Five Secrets of Charismatic Leadership

Even if you lack charisma, you can still mobilize your team by following a tried-and-true formula, writes Nick Tasler, who points out that introverts often outperform extroverts at the top.

Displaying charismatic leadership is one of the most effective ways to boost everything from motivation and creativity to productivity and plain old satisfaction. It's the manager's job to get those things done. But what if you fall somewhere between Ben Stein and Alan Greenspan on the charisma scale?

The good news is that you are not doomed to fail as a leader. A new study shows that the more reserved style of introverted leaders can actually inspire better performance in followers. If the employees are extroverted, the team will perform better under the leadership of an introvert. Introverted leaders are more likely to take a team approach to problem-solving and to let talented team members spread their wings. However, if you need to light a fire under a more reserved group, a little charisma in your messaging can go a long way.

The Charismatic Narrative

Anyone can use this structure to present a charismatic message. Just follow these five steps:

1. Define the main character: Your story must be about your audience or someone your audience cares about.

2. Describe the happy ending.

3. Describe the not-so-happy beginning.

4. Describe what action you want them to take.

5. Just add watery eyes: Use emotions to rouse the team

Bad to the Bone: Dealing With a Bad Boss

By Susan M. Heathfield,

Dealing with a less than effective manager, or just plain bad managers and bad bosses, is a challenge too many employees face. No matter the character of your bad boss, these ideas will help you deal with your bad boss.

Start your campaign by understanding that your boss may not know he is bad. Just as in situational leadership, the definition of "bad" depends on the employee's needs, the manager's skills and the circumstances.

Recommended Approach to the Unwitting Bad Boss

- Talk to this boss. Tell him what you need from him in term of direction, feedback and support. - Be polite and focus on your needs. Telling the boss he’s a bad boss is counterproductive and won’t help you meet your goals.
- Ask the manager how you can help him reach his goals. Make sure you listen well and provide the needed assistance.
- Seek a mentor from among other managers or more skilled peers, with the full knowledge of your current manager, to enlarge your opportunity for experience.
- If you’ve taken these actions, and they haven’t worked, go to your boss’s manager and ask for assistance. Or, you can go to your Human Resources staff first, to rehearse and gain advice. Understand that your current boss may never forgive you, so ensure you have done what you can do with him, before taking your issues up the line.
- You may never hear what the boss’s boss or the HR staff did to help solve your bad manager’s behavior. It’s confidential. But, do allow some time to pass for the actions to have their desired impact.
- If nothing changes, despite your best efforts, and you think the problem is that they don’t believe you, draw together coworkers who also experience the behavior. Visit the boss’s manager to help him see the size and impact of the behavior.
- If you think the problem is that your boss can’t – or won’t – change, ask for a transfer to another department. This recommendation presumes you like your employer and your work.
- If a transfer or promotion is unavailable, begin your search for a new job. Fleeing is always an option. You may want to conduct your job search secretly, but under the circumstances, it may be time for you to go.

Click on the title link to read more. See what to do When the Bad Boss Knows.

CEOs' Words of Wisdom for the Class of 2008

With graduation behind them, newly minted MBAs are getting ready to put their hard-earned knowledge to work. Perhaps some of the most valuable wisdom they received didn't come from professors or coursework, but from the inspirational words of a CEO on the commencement podium. A prevailing theme from this season's commencement speakers was how new challenges—including globalization, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability—will change the role of the leader in the 21st century.

• Muhammad Yunus (the pic), Founder and managing director of Grameen Bank: The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner addressed the entire body of MIT graduates, but his message that businesses should exist first to serve social good was perhaps heard loudest by Sloan's MBA grads.
• William Weldon, Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson: Weldon pointed to two adages that have inspired him most: the words written on Jackie Robinson's tombstone—"The value of a life is measured by its impact on other lives"—and his own company's credo, which says strong leaders are those who build a sense of purpose for themselves, their employees, and their organization.
• Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE: Immelt urged graduates to continue the process of learning throughout their careers—both from successes and failures. "One thing I wish you more than anything else is failure. I don't mean that in a bad way, but I can't tell you how much I've learned from failure. It's how you generate confidence."
• John Denniston, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers: John Denniston told graduates they should be ready to adapt in order to lead during periods of "unprecedented economic transformations."
• Robert Rodriguez, CEO of First Pacific Advisors: "As your career unfolds, you will face many choices. Beware of gravitating to the expected, expedient, accepted, and the safe. They all entail hidden risk. All too often the easier pathway appears to be the safest and surest, but it is not necessarily so."
• Ann Moore, Chairman and CEO of Time Inc: "Inactions may be regretted more in the long term. As you age, you feel worse for not trying."

Click on the link for more wisdoms.

Dealing with stress on the job

Today job stress poses a threat to the health of workers and, in turn, to the health of organizations. Short-lived or infrequent episodes of stress pose little risk, but when stressful situations persist and remain unresolved, the body is kept in a constant state of activation, creating increased wear and tear to biological systems. Ultimately, fatigue or damage results, and the risk of injury or serious disease can escalate.
Job stress can be caused by a number of conditions. These include corporate culture, interpersonal relationships, roles and responsibilities on the job, how work tasks are designed, career concerns, and environmental conditions. If your workplace seems stressful, you can try to reduce it by considering the following:
• Ensure that the workload is in line with workers’ capabilities and resources.
• Design jobs to provide meaning, stimulation, and opportunities for workers to use their skills.
• Clearly define workers’ roles and responsibilities and provide opportunities to participate in decisions and actions affecting their jobs.
• Improve communications and reduce uncertainty about career development and future employment prospects.
• Provide opportunities for social interaction.
• Establish work schedules compatible with demands and responsibilities outside the job.
• Identify and promote strategies for employees to use to reduce stress day to day. These include recognizing the symptoms of stress, exercising, eating right and getting enough rest, learning and practicing relaxation techniques, talking things out with someone, and having a good laugh.
Being vigilant and paying attention to individuals and the environment can help you create a healthy workplace.

Sparking Creativity in the Workplace

Can every employee be creative?

The paper shatters the myths surrounding creativity; for example, that it depends on personality, intelligence, character, age or experience, or that it belongs to people who live dangerously. The truth is that very often, the best ideas come from conservative people. Studies have shown that unusually intelligent people with a high IQ are no more creative than those with an average IQ.

How, then, can companies foster creative talent?

Creativity results from having the right aptitudes and attitudes: the ability and the will. Employees need freedom to work, since the best ideas often come when people are having fun, laughing and enjoying their work. Here are ideas for sparking creativity in ourselves and in our subordinates.

Improving Our Own Creative Talent

A creative attitude is a permanent willingness to approach problems and situations in new ways. It is based on three basic attitudes: tenacity, confidence and enthusiasm. Besides the attitude or will, we also need the aptitude or ability. In business, originality is not enough. Ideas must be useful and practical. To enhance our ability to produce new ideas we should learn to make better use of the "old elements."

Fostering Subordinates' Creative Talent

A creative attitude is an inner willingness, and so, will depend essentially on our subordinates' motivation. The first measure is to reward initiative and encourage experimentation. Second, align the right person with the right task.

There are basically four ways to encourage subordinates' creative aptitude: foster diversity; invite subordinates to explore and use sources of innovation; ask them SCAMPER questions (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put for other purposes, eliminate, rearrange or reverse); and encourage them to use team creativity techniques.

As employees search for innovation opportunities, they should draw on the seven sources of innovation identified by management leader Peter. F. Drucker: surprises, incongruities, bottlenecks, changes in the industry, changes in perception, demographic changes and changes in knowledge.

To promote lateral thinking, teams should turn to creativity techniques such as provocation, broken logic, brainstorming or the six thinking hats, in which each team member must look at a subject or situation from a different "color" or angle.

Thus, to establish a creative culture, companies should concentrate on inspiring people with clear missions and goals, and they should promote information exchange and collaboration.

Ten Tips to Encourage Meaningful Conflict

Conflict avoidance is most frequently the topic when conflict in organizations is discussed. Conflict resolution - as quickly as possible - is the second most frequent topic. This is bad news because meaningful work conflict is a cornerstone in healthy, successful organizations. Conflict is necessary for effective problem solving and for effective interpersonal relationships. So, knowing how to raise issues and participate in meaningful work conflict is key to your success in work and in life. These tips will help.

1. Create a work environment in which healthy conflict is encouraged by setting clear expectations.
2. Reward, recognize, and thank people who are willing to take a stand and support their position.
3. If you experience little dissention in your group, examine your own actions.
4. Expect people to support their opinions and recommendations with data and facts.
5. Create a group norm that conflict around ideas and direction is expected and that personal attacks are not tolerated.
6. Provide employees with training in healthy conflict and problem solving skills.
7. Look for signs that a conflict about a solution or direction is getting out of hand.
8. Hire people who you believe will add value to your organization with their willingness to problem solve and debate.
9. Make executive compensation dependent upon the success of the organization as a whole as well as the accomplishment of individual goals.
10. If you are using all of the first nine tips, and healthy work conflict is not occurring ... You need to sit down with the people who report to you directly and with their direct reporting staff and ask them why. Some positive, problem solving discussion might allow your group to identify and rectify any problem that stands in the way of open, healthy, positive, constructive work conflict and debate.

Asia Needs to Provide Global Leadership

Can Asians think?

The dean of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy says it's time to come to grips with the end of Western domination of global affairs. Below is his interview with BW:

You have boldly written about the hypocrisy of the West and its own inner conflicts that do not allow it to acknowledge that its time is up. What was the trigger that compelled you to express yourself thus?
I wrote because the Asian voice is never heard in the rest of the world. We are entering a completely new historical era, with new maps and new guidelines, [moving from] a monocultural world to a multicultural world. This new era is so different because it is the end of the era of Western domination of world history—though not the end of the West—and the beginning of a new era of a rising Asia. Because of Western dominance, the West has run the world for the past 200 years—in many ways benignly. It could do that when it felt confident and secure, when it felt the future belonged to it. But history teaches us that when these same powers become insecure, they become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
What are some of the consequences?
There is a global leadership vacuum at a time when you need new kinds of thinking. Asia needs to provide global leadership. But none of us seems to want to figure out what the consequences of the end of Western domination will be. It is painful for the West to give up power [and] it resists the transfer of power. It is anachronistic and absurd that the head of the IMF should still be a European and the head of the World Bank should still be American. The Doha round failed because the West has lost the confidence that it can push for trade talks and win.
And you think Asia would do better?
Asians could do as good a job in representing global interests. It is the responsibility of the rising powers to take this on, but there is a reluctance on the part of India and China to take this on too early.
But hasn't Asia been a big beneficiary of this Western dominance?
Yes. East Asia rose because [of] the rules-based order of the world, inherited from the West. America has done more for the rise of Asia than any other country. The yeast from which Asia rose came from Asian elites trained in the U.S. Larry Summers, then-president of Harvard University, said that in the industrial world, productivity improved by 50% in a single generation; in Asia, it has improved by 10,000%.
You give high praise to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) over the EU. Why?
Asean is an economic mini-power worth under $1 trillion, but it is a diplomatic superpower. The EU is an economic superpower, but a diplomatic mini-power. After all these years, the EU still remains a Christian club. Look at Asean. It has all religions in it: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism, Communism, Christianity. Asean is the role model of the future, the EU is not.
What about the Middle East. Where does its rise fit in?
Its moment is nigh. The picture on the cover of my book is not Shanghai, but Dubai. Dubai wants to be Singapore. Dubai's success can pressurize and inspire Iran. The march to modernity in Asia began in Japan, then went to Southeast Asia, then China, then India—and from there it will go to Pakistan and the Middle East.
And China?
China is one of the most misunderstood countries in the world. Chinese society has changed 180 degrees in the last 30 years. Western universities are rushing to partner with Chinese universities. They have to join the line now. These are the universities of the future. China may have a closed political system, but it has open minds.
Finally, where do you see India in all this change?
India will have a critical role to play. With the rise of Asia, there will be a lot of angst in the West, especially if they lose to China, a Communist country, and fear the "yellow peril." India's rise in the West is seen as nonthreatening, because there are no traditional differences between India and the West.

How to Handle a Crisis

Crisis: A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point. (American Heritage Dictionary)

How to handle a crisis?

The best thing is to have a plan of action prepared in advance. That way, you can react swiftly and smartly when a crisis hits. Crises by nature are messy, often unfolding at a pace that makes careful and considered response difficult. Sometimes, they stem from unforeseen events, and in retrospect some could have been predicted, but always they present a test of leadership skill and preparation.

Communication Is Key

Crises represent turning points for business health and reputation, often leaving both in tatters. If handled well, though, a crisis response can actually enhance reputation and spur some needed dialogue and change. Considering an airline achieved its tremendous growth largely because of its customer-friendly reputation, its failure to anticipate such cancellations and plan accordingly became the focus of the debate over what went wrong.

Playing Ostrich Won't Work

At minimum, clear and immediate communication is an antidote. If stakeholders know you're aware that there's a problem, that may be enough in the short run to maintain goodwill until the problem is fixed or at least dealt with. Yet it's far easier to find examples of poor-crisis communications response than it is to find examples of those who learn from others' high-profile mistakes. A lack of information fuels anxiety rather than defuses it.

7 steps in responding to a crisis: http://www.businessweek.com/playbook/07/0904_1.htm

How to Develop Strategic Thinking Skills in Business

Strategic thinking is a process in which you develop a vision for your business and then work backwards to develop a plan to accomplish that vision. Without vision, a business will have no direction, but it's impossible to achieve a vision without a strategy. Strategic thinking involves developing skills in creativity, problem solving, teamwork, critical thinking and flexibility। Strategic thinkers are able to see the big picture, as well as how to attain it.

Learn to Think Strategically
Step 1: Examine the status quo. Strategic thinking skills require you to examine how things have always been done critically in order to determine if that is the way things should be done. Strategic thinkers are willing to look outside of the norm to find more efficient and creative ways of doing things.
Step 2: Look at the forest, not the trees. Strategic thinkers are not mired down by the details of managing day-to-day issues.
Step 3: Focus on the future. Strategic thinking is goal oriented and guided by a vision for the future of a company. When you are developing strategies for business growth, those strategies must have clearly defined goals that contribute to the overall vision for the company.
Step 4: Consider external forces such as governmental regulations, legal developments, market conditions, economic factors and technological developments that can affect how you plan for the future.
Step 5: Get feedback from within your industry. Market research, particularly in product-driven industries, can help you match the vision for your company to consumer expectations.
Step 6: Check the facts. Even though strategic thinking involves making predictions about the future, those predictions must be realistic. Gather hard data, including your organizations financial reports and analysis of your industry.
Step 7: Consider the organizational structure of your business and assess how that team fits into your strategies for the future. You may have to reorganize your team to achieve your goals.
Step 8: Anticipate challenges. An important part of thinking strategically is being able to predict what issues will arise and devising a plan to confront those issues ahead of time.

Tips to develop alliances

Here are ten tips to develop work alliances that will help you accomplish your work mission:

1. Treat your allies as equals.
2. Effective communication forms the foundation for a positive work alliance.
3. Exhibit total professionalism: Never participate in gossip or in discussing the business of coworkers behind their backs.
4. Spend time with your allies: Be available to listen, to strategize and to occasionally eat lunch together.
5. When working on a project together, always put forth your best efforts.
6. Choose your battles wisely: Learn to give in sometimes.
7. Keep your promises: It is a matter of developing trust.
8. Resolve any conflicts or disputes at your earliest opportunity.
9. Be an ally: Support your colleague’s ability to accomplish his or her mission, too.
10. Never back-stab or blind-side an ally. If you have a problem with their actions, talk to your ally directly.

Global MBA Ranking 2008

Top MBA programmes 2008
1. University of Pennsylvania: Wharton 2. London Business School 3. Columbia Business School 4. Stanford University GSB 5. Harvard Business School 6. Insead 7. MIT: Sloan 8. IE Business School 9. University of Chicago GSB 10. University of Cambridge: Judge

Top masters in management programmes 2007
1. HEC Paris 2. Cems/London School of Economics and Political Science 4. ESCP-EAP European School of Management 5. Essec Business School 6. EM Lyon 7. Grenoble Graduate School of Business 8. Audencia 9. Stockholm School of Economics 10. RSM Erasmus Univeristy

Listen With Your Eyes: Top 10 Nonverbal Communication Tips

Nonverbal communication is the single most powerful form of communication. The best communicators are sensitive to the power of the emotions and thoughts communicated nonverbally. Understanding nonverbal communication improves with practice. The first step in practice is to recognize the power of nonverbal communication.

Multicultural differences in body language, facial expression, use of space, and especially, gestures, are enormous and enormously open to misinterpretation. If you want to mask your feelings or your immediate reaction to information, pay close attention to your nonverbal behavior. Especially to a skilled reader of nonverbal cues, most of us are really open books.

Top Ten Nonverbal Communication Tips

1. Pay Attention to Nonverbal Signals.
2. Look for Incongruent Behaviors.
3. Concentrate on Your Tone of Voice When Speaking.
4. Use Good Eye Contact.
5. Ask Questions About Nonverbal Signals.
6. Use Signals to Make Communication More Effective and Meaningful.
7. Look at Signals as a Group.
8. Consider Context/ situation.
9. Be Aware That Signals Can be Misread.
10. Practice, Practice, Practice.

To gauge your expertise in interpreting nonverbal communication, take these nonverbal communication interpretation quiz questions from the University of California at Santa Cruz. This is a useful Dictionary of Nonverbal Gestures, Signs and Body Language Cues. Check out the pictures that illustrate hundreds of nonverbal communication manners.

Hidden Traps in Decision Makings

In making decisions, you may be at the mercy of your mind’s strange workings. Here’s how to catch thinking traps before they become judgment disasters.
Bad decisions can often be traced back to the way the decisions were made—the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. But sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human brain works can sabotage the choices we make.
There are eight psychological traps that can affect the way we make business decisions. The anchoring trap leads us to give disproportionate weight to the first information we receive. The status-quo trap biases us toward maintaining the current situation—even when better alternatives exist. The sunk-cost trap inclines us to perpetuate the mistakes of the past. The confirming-evidence trap leads us to seek out information supporting an existing predilection and to discount opposing information. The framing trap occurs when we misstate a problem, undermining the entire decision-making process. The overconfidence trap makes us overestimate the accuracy of our forecasts. The prudence trap leads us to be overcautious when we make estimates about uncertain events. And the recallability trap prompts us to give undue weight to recent, dramatic events.
The best way to avoid all the traps is awareness—forewarned is forearmed. But executives can also take other simple steps to protect themselves and their organizations from these mental lapses.

Mao and the art of management

The main pillars of Mao management style business and state leaders could learn: a powerful, mandacious slogan, ruthless media manipulation, sacrifice of friends and colleagues and activity sustaining for achievement. An interesting point of his ideology here is long-term focus and short-term sacrifice. I don't think all are for bad leaders or managers. There are many things Western leaders, both good and bad, should grasp from China and Asia. There is no one best leadership style.

How To Build A Winning Team

Team success ultimately depends on its balance. The article highlights the framewrok to get the right mix.