When tackling urgent organizational problems, leaders usually work hard to identify underlying causes, tap a wide range of knowledge, and experiment with solutions. But once they've mapped out a plan, there's one more crucial step they must take: crafting a story so compelling that it will harness their organizations' energy and direct it toward change. Drawing on decades of experience helping senior executives lead large-scale transformations, Harvard professor Frei and leadership coach Morriss present an effective way to approach that challenge. They outline four key steps: (1) Understand your story so well that you can describe it in simple terms, (2) honor the past, (3) articulate a persuasive mandate for change, and (4) lay out a rigorous and optimistic path forward. Next you need to get others behind your story. Emotions can bring it to life and help drive employees' commitment to change. You also should promote your narrative aggressively. Share it wherever the opportunity arises-in speeches, interviews, town hall meetings, one-on-ones-and incorporate it into different formats, from videos to images to guidebooks.

Trust is the basis for almost everything we do. It's the foundation on which our laws and contracts are built. It's the reason we're willing to exchange our hard-earned paychecks for goods and services, to pledge our lives to another person in marriage, and to cast a ballot for someone who will represent our interests. It's also the input that makes it possible for leaders to create the conditions for employees to fully realize their own capacity and power. So how do you build up stores of this essential leadership capital? By focusing, the authors argue, on the three core drivers of trust: authenticity, logic, and empathy. People tend to trust you when they think they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they believe that you care about them (empathy). When trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these three drivers. This article explains how leaders can identify their weaknesses and strengths on these three dimensions and offers advice on how all three can be developed in the service of a truly empowering leadership style.

After working with hundreds of leaders in a wide variety of organizations and in countries all over the globe, the authors found one very clear pattern: When it comes to meeting their leadership potential, many people unintentionally get in their own way. Five barriers in particular tend to keep promising managers from becoming exceptional leaders: People overemphasize personal goals, protect their public image, turn their competitors into two-dimensional enemies, go it alone instead of soliciting support and advice, and wait for permission to lead. Troy, a customer service manager, endangered his job and his company's reputation by focusing on protecting his position, not helping his team; when a trusted friend advised him to change his behavior, the results were striking. Anita's insistence on sticking to the tough persona she'd created for herself caused her to ignore the more intuitive part of the leadership equation, with disastrous results-until she let go of the need to appear invulnerable and reached out to another manager. Jon, a personal trainer who had virtually no experience with either youth development programs or urban life, opened a highly successful gym for inner-city kids at risk; he refused to be daunted by his lack of expertise and decided to simply "go for it." As these and other examples from the authors' research demonstrate, being a leader means making an active decision to lead. Only then will the workforce-and society-benefit from the enormous amount of talent currently sitting on the bench.