A decade of research into top executives shows that expertise can actually severely impede performance, in two important ways. The first is overconfidence: believing that brilliance in one area leads to competence in another. The second is when deep knowledge and experience leave leaders incurious, blinkered, and vulnerable--even in their own fields. The solution is clear: Rededicate yourself to learning and growth, and rediscover just a bit of what the Buddhists call "beginner's mind." Strategies that the most successful executives use to do so fall into three buckets: challenging their own expertise, seeking out fresh ideas, and embracing experimentalism.

What sets exceptional business leaders apart? One thing, says Sydney Finkelstein, is their ongoing commitment to giving direct reports one-on-one instruction. Finkelstein, a management professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, has studied world-class leaders for more than a decade. He's found that they make a point of personally imparting memorable lessons that fall into three categories: pointers on professionalism, technical knowledge and skills, and broader life lessons. Finkelstein notes that when and where top leaders teach is almost as important as what they teach. Instead of waiting for formal reviews, great managers stay accessible to their employees and share their wisdom as opportune moments arise, whether that's in the office or outside it. They also create teaching moments--often by taking proteges off-site. How do they make lessons stick? Their techniques include (1) customizing instruction to the needs, personality, and development path of each individual, (2) asking pertinent questions to deepen learning, and (3) modeling the behavior they want others to practice. Finkelstein discusses numerous superstar leaders who are revered as great teachers and suggests that if you follow their example, you can strengthen your staff and drive superior business performance.

When you look at the top people in a given industry, you often find that many of them once worked for the same well-known leader. In the NFL, 20 of 32 head coaches trained under Bill Walsh or someone in his coaching tree. Dozens of top hedge fund managers got their start under Julian Robertson of Tiger Management. Nine of Larry Ellison's top execs became CEOs, COOs, or chairs of other companies. The list goes on: Jay Chiat, Alice Waters, Bob Noyce, Lorne Michaels, and Mary Kay Ash are all known for grooming extraordinary people who became leaders in their fields. After conducting deep research into the practices of these superbosses, Tuck professor Finkelstein found similarities in their "people strategies." In hiring, they focus on intelligence, creativity, and flexibility; look for unconventional talent; and adapt roles and even organizations to suit people. In development, they set high expectations, build master-apprentice relationships, and encourage fast, step-change growth. All of us can borrow from their playbook to improve our own ability to identify and hone talent.

Decision making lies at the heart of our personal and professional lives. Yet the daunting reality is that enormously important decisions made by intelligent, responsible people with the best information and intentions are nevertheless hopelessly flawed at times. In part, that's due to the way our brains work. Modern neuroscience teaches us that two hardwired processes in the brain - pattern recognition and emotional tagging - are critical to decision making. Both are normally reliable; indeed, they provide us with an evolutionary advantage. But in certain circumstances, either one can trip us up and skew our judgment. In this article, Campbell and Whitehead, directors at the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre, together with Finkelstein, of Dartmouth's Tuck School, describe the conditions that promote errors of judgment and explore how organizations can build safeguards against them into the decision-making process. In their analysis, the authors delineate three "red-flag conditions" that are responsible either for distorting emotional tagging or for encouraging people to see false patterns: conflicts of interest; attachments to people, places, or things; and the presence of misleading memories, which seem, but really are not, relevant and comparable to the current situation. Using a global chemical company as an example, the authors describe the steps leaders can take to counteract those biases: inject fresh experience or analysis, introduce further debate and more challenges to their thinking, and impose stronger governance. Rather than rely on the wisdom of experienced chairmen, the humility of CEOs, or the standard organizational checks and balances, the authors urge, everyone involved in important decisions should explicitly consider whether red flags exist and, if they do, lobby for appropriate safeguards.

A corporation's success today lies more in its intellectual and systems capabilities than in its physical assets. Managing human intellect--and converting it into useful products and services--is fast becoming the critical executive skill of the age. It is therefore surprising that so little attention has been given to that endeavor. Few managers have systematic answers to even these basic questions: What is professional intellect? How can we develop it? How can we leverage it? According to James Brian Quinn and his coauthors, an organization's professional intellect operates on four levels: cognitive knowledge, advanced skills, systems understanding, and self-motivated creativity. They argue that organizations that nurture self-motivated creativity are more likely to thrive in the face of today's rapid changes.