Organizations and senior leaders often try to improve profitability and productivity by demanding more — more hours, more projects, more email, and more output. But focusing on “more” may be a mistake. After a certain point, additional hours at work don’t necessarily translate into additional productivity. Excess busyness and long hours can actually produce more errors, lead to declines in employee health, and lead people to emphasize reactiveness over proactiveness. In fact, companies might be better served by giving their people opportunities to recover from periods of intense work, so their minds can clear and they can recognize what’s most important. Leadership Muscles Need Recovery With
Studies show that leaders around the globe consistently face the same main challenges — even if they describe their leadership challenges and specific context in different ways. These are: Honing Effectiveness Inspiring Others Leading a Team Guiding Change Managing Stakeholders Here are 4 concrete things leaders can do to address these common leadership challenges: 1. Set goals. Be proactive in setting goals, as well as establishing the timelines — and deadlines — necessary to keep yourself and your teams on track. The distractions that you face can make it easy to lose sight of long-term and even short-term goals. You can easily get sucked into dealing with urgent issues that arise unexpect
What’s most challenging about leading organizations today? And do these leadership challenges differ around the world? Our researchers went straight to the source to answer these questions about leadership challenges, gathering input from 763 middle- and executive-level leaders in organizations from China/Hong Kong, Egypt, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the U.S.A., and Spain. Our study found that leaders around the globe consistently face the same 6 challenges — even if they describe their leadership challenges and specific context in different ways. So what are the top leadership challenges? 1. Honing Effectiveness: the challenge of developing the relevant skills — such as time-manag
