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 for today and tomorrow.

From Ric Kelly: Leaving a Positive Leadership Legacy Is Really About Living Your Values Now

“We seem to spend so much of our time chasing targets and calculating our next leadership move, rather than focusing on what it is that we want to achieve and be remembered for as organizational leaders.”

From Tom Peters: The Speed Trap: When Taking Your Time (Really) Matters

“The bottom line re ‘Speed Trap’ is that I think in this age of ‘speed, speed, more speed,’ it is in fact the case that the most important things associated with enterprise effectiveness and, yes, excellence take time. In fact, lots of time.”

From Theodore Kinni: Why Wandering Works Wonders for Managers

“If you occupy the heights of the business world, staying grounded can be a challenge. The longer you reside atop a corporate Mount Olympus, the less connected you may become to the mundane world of work occupied by the rest of us and, perhaps more dangerously, the customers who pay the bills. I’ve been investigating some whimsical solutions for leaders who need to get their feet back on the ground.”

From Mike Figliuolo: The Critical Importance of Leadership During Boring Times

“Leading during a crisis is easy. Adrenaline leads to focus and higher performance. But how do you lead during the doldrums when nothing ‘important’ is going on? Those slow times are the ones that affect performance during the crisis. Failure to lead during slow times leads to failures during crisis.”

From Eric J. McNulty: The Leadership Maker Movement

“In a sense, leaders have always been makers. Where once they designed a new production process, like Henry Ford’s, or took a commodity product to a higher level, like Steve Jobs did, they now unlock human potential. In the industrial age, leaders provided guidance for workers on what to do. Now, because of the need to be more nimble and adaptable to constant change, the challenge is for leaders to create the conditions for self-organizing teams, decentralized decision making, and independent problem solving.”

Book Suggestions

The Road to Character by David Brooks

The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last by Tom Peters

One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership by Mike Figliuolo

Every week I share some recommendations of business books that I think are worth a look. Follow this link to the most recent list.

Every Monday, I do a blog post about business reading and business books. Follow this link to the most recent post.