Weekends are time when things slow down a little. Your weekend shouldn’t be two more regular work days. That’s a sure road to burnout. Take time to refresh yourself. Take time for something different. Take time for some of that reading you can’t find time for during the week.

Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. This week there are articles about leadership in today’s challenging environment and Laszlo Bock’s take on the future of leadership.

From Stanislav Shekshnia, Veronika Zagieva, and Alexey Ulanovsky: Turbulent Times Call for Athletic Leaders

“Over the last decade, we studied CEOs of companies that thrive within some of the most challenging business environments on the planet. Though very different in many respects, these CEOs share leadership behaviours and attitudes that strongly parallel those of top athletes. We further theorise that these athletic traits make CEOs uniquely suited to tackle contexts where little can be taken for granted.”

From Stuart Hearn: How to Step Up Your Leadership Game in 2018

“Among the responsibilities of leaders is keeping up with changes in the workforce and what that requires to inspire and engage employees. Here are five tenets to keep in mind.”

From Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman: Most Leaders Know Their Strengths — but Are Oblivious to Their Weaknesses

“‘Oh, I pretty much know my strengths and my weaknesses.’ If we had a dollar for every time we’d heard this from an executive we were coaching, we could have retired a long time ago. When probed, they often proclaim that while they might not recognize all their strengths, they are confident about knowing their serious weaknesses. And yet what we see when we administer 360-degree feedback surveys on behalf of these leaders is that the executives with really low scores in one or more areas are often completely unaware of their fatal flaws. They are shocked to find themselves scoring so low — even though approximately 30% of all the leaders we’ve studied have at least one fatal flaw.”

Book Suggestion: Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman

From Stanislav Shekshnia, Kirill Kravchenko, and Elin Williams: The Four Essential Roles of a CEO

“Twenty global business leaders share the attributes that make them effective. We often hear that running a large company is one of the most complex jobs in the world. Business schools, strategic consultancies, headhunting firms, training providers, executive coaches all have a tendency to mystify the work of the CEO. However, effective CEOs see their jobs in much simpler terms and consider this simplification an important element of their effectiveness.”

From Dan Bigman: Former Google People Chief Laszlo Bock On The Future Of Leadership

“Bock and his team unearthed insights into what actually creates a workplace that brings out the best in people and put those ideas into practice. It was a data-driven HR laboratory with scale and ambition not seen since Henry Ford, and it revolutionized the relationship between Google and its employees, from their first interview to their last day, and beyond.”

Book Suggestion: Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock