Why Being A Meaner Boss Will Help Your Company--And Make Your Employees Happy. Everybody likes to be liked. And unless you’re the type of boss who revels in tyranny, it’s only natural to seek the favor of your underlings. But there’s a big difference between engaging with employees and fawning over them. In an era when the virtues of a collegial and collaborative environment are widely espoused, there’s guilt associated with being a strong-handed boss. Managers are often afraid to pull rank for fear they’ll fall out of grace with their reports and spoil team camaraderie if they’re not nice. “So many leaders, supervisors, and bosses suffer from a nice-guy conflict,” says Bruce Tulgand, author of It's Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need. “Managers are afraid that people will think they’re a jerk.” “Disagreeableness is a multifaceted trait,” says Livingston.
Let the performance be the arbiter—unless you’re running a commune. Charlotte Beers, on the Importance of Self-Assessment. Lessons from the water-boy: How to lead and serve. (MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY We measure leaders' effectiveness more by what they do than by what they say. But after reading "Being a Better Leader" by ace restaurateur Ari Weinzweig, we can add another gauge -- measure leaders by what they write.
Ari is an old friend and fellow resident of Ann Arbor, Mich., so I have watched closely how he and business partner Paul Saginaw built their deli Zingerman's not only into an entire community of food-related businesses, but also an international culinary sensation. What I like about Ari's new book, the second in his series about management and leadership, is its utter practicality. Ari knows what it takes to build a business, as well as to lead it -- two very different skills. By his own admission, Ari has made a few mistakes along the way, "Being a Better Leader" gets to the heart of what it means to lead people in ways that enrich the lives of all stakeholders, including customers, employees, and owners. © 2012 CBS Interactive Inc..
Lessons from Jose Andres on Organizational Development. Foodies in Washington, D.C., know all about Jose Andres, the award-winning chef who popularized Spanish style tapas dining in America. Andres arrived in the United States from Spain in 1993 and opened his first restaurant, Jaleo, that year. Today, he is the CEO of Think Food Group and the mastermind behind eight restaurant concepts with locations in D.C., Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Earlier this week, I was in the audience for a lunch-time conversation with Andres at a conference called American Competitiveness: What Works organized by General Electric and co-sponsored by Washington Post Live.
I probably learned as much about leadership in an hour of listening to Jose as I have in the past year. It turns out there’s a lot you can learn about leadership and organizational development from a chef who has gone from running a small business to a culinary empire in less than 20 years. Share Your Passionate Purpose. "Boy CEO" Mark Zuckerberg's Two Smartest Projects Were Growing Facebook And Growing Up. Jonah Lehrer on How to Be Creative. Time Management.