgrounds," NPR's David Greene says. The principle isn't an entirely new one. The idea that different perspectives result in better work has been explored from a more macro-economic perspective, as research shows that diverse cities experience more economic growth.
Small Business Ideas and Resources for Entrepreneurs. Meditate to Connect, Create and Lead. For me, to unplug is to give up craving, to live mindfully, to move toward nirvana (Sanskrit for "complete liberation").
Today, we suffer from a constant craving for information and the need to blast out whatever is on our minds to the rest of the world -- thanks to social media. Unfortunately, all addictive behavior creates grief. And our addictive need to consume and share information is no different. The Buddha -- who knew a thing or two about unplugging -- said: "From craving grief arises, From craving arises fear, For him who is free from craving There is no grief, then whence comes fear? This passage has had a profound impact on my personal thinking. Do You Have The Courage To Survive And Thrive As An Entrepreneur? To be an entrepreneur you have to be willing to jump into the deep end.
And that takes courage. But courage is just the beginning. At a fundamental level, most entrepreneurs need to repeatedly overcome adversity and pursue opportunities with very limited resources. My path as an entrepreneur has been marked by the adversity I’ve experienced in my own life and the struggles I’ve witnessed in the lives of others.
Creativity. Presentations. Learning. Crisis_management. Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities. By Tony Golsby-Smith | 12:34 PM March 31, 2011 How many people in your organization are innovative thinkers who can help with your thorniest strategy problems?
How many have a keen understanding of customer needs? How many understand what it takes to assure that employees are engaged at work? If the answer is “not many,” welcome to the club. Business leaders around the world have told me that they despair of finding people who can help them solve wicked problems — or even get their heads around them. This is because our educational systems focus on teaching science and business students to control, predict, verify, guarantee, and test data. People trained in the humanities who study Shakespeare’s poetry, or Cezanne’s paintings, say, have learned to play with big concepts, and to apply new ways of thinking to difficult problems that can’t be analyzed in conventional ways.
Complexity and ambiguity. Innovation. Communication and presentation. Customer and employee satisfaction. What else?