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Every leader needs to have smooth, productive relationships with those around him or her. But what makes for a rewarding relationship — and its opposite — has long been unclear. Boyatzis, who has conducted studies and written extensively about the impact of brain activity on such relationships, describes some important new research that holds the promise of helping leaders to form more effective relationships. In one study, executives underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and were asked questions about past work events involving both resonant and dissonant leaders; recalling events with resonant leaders activated brain pathways linked to openness and learning, while recalling events with dissonant leaders had an almost opposite effect. In another study, sophomores were interviewed first about their ideal future and then about their current homework and work ethic; the latter questions activated parts of the brain associated with guilt and self-consciousness, calling into question the efficacy of traditional performance management reviews.

The sum of virtues, values, and traits equals good character, which, in addition to competence and commitment, is one of the three components that make a leader effective and respected. For many, however, virtues and values remain undefinable or elusive. These authors define and de-construct them, and in the process demonstrate how character helps people in their personal journeys to become better leaders. Furthermore, they explain how character develops and why it matters.

Most management intervention strategies are conceived to meet routine or predictable challenges. Yet managers rarely have effective strategies for non-routine challenges, which puts firms at a disadvantage, as non-routine challenges present extraordinary opportunities for innovations and breakthroughs. This article offers transformational leadership principles for non-routine challenges, based on perception, context, and self-empowerment.

That an organizational conflict can be an ideal learning opportunity may seem unlikely. But though a conflict may never be fully resolved, organizations may learn how to relieve or eliminate the larger problems of their dispute. Based on a study of British Columbia’s salmon farming industry — an industry marked by conflict between farmers, government, First Nations, environmental organizations, and industry associations — MacDonald proposes eight practices of organizational leadership, individual leadership, and learning processes that can be applied in order to manage differences and learn from them. 1. Build robust and adaptable learning capabilities. 2. Encourage learning from a range of sources. 3. Focus on gaps in knowledge. 4. Motivate individuals to act. 5. Pair similar individuals between organizations. 6. Agree on rules and hold everyone accountable. 7. Change structures and people as the relationship evolves. 8. Take the time to understand each other.

In an increasingly complex and volatile business environment, companies need leaders who can collaborate, whether across national boundaries or teams. According to a recent survey of over 300 organizations by the Hay Group, organizations have become flatter and more “matrixed”; employees work on different project teams and report to different managers. Alongside benefits to innovation, information sharing, and complex problem solving, this also results in unclear lines of accountability and authority, and slower decision making. The survey found that executives are lacking competencies for collaboration, suggesting that leadership skills have not evolved with the new organizational structure. This flat, matrixed structure requires leaders who can subordinate their agenda, yield power, and give up resources for the greater good, rather than exercise maximum control. The Hay Group’s research found that successful collaborative leaders have six key capabilities: enterprise perspective, cross-functional perspective, customer perspective, self-management, respectful listening, and matrix influencing. Furthermore, companies can improve their chances of successful collaboration by following five guidelines: be clear about the destination, develop mutual understanding, know when to lead and when to follow, set schedules and stick to them, and encourage information sharing. After examining these issues with examples from Procter & Gamble, Apple, Sony, and Cisco, this article ends with a collaboration assessment tool.

TD Bank Group was one of the few large financial institutions in the world to have prospered during the financial meltdown and subsequent recession in 2008/9. It did this without any government assistance. Furthermore, it emerged from the crisis substantially larger in terms of market capitalization and assets while having the best performance of any of the Big-5 Canadian banks in terms of stock price and total shareholder return during the period 2003-2011.<br><br>The case describes many of the actions led by TD’s CEO, Ed Clark, following his promotion to that role after severe credit losses at the bank. It describes a shift of strategy that focused on reducing market, credit, and liquidity risk while increasing strategic risk. It also describes in depth the governance and management approach to risk at the bank as well as identifying important issues such as the establishment of a risk-management culture, the relationship between executive compensation and risk, and the formulation and promulgation of a clear statement of risk appetite. Further, it allows the instructor to focus on the many types of risk that have to be managed in a financial organization including strategic, market, credit, liquidity, operational, insurance, legal/regulatory, and reputational risk and how these might be traded-off against each other.<br><br>Students are required to identify which actions taken by TD are likely to have contributed to the bank’s excellent performance and the extent to which those actions may have been reflected in the performance of the bank’s stock. They need to consider whether avoiding market, credit, and liquidity risk was worth it for TD given that the company did not achieve superior performance to its peers before the financial crisis, a fact that was reflected in its disappointing stock performance.

Dr. Mak Lap Ming, an obstetrician and gynecologist who operated two clinics in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, was contemplating retirement. Now that his own child was financially independent and thus relieved some of the pressure on Mak, he was wondering if it made financial sense to retire soon. He also wondered what the immediate consequences of retirement would be and if semi-retirement was a viable option. To that end, he could work with a partner and shift control to that partner at some point; he could work at his clinics part-time; or he might be able to close one clinic completely and practice out of the remaining one. Mak also thought of retiring completely at the end of the year. Evaluating his options brought Mak significant internal conflict: part of him longed to attain the freedom to travel, yet he experienced great emotional satisfaction when he attended a birth and saw the joy that birth gave to the parents. Mak wondered whether, in his particular case, the pros of retirement outweighed the cons.

A new faculty member is engaged in a decision-making process surrounding the development of a points-based system designed to allocate merit pay at a business school. The process is forcing her to evaluate how she is structuring the allocation of her work, which is directly affecting her motivation toward coaching a student case competition team. Edwards has historically used a judgment-based approach to the allocation of merit. The case outlines the rationale used in the design of the new points-based system, discusses the potential advantages and disadvantages, and highlights the perspectives of different stakeholders throughout the process, including the union, the faculty, and senior administration. The union is opposed to merit, so has outlined fairly stringent criteria for the awarding of merit in the new collective agreement. Faculty opinion is mixed surrounding merit more generally, and the implementation of a points-based system versus a judgment-based system in particular. Senior university administration is committed to the continuation of the merit system at the university as a tool to reward outstanding performance and to retain star faculty. The individual departments at Edwards are in the midst of finalizing the standards and procedures for allocation of merit-based pay. The protagonist is uncertain about how her department will proceed in the design and allocation of points, and how it will result in her re-allocating her work tasks.

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With European nations approaching financial meltdown, conflicts multiplying in the Middle East, and the fiscal cliff looming in the United States, the world seems threatened by geopolitical crisis. This article identifies five factors that are contributing to global insecurity and delaying financial recovery. The first is economic uncertainty, marked by the global financial crisis and high unemployment — youth unemployment is 17 per cent in the United States and surpassing fifty per cent in Spain and Greece. The second factor is demographic shifts, with high projected population growth in Asia and Africa and shrinking projected populations in countries like Germany, Russia, and Japan. The third factor is political paralysis, as exemplified by partisanship in the U.S. Congress or the struggles of the fledgling Iraqi state. The fourth factor is war and terror, marked by an unresolved War on Terror, a rising Chinese military, and cyber warfare. The fifth is climate change and resources, particularly the increasing problems of global warming and resource scarcity. After outlining these five challenges to global security, this article stresses the importance of innovation and research and development as ways to avoid potential crises.

Previous decades were characterized by relative stability and predictable economic growth. But in the new climate of volatility, unpredictability, complexity, and ambiguity, leaders must accept imperfection and uncertainty. Rather than respond to new situations according to scripts, expectations, and external standards, leaders should exercise self-awareness, creativity, and improvisation. Leadership is defined not by creating perfect plans, but by responding to unscheduled events and learning from them. As this article suggests, leaders must prepare themselves by accurately perceiving their unique mix of talents and flaws. Only then can they effectively leverage their ability to lead and move past conformity and the projection of superficial strength.

Nations across the world are commonly said to be facing leadership crises in sectors such as government, business, religion, and education. One phenomenon in the context of leadership decline is the rise of followers. Partly, this rise stems from long-term historical shifts away from dominance and hierarchy and towards democracy and increased rights. But recent technological changes also account for it, with social media and the Internet placing more power in the hands of common people. Paradoxically, during the last thirty years while leadership has been in decline, the leadership industry has flourished, and there is a proliferation of leadership centres, programs, workshops, books, and consultants claiming to teach people how to lead. After describing the current leadership crisis, this article uses the examples of political opposition to Vladimir Putin and more cooperative, restrained CEOs to illustrate the decline in traditional norms of leadership.

In recent years, professional service firms have seen considerable senior talent (often women with children) leave work. Many of these individuals leave their career due to the unwillingness of their employer to provide them with the flexibility to achieve a work-life balance. Virtual teams — often the answer to this problem — are those in which not all members are physically assembled; they share complementary skills and are enabled by technology such as the Internet and telephone. This format, which is especially suitable for individual, knowledge-based work, is on the rise due to employee demand. The lifestyle-driven virtual team model allows practitioners to be selective about their hours and projects, increasing employee satisfaction. Employers benefit due to virtual teams leveraging the best talent more easily and workers facing fewer office-related distractions. Unique challenges, however, include the absence of non-verbal communication, working across time zones, difficulty of building rapport, overreliance on e-mail and telephone communication, and managing conflict at arm’s length. After describing the paradigm of lifestyle-driven virtual teams, this article outlines the best practices: institute strong leadership, choose the right team members, set expectations from the start, implement strict protocols, use proven processes, manage timelines and budgets carefully, establish meaningful project milestones, encourage interaction, communicate more efficiently, and minimize team conflict.

Canada’s economic axis was originally domestic, running east to west. Later, with the North American Free Trade Agreement, it ran north to south. Now, Canada is in free trade negotiations with the European Union and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and has a bilateral pact with Japan. This article, by a former senior policy advisor to the prime minister of Canada, begins by examining Asia’s economic miracle, including China’s rise and Japan’s generation of the largest increase in wealth creation in world history. It then describes the proposed but somewhat uncertain Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would include various Pacific nations, as well as Canada and the United States. It argues that the top priority for Canada should be a bilateral free trade agreement with Japan and that three issues should guide Canada’s actions: a) Canadian manufacturers can become part of Japanese global manufacturing by producing specialized parts; b) Japanese banks, trading firms, and manufacturers have entered into alliances and networks to invest in new technology, share production, transfer technology, and enter new markets; c) Japan, which invented lean production and just-in-time production, is aggressively transforming global supply chains and Canada could become a North American gateway for container flows from Europe and Asia. In describing the global economic climate, this article shows the economic shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the importance of leveraging the new opportunities therein.

Canada ranks 17th out of 24 OECD countries on productivity. Many consider productivity to mean “working harder for less pay,” but a more accurate definition would be “output per hour of work” or “combined output from labour and capital.” General disinterest in and misunderstanding about productivity impedes necessary actions being taken to fix Canada’s looming crisis. As this article explains, reasons for Canada’s productivity deficit include its abundance of small businesses, which generally invest less in R&D; Canadian governmental and private-sector under-investment in information technology; unfavourable taxation; and inertia due to unions’ demands. Yet there are various opportunities for Canada to boost productivity, including implementing more government policy that addresses barriers to competition and growth and promotes technology and education investment; researching opportunities in the private sector and applying them in the public sector; and investing in teams, processes, and equipment. This article, based on interviews with business executives who have overseen significant change, finishes by detailing various enablers of productivity, including technology investment; strategic leadership; better workplace cultures with a stronger sense of teamwork and increased training; and an entrepreneurial mindset.

China is facing a shortage of workers as its demographics and role as the “factory of the world” change. Though set to remain an export hub, China is climbing the value chain and its middle class is growing, so that “Made in China” will turn into “Sales in China.” Since the economic crisis, Asian markets have shown resilience for three reasons. Firstly, Asia is diversifying its trade base, with less dependence on Western trade and more domestic and intra-Asia trade. Also, economic diversity has stabilized the region, due to the presence of developed financial centres like Hong Kong, sophisticated manufacturing bases like mainland China, and low-cost manufacturing, such as in Vietnam and Bangladesh. Finally, the region is well financed, with such rapid economic growth that the Asian middle class is expected to account for over 40 per cent of total global consumption by 2020. A global talent imbalance exists due to high unemployment in mature markets and talent scarcity and rapid economic growth in Asian markets. Opportunities in this scenario include the chance for foreign universities to attract more Chinese students, a role for the subsidiaries of multinational enterprises to develop capable talent for Chinese operations, a prioritization of Chinese-language schools, and a strengthening of relations with China in the key area of trade engagement.

Firms with higher information technology (IT) spending and expertise often achieve greater margins, yet many business leaders still lack IT savvy. Recent decades have witnessed the migration of information systems from specialized divisions to all parts of firms, but a lack of IT-savvy employees has led to underperforming IT investments. IT savvy is not a technical skill, but rather a basic understanding of technology, a knowledge of technology’s evolution, and an ability to scan the environment for new and innovative technological trends. Firms must gain familiarity with cloud technology, mobile platforms, digital strategies, social media, and big data. IT-savvy executives should include IT use in job descriptions, implement rewards and incentives that promote information and systems sharing, measure the performance of IT investments, create technical support functions, and create information systems and resources that are accurate, relevant, and shareable.

Despite leaders’ best intentions, the execution of strategy is often fraught with obstacles. This is frequently due to hidden, unobvious commitments lying beyond leaders’ awareness that counteract their espoused commitments. There are four key areas that contribute to leaders’ ability to perform: 1. Are they smart enough to manage complexity? 2. Do they possess the knowledge and skills required? 3. Do they care enough about their work? 4. Are they mature enough to manage relationships? <br><br> This article distinguishes between technical challenges (complex and critically important work with known solutions) and adaptive challenges (such as creating a corporate culture more oriented to innovation). Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in employees’ priorities, beliefs, and habits. Overcoming these challenges depends greatly on how much a leader cares about his or her organization. This article suggests that leaders focus too much on running a business and meeting technical challenges, and not enough on changing a business and addressing adaptive challenges. In order to meet adaptive challenges, leaders should know their main priorities, understand their hidden commitments and faulty assumptions, and apply this learning to their teams.

According to the author, a former CEO of IKEA, a company needs four building blocks to ensure success: 1) A vision that incorporates a social ambition and a strong value base. IKEA’s founder wanted to enable those with limited financial means to have access to home furnishings of good design and quality. 2) Product range and differentiation achieved by control of the entire value chain. Differentiation of products and prices gives a company the opportunity to meet basic customer needs and build a competitive advantage that is difficult to copy. Indeed, many retailers now develop their own product ranges. 3) Market leadership and a balanced portfolio of outlets in emerging and mature markets. IKEA has established a balance of retail markets with growth potential and profitability. It adapts to different markets, offers competitive prices (especially in emerging markets), has a strong value base to fit different cultures, and has a solid, profitable home base to finance its activity. 4) A company that is controlled by a committed owner. The author argues in favour of an owner with majority control who takes a long-term perspective and takes risks. Institutional owners or employed CEOs (non-owners), he suggests, will not stay long enough to meet a firm’s needs.

This management thinker and author writes that the central challenge in the Western world now is not to make existing organizations more efficient and allocate resources; that struggle has moved to the East. The main challenge in the West is for it to reinvent its economies, innovate, and create wealth. Leaders will learn which tactics and tools they can use to achieve these extremely important goals. The author discusses the tools of power, management, leadership, and culture.