Kurt Lewin (1951), organizational theorist of “three phases” fame, also developed the concept of force fields in change. Lewin basically asserts that there are forces that drive change or progress toward a goal (helping forces) and forces that drive resistance to change (hindering forces). The difference in resistance to change vs. readiness to change lies [...]
Transformational leadership involves the ability to inspire and motivate followers to take action toward the desire goal or behavior. We all know that inspiration is a vital part of effective leadership, most of us just don’t know what it means to inspire someone. Instead, we sell them on the desired actions or levels of performance [...]
Often managers are called to be more than just managers; they’re called to be leaders. Recent literature continues to blur the line between management and leadership. However, one theory stands out because of its potential to make clear cut distinctions between leaders and managers: Transformational Leadership theory.
Transformational Leadership is a relatively new approach to leadership [...]
I’ve just released a new article through LeaderLab Papers. It is a PDF summary of various leadership theories and a collection of posts from this blog.
01.02 The Portable Guide to Leadership
Airport bookstores are crowded with books on leadership and each one seems to promote a “leadership lack.” They’ll each begin with phrases like “The most [...]
Theory X and Theory Y are theories of human motivation created and developed by Douglas McGregor at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1960s. The theories describe two very different attitudes toward workforce motivation. McGregor felt that companies followed either one or the other approach.
In Theory X, management assumes employees are inherently lazy, [...]
Steve Farber is the president of Extreme Leadership, Incorporated—an organization devoted to the cultivation and development of Extreme Leaders in the business community. His latest book, Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson In Leadership, is a Wall Street Journal® and USA Today® bestseller.
Check out the podcast on the LeaderLab website or in iTunes.
At this point, you’re bound to be thinking that timeshare salespeople and insane strong men are extreme examples. However, this is exactly my point. These two examples are certainly outliers, but they’re still valid.
And because they’re valid, the Maxwell definition is invalid. It is simple, but it is weak.
The challenge then, is to create a [...]
Shortly after any political or corporate scandal, the talk on the media immediately shifts to a discussion on bad leadership. Indeed, Jeffrey Skilling was a bad leader of Enron. This brings on a never-ending debate about how we distinguishing between good leaders and bad leaders. In our mind, we can easily cite good leaders from [...]
A few years ago, I was invited to a special presentation. I was offered a three-night, all expenses paid vacation in the Caribbean. The only stipulation was that on Day Three of the vacation, I had to listen to a special presentation about the resort I was staying at.
I declined. As I’m sure you would [...]
Leadership is perhaps the hardest concept to define.
Warren Bennis once wrote, “It is almost a cliché of the leadership literature that a single definition of leadership is lacking. Author Joesph Rost commented on this dilemma by writing “The scholars do not know what they are studying, and the practitioners do not know what they are [...]
About
David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab, a community of resources dedicated to promoting the practice of leadership theory. He is an executive coach, a sought-after speaker and an adjunct professor of business at several universities.