Weekend Leadership Reading 12/22/17

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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 how to respond to a question when you don’t know the answer, characteristics of effective critical thinking, key takeaways from the 2017 London Business School Leadership Institute survey, dealing with distraction, and holiday happiness.

From Anett Grant: This Is How To Respond To A Question You Don’t Know The Answer To

“No matter what your job or level, your work life is always throwing questions at you. Some of them are easy to answer with a confident ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or a well-reasoned explanation. Others aren’t. Most of the time it’s no big deal when you don’t have a solid answer right away. But sometimes a question can really stump you, and defaulting to ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’ll get back to you,’ can risk diminishing your credibility–especially if those are your go-to responses every single time you’re put on the spot at work.”

Thanks to Smartbrief on Leadership for pointing me to this story

From Lee Watanabe-Crockett: The 7 Most Important Characteristics of Effective Critical Thinkers

“For a long time now we’ve talked about how important critical thinking skills are for today’s learners (and for everyone) to build on. Every educator knows how crucial it is to cultivate them in our classrooms and indeed throughout our whole lives. But what does the ideal critical thinker look like? What are the most crucial defining characteristics of effective critical thinkers?”

From the London Business School: Key takeaways from the 2017 Leadership Institute survey

“A new survey suggests that employee engagement is a major leadership challenge for today’s organisations, despite it reducing turnover rates, improving customer loyalty and enhancing organisational performance. The inaugural London Business School (LBS) Leadership Institute survey reported one-third of 1,248 senior directors and executives from 98 different countries rated the issue as their toughest challenge. It was the top priority for senior leaders at financial services, manufacturing and professional services firms.”

From Kandi Wiens: Break the Cycle of Stress and Distraction by Using Your Emotional Intelligence

“Being able to focus helps us succeed. Whether it’s focusing inward and attuning ourselves to our intuitions and values or outward and navigating the world around us, honing our attention is a valuable asset. All too often though, our focus and attention get hijacked, leaving us feeling frazzled, forgetful, and unable to concentrate.”

From Robin Lewis: Holiday Happiness: Go for It While You Can

“We live in an era of a perpetual imbalance of supply and demand, and, therefore real-time price deflation across almost all consumer-facing industries. Indeed, price promoting has become the basis of competition. And, as we all know, this is a downward vortex that kills. A business cannot cost or price cut its way to growth over the long term. Today, it cannot even do it short-term.”

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Gary Gruber   |   23 Dec 2017   |   Reply

Here’s another short piece which you might want to add to your leadership reading list for this weekend or for anytime you want.

http://www.garygruber.com/eagership-eagerness-to-lead

Thanks for considering…

Wally Bock   |   24 Dec 2017   |   Reply

Thanks, Gary