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By now everyone is familiar with the glass ceiling, the informal barrier that keeps women out of top positions. Newer research has focused on why women have a better chance of getting a top job when an organization is facing a crisis-a phenomenon called the glass cliff. Two recent studies suggest that women are more likely to be promoted into these perilous positions in organizations with a history of male leadership, partly because stereotypically female attributes, such as communication and team-building skills, are especially valued during turbulent times.

Technology itself has become the great general manager. It can monitor performance closely, provide instant feedback, and even create reports and presentations. That leaves people with general management skills in a very vulnerable position. They must make two crucial investments: the first in acquiring and building knowledge or competencies that are valuable and rare; the second in developing new areas of proficiency throughout their working lives.

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.

Within a period of 23 months, Lois Quam found herself with a dizzying level of responsibility, both at work-as research director at UnitedHealthcare and head of the company's public-sector services division-and at home, with newborn twins and a toddler. But rather than bend under the weight of either pressure, Quam found ways to thrive in both areas of her life. Namely, she focused on big-picture goals, doing what was required to be the kind of mother and manager she wanted to be. She wasn't shy about letting her worlds overlap, taking her children to work and even allowing their visibility to work in her favor as she advocated for affordable health care for families. Now head of her own successful company, Quam carved out a place for herself as a successful working mother before work/life balance was a corporate buzzword.

Wynton Marsalis grew up in a family of New Orleans jazz musicians and received his first trumpet as a sixth birthday present from bandleader Al Hirt. At 14 he debuted with the Louisiana Philharmonic; at 17 he moved to New York, where he attended Juilliard, joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, assembled his own band, and began a prolific composing and recording career. He talks here about leadership and creativity.

This note contains a verbatim transcript between an MBA student and a practicing manager and can be used to identify the speaker's values, attitude, beliefs, and expectations (VABEs). Seeing, examining, understanding, and evaluating one's own VABEs is a precursor to becoming an effective leader of others.

In 2007, Walmart was sourcing approximately $750 million in seafood annually. Although output from the world's fisheries had declined to 3 percent of production levels in the year 1900, the company's volume of seafood business was growing at roughly 25 percent per year. Against this backdrop, Peter Redmond, vice president for seafood and deli, believed that continuity of supply was the single greatest long-term issue facing the seafood network. To help address this challenge as part of the company's recently-announced sustainability strategy, Walmart set a goal to transition to selling 100 percent MSC certified wild-caught seafood by the end of 2011. To accomplish its goal of selling only certified wild-caught fish, Walmart would have to work through its suppliers to increase the number of fisheries and processing plants in the MSC certification program. This case describes MSC certification and the salmon supply chain from the point of view of one of Walmart's tier-one seafood suppliers. It provides enough detail that students should be able to make recommendations regarding how should Walmart rationalize its seafood supply chain to reduce costs and promote sustainability.

This case presents two vignettes from the perspective of Laura White, a newly-promoted manager of the Cook Islands operations for a large Australian bank. In Vignette A, White learns of the existence of an Offshore Banking Unit (OBU) - the source of significant revenue to the Islands' economy - in which the customers' identities are unknown. The bank has just brought on a new CEO who has emphasized the importance of transparency and knowing your customer. Given the context of the CEO's philosophy and White's new role as manager, she must decide whether or not to raise her concerns to her manager regarding the OBU. Vignette B provides further history on White's previous experience with an ethical scandal in the bank. After having been told by her manager that bringing more attention to the Cook Islands' OBU banking operations will only cause more problems, she must decide once again if and how to elevate the issue.

Although extroverted leaders have important strengths, in certain situations an introvert may make the better boss. This research suggests that the extrovert's tendency to take over discussions may stifle the ideas of his or her subordinates; whereas introverted leaders tend to listen more carefully and show greater receptivity to suggestions, making them more effective leaders of proactive teams.

The modern workplace may have made progress toward achieving work-life balance, but many issues remain. They include stress on the job, the underutilized potential of working remotely, the division of labor at home, and pay equity for women.

When Brian Dunn became interested in social media, about five years ago, it was a personal interest, not a strategy. Now he uses Twitter and Facebook to connect directly with customers and employees, watch trends, and keep on top of the news. On Memorial Day 2010, after he tweeted a simple thank-you to U.S. service members and Best Buy employees in the reserves, Dunn heard back from a company product specialist that her fellow employees had put together a technology system (using a laptop, a webcam, and Skype) that enabled her and her three children to talk with their father, a soldier in Iraq. To Dunn, this was a moment of serendipity-and an illustration of how important his employees' work can be. Social media are absolutely core to his company's strategy, Dunn says, because the more people become involved with them, the greater the demand for connectivity and the PCs and mobile devices that deliver it. That's why Best Buy has a Twitter feed called Twelpforce, where customers can post tech problems and company associates or other users can post solutions. Dunn acknowledges that social media can have a downside-such as when his Twitter account was hacked in a particularly embarrassing way, causing a brief crisis at Best Buy-but he remains a committed fan.

When the world's largest financial institutions had to be rescued from insolvency in 2008, many experts laid the blame at the feet of corporate boards. But insufficient board oversight is a problem that had supposedly been solved in 2002. As the United States reeled from the blatant failures of corporate governance at Enron and WorldCom, Congress passed the famous Sarbanes-Oxley Act to prevent such failures from happening again. The new rules looked promising. The majority of a board's directors now had to be independent. And senior executives were required to conduct annual assessments of their internal controls for review by external auditors, whose work would be further reviewed by a quasi-governmental oversight board. By the time of the financial meltdown, most major financial institutions were SOX compliant-but that didn't stop the failures. More than 80% of collapsed banks' board members were independent, as were all members of their audit, compensation, and nominating committees. All the firms evaluated their internal controls yearly, and, in 2007, their external auditors' reports showed no material weaknesses. Neither did the reviews by the quasi-governmental board. So why were the SOX reforms so ineffective? In the author's view, it's because they merely added a new layer of legal obligations for governance without improving the quality of people serving on the boards or changing their behavioral dynamics. The author-formerly the president or chairman of two global financial firms, an independent director of several large industrial companies, and a longtime scholar of corporate governance-identifies three chronic deficiencies of boards: They tend to be too large to operate effectively. Members often lack sufficient expertise in the relevant industry. And few devote enough time to fully understand the complexities of the business. In this article, Pozen presents a new model for the corporate board.

Employee wellness programs have often been viewed as a nice extra, not a strategic imperative. But the data demonstrate otherwise, according to Berry, of Texas A&M University; Mirabito, of Baylor University; and Baun, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Their research shows that the ROI on comprehensive, well-run employee wellness programs is impressive, sometimes as high as six to one. To achieve those kinds of results, employers cannot merely offer workers a few passes to a fitness center and nutrition information in the cafeteria. The most successful wellness programs are supported by six essential pillars: engaged leadership at multiple levels; strategic alignment with the company's identity and aspirations; a design that is broad in scope and high in relevance and quality; broad accessibility; internal and external partnerships; and effective communications. Companies in a variety of industries-including Johnson & Johnson, Lowe's, H-E-B, and Healthwise-have built their employee wellness programs on all six pillars and have reaped big rewards in the form of lower costs, greater productivity, and higher morale. Those benefits are not easy to achieve, and verifiable paybacks are never a certainty. But the track record inspires emulation, especially when you see the numbers.

Millions of people are struggling at work. Some are in the wrong jobs. Others feel no connection to their colleagues or engagement with their tasks. The result is rampant dissatisfaction and underachievement. Hallowell, a child psychiatrist specializing in learning differences, describes the Cycle of Excellence, a plan for helping people achieve peak performance. It consists of five steps: Select a job that reflects what you like to do and what you do best and that adds value to the organization. Research has shown that good job fit reduces stress and increases satisfaction and performance. Connect with the people around you. Robust relationships in the workplace galvanize people and build their engagement with their jobs. Small talk may seem trivial, but it pays big dividends. Play on the job. It sounds like an oxymoron, but people do their best-and are most satisfied-when they're imaginatively involved with their work. And when you're hard at play, you're building your brain. Grapple and Grow-that is, work hard to achieve a difficult task. The stress you may feel as you engage with a tough assignment and connect with others to complete it is not the toxic kind. Shine in the acknowledgment of your achievements. Praise releases chemicals that make us feel good, and it fills our uniquely human need to be of value, to matter. If you aren't getting it, ask for it. The need for recognition is fundamental to optimal human performance.

Stephen Greer's Hong Kong-based scrap-metal-recycling company, Hartwell Pacific, was enjoying a period of fantastic growth in the late 1990s: Within 18 months, the firm grew from two employees to 200 and opened locations in seven countries. But Greer's experience offers a vivid illustration of what can go wrong when an entrepreneur ambitiously expands without understanding that emerging markets operate by very different rules. Greer didn't realize that the corollary to cheap local wages is a poor population that may be tempted to supplement paychecks by stealing from employers; his company ultimately lost several million dollars from employee theft and embezzlement. This episode of fraud led Greer to learn to sacrifice some growth for control, to embrace bureaucracy, and to overcome his distrust and return to the optimistic mind-set that's essential for entrepreneurial growth.

If your firm is debating whether to hire a chief sustainability officer (CSO), you may be like fictional electronic components manufacturer Narinex. After losing another big contract to competitor Glistrom, an internal analysis of previous-versus-current RFPs has highlighted one clear area of concern: sustainability. Glistrom recently hired a CSO who has been very visible in promoting its green strategies, even though they don't differ much from Narinex's. With customers increasingly interested in the "greenness" of the products they buy, Narinex needs to change its approach. The executive team debates the questions of cost, brand image, and strategy, and tries to decide whether to handle the issues in-house with current resources, to bring in a consultant to investigate changes, or to hire a CSO. How do you think Narinex should resolve its dilemma? This fictional case was authored by Eric J. McNulty, who writes about sustainability, and Rupert Davis, who heads the sustainability practice at MontaRosa. Commentary is offered by Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP; Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola; and HBR's readers. Two experts comment on this fictional case study in products R1012N and R1012Z.

The celebrated shoe designer talks about how and why he started to "do shoes," some factors in his success, balancing art and commerce, and why he's stayed independent.

If your firm is debating whether to hire a chief sustainability officer (CSO), you may be like fictional electronic components manufacturer Narinex. After losing another big contract to competitor Glistrom, an internal analysis of previous-versus-current RFPs has highlighted one clear area of concern: sustainability. Glistrom recently hired a CSO who has been very visible in promoting its green strategies, even though they don't differ much from Narinex's. With customers increasingly interested in the "greenness" of the products they buy, Narinex needs to change its approach. The executive team debates the questions of cost, brand image, and strategy, and tries to decide whether to handle the issues in-house with current resources, to bring in a consultant to investigate changes, or to hire a CSO. How do you think Narinex should resolve its dilemma? This fictional case was authored by Eric J. McNulty, who writes about sustainability, and Rupert Davis, who heads the sustainability practice at MontaRosa. Commentary is offered by Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP; Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola; and HBR's readers. Two experts comment on this fictional case study in products R1012N and R1012Z.

If your firm is debating whether to hire a chief sustainability officer (CSO), you may be like fictional electronic components manufacturer Narinex. After losing another big contract to competitor Glistrom, an internal analysis of previous-versus-current RFPs has highlighted one clear area of concern: sustainability. Glistrom recently hired a CSO who has been very visible in promoting its green strategies, even though they don't differ much from Narinex's. With customers increasingly interested in the "greenness" of the products they buy, Narinex needs to change its approach. The executive team debates the questions of cost, brand image, and strategy, and tries to decide whether to handle the issues in-house with current resources, to bring in a consultant to investigate changes, or to hire a CSO. How do you think Narinex should resolve its dilemma? This fictional case was authored by Eric J. McNulty, who writes about sustainability, and Rupert Davis, who heads the sustainability practice at MontaRosa. Commentary is offered by Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP; Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola; and HBR's readers. Two experts comment on this fictional case study in products R1012N and R1012Z.

The AIG Board underwent significant restructuring after the company was bailed out by the U.S. government in September 2008 in the midst of the financial crisis.