Instead of studying leadership, why not spend some time studying leaders and strategies in the wild? You can learn a lot from leadership experts, but you always see the leader and what he or she does through the expert’s personal lens. Supplement that learning with studying real leaders in real life situations and draw your own conclusions. The posts in this series will help you.

Every week I’ll point you to articles by and about real leaders in real situations and to articles about how real companies are faring in the marketplace. Read them. Think about them. Draw your own lessons and conclusions from them. Then try to apply those lessons in your own real life.

This week I’m pointing you to articles about Denise Jerome, Fred Millen, Danny Leffel, De Beers, and GE.

From Bridgett Weaver: Michaelis Events CEO Denise Jerome insists on hiring ‘do-ers’

“When a wedding cake collapses on the way to the ceremony, it can seem like a disastrous mistake for a catering and events company. But Denise Jerome, founder and CEO of Louisville’s Michaelis Events LLC, thinks that exact situation — which happened last summer — was an example of when her employees did really great work.”

From David Grossman: Q&A with Alyeska Pipeline Director of Human Resources Fred Millen

“Fred Millen, Director of Human Resources at Alyeska Pipeline is an HR guru who specializes in workforce planning, employee development succession planning and more. With a background in Theology, he’s a wonderful storyteller, speaker and counselor to many. He hails from the south, but his colleagues joke that after 10 years in The Last Frontier, he’s ‘all Alaskan now.’ Fred is full of HR wisdom and I’m excited to share with you our Q&A here.”

From Patrick Gorman: Crew CEO Danny Leffel On Why Empathy And Shared Understanding Is Critical

“Danny Leffel is a bit of a serial entrepreneur, having founded and built four companies in the tech world in the past decade-and-a-half. His latest venture is Crew, a communications app for desk-free workers (think restaurants, retail, hotel and emergency services employees) that helps to keep these critical teams on the same page. The app is being used by employees at Macy’s, Staples, Domino’s, McDonald’s, CVS and others, and is helping increase growth and reduce turnover at companies leveraging the solution.”

From Johathan Shieber: Diamond dynasty De Beers stoops to conquer with new line of man-made diamond jewelry

“For De Beers, today’s announcement of a new jewelry line was a very public reversal from a company that two years earlier had turned up its nose at the thought of man-made jewelry providing a competitive offering to existing products.”

Thanks to Smartbrief on Leadership for pointing me to this story

From Jeff Cunningham: GE Is Evolving In The Age Of Disruption

“GE is a very large canary in the coal mine and it’s singing to all global American companies. Once considered the best-managed company in America, a stalwart top 10 in the S&P 500 with a dividend safer than Fort Knox, the company has suffered a series of crushing blows to its reputation. Today, GE is going through is a disruption that will repeat itself in waves throughout the corporate universe.”

For some ideas about how to get more from this series of posts, check out “Studying Leaders in the Wild.“