個案總覽

Strong leadership is a critical determinant of success in times of crisis. Most businesses operate in a complex and uncertain environment in which strategies that were successful in the past quickly become redundant in the face of change. Unless mitigated by a decisive leader, problems that ill-prepared organizations face are likely to evolve into a full-fledged crisis. This article identifies six behaviours or mindsets that are critical for leaders in crisis situations. While no one can be prepared for all possible crises, leaders have to use foresight to anticipate the worst and have a general idea about how they are going to respond if they face a crisis. A contingency plan should be created and existing response plans should be tested to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various people on the crisis management team before a real crisis hits. While leaders have to be decisive and confront facts rather than try to explain them away, they also have to be exceptional communicators, making people feel informed, safe and connected. Leaders have to be visible and connect with the people on the shop floor as in the boardroom. Lastly, leaders must be prepared to take risks and make quick decisions in the face of uncertainty. They must have the courage to make the best possible decision with the set of all available facts, coupled with a solid professional background and instinct. The leader must then communicate that they have knowledge and control of the solution, and full confidence in the chosen course of action. Anything less and they will lose the confidence of the people and worsen the level of uncertainty and tension in a crisis situation.

A business leader's greatest battle today is to win the trust of stakeholders. The leaders who win are those who communicate open and often, have a clear and committed communications policy, initiate formal and informal programs and assess their own performance in communicating effectively. Here's sound advice from authors who have taught CEOs how to do it.

The need to focus on soft issues has forced managers to take their eye off the ball and lose sight of the fact that strategy matters more than ever. But these same managers must not only realize that strategy matters, they must develop and deploy tough strategies that will defeat the competition. Today, managers must play to win.

While it is important that a board have some directors who are independent and others who are financially literate, having a board that works - and works well -- requires a mix of directors with significant expertise and experience and the right dynamics. This author, the head of a firm that recruits directors, explains what makes a board work well. Absolutes, like having independent directors, are important, but what makes a board work really well is a mix of directors with expertise, experience and the right dynamics.

When Enron was still - and only - a pipeline company, it lost a major contract in India because local authorities felt that it was pushing negotiations too fast. In fact, the loss of the contract underlines the important role that cultural differences play in international negotiation. For one country's negotiators, time is money; for another's, the slower the negotiations, the better and more trust in the other side. This author's advice will help negotiators bridge the cultural differences in international negotiation. When it comes to negotiating with businesspeople around the world, knowing your opposite's culture is as important as understanding his or her goals.

The rich are different than you and me, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. That truism can be applied to the differences between employees and executives today, and perhaps nowhere is the gap more conspicuous than in the benefits and perks executives receive while they're working for a company -- and continue to receive once they retire. Moreover, most companies hide these perks. The time has come, writes this author, to open up and disclose.

Taking a hard line may be fine -- but only in the short term, and only if you really believe that your counterpart is you're adversary. But negotiation is often a series of episodes, which means that considering your counterpart as a partner or a collaborator is the foundation of trusting and fruitful-- and ongoing -- negotiation. How the game is played matters more than who wins.

Negotiation has come a long way. A once purely adversarial, one-time event has evolved into a relationship-based, ongoing process that puts a premium on empathy and co-operation. This author, an expert educator who has played a critical role in improving negotiators' skills and the results they achieve, discusses the substantial changes that have occurred in how negotiations are conducted today.

Just as negotiating has become an ongoing process, so too has learning new negotiating techniques. Improving your negotiation skills, write the co-authors of this article, is a long journey that involves constant reflection, awareness, and openness to feedback. In the article, a valuable and extremely useful primer for negotiators, they describe and outline the preparation, value-claiming and value-creating strategies that are the foundation of any successful negotiation.

The right strategy and preparation are important elements in successful negotiation, but unless we use the right verbal and nonverbal communication we may never get what we want. Knowing the rules that that can set the tone or code of a negotiation, and how we can successfully switch that code, is vitally important. Without that knowledge, this author points out, we may never get what we want.

To the surprise of many, it's back! We're talking about GROWTH, the intoxicating - and in many cases, company destroying -- strategy that had fallen out of favour these past five years or so. But look, along with a stock market revival, the pace of M&A's and other growth strategies has also picked up. But still, it's caveat emptor. This strategist and author has sound advice for today's hungry, growth-oriented CEOs.

The market is up, and the CEO is rewarded with a huge compensation package. The market is down, and the CEO is rewarded with a huge compensation package. There's plenty wrong with this picture, not the least of which is the lack of any link between pay and performance, and the absence of any long-term performance measures. This author, a recognized expert in executive compensation, has several excellent suggestions for changing the picture.

That the terrain of decision making is mined with moral hazards has never been much in doubt. But the real question for executives is this: Just how can you make your conscience your guide? This author has suggestions and strong advice that, when taken, can help restore public confidence in business leaders.

What makes a leader the most? This author argues that it is a compassionate approach, a leaderful practice that exhibits humility and seeks to serve others rather than power for its own sake. As a result, people learn to count on others because they have learned that each member, even the weakest, will be kept in mind when decisions are made.

Like it or not, leaders need to manage the mood of their organizations. The most gifted leaders accomplish that by using a mysterious blend of psychological abilities known as emotional intelligence. They are self-aware and empathetic. They can read and regulate their own emotions while intuitively grasping how others feel and gauging their organization's emotional state. But where does emotional intelligence come from, and how do leaders learn to use it? In this article, 18 leaders and scholars (including business executives, leadership researchers, psychologists, an autism expert, and a symphony conductor) explore the nature and management of emotional intelligence. Their responses varied, but some common themes emerged: the importance of consciously--and conscientiously--honing one's skills, the double-edged nature of self-awareness, and the danger of letting any one emotional intelligence skill dominate. Among their observations: Psychology Professor John Mayer, who codeveloped the concept of emotional intelligence, warns managers not to be confused by popular definitions of the term, which suggest that if you have a certain set of personality traits then you automatically possess emotional intelligence. Neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg agrees with professors Daniel Goleman and Robert Goffee that emotional intelligence can be learned--but only by people who already show an aptitude for it.

Does using Tyco's funds to purchase a $6,000 shower curtain and a $15,000 dog-shaped umbrella stand make Dennis Kozlowski a bad leader? Is Martha Stewart's career any less instructive because she may have sold some shares on the basis of a tip-off? Is leadership synonymous with moral leadership? Before 1970, the answer from most leadership theorists would certainly have been no. Look at Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung--great leaders all, but hardly good men. In fact, capricious, murderous, high-handed, corrupt, and evil leaders are effective and commonplace. Everywhere, power goes hand in hand with corruption--everywhere, that is, except in the literature of business leadership. To read Tom Peters, Jay Conger, John Kotter, and most of their colleagues, leaders are, as Warren Bennis puts it, individuals who create shared meaning, have a distinctive voice, have the capacity to adapt, and have integrity. According to today's business literature, to be a leader is, by definition, to be benevolent. But leadership is not a moral concept, and it is high time we acknowledge that fact. Leaders are like the rest of us: trustworthy and deceitful, cowardly and brave, greedy and generous. To assume that all good leaders are good people is to be willfully blind to the reality of the human condition.

Leaders go through many transitions in their careers. Each brings new crises and challenges that are predictable. Knowing what to expect can help you get through and perhaps emerge stronger. In this engaging article, Warren G. Bennis, professor and founding chairman of the University of Southern California's Leadership Institute, reflects on leadership, recounting his own experiences as a young lieutenant in the infantry in World War II, as the new president of a university, and as the mentor to a unique nursing student. Bennis also describes the experiences of other leaders he has known throughout his career. Drawing on more than 50 years of academic research and business expertise--and borrowing from Shakespeare's seven ages of man--Bennis says the leader's life unfolds in seven stages. "The infant executive" seeks to recruit a mentor for guidance. "The schoolboy" must learn how to do the job in public. "The lover with a woeful ballad" struggles with the tsunami of problems every organization presents. "The bearded soldier" must be willing to hire people better than he is, because he knows that talented underlings can help him shine. "The general" must become adept at allowing people to speak the truth and being able to hear what they are saying. "The statesman" is hard at work preparing to pass on wisdom in the interests of the organization. And, finally, "the sage" embraces the role of mentor to young executives.

Leaders are vulnerable, too. That is, they can be led astray just as their followers can--actually, by their followers. Sometimes, good leaders end up making poor decisions because well-meaning followers are united and persuasive about a course of action. This is a particular problem for leaders who attract and empower strong followers. These executives need to become more skeptical of the majority view and push followers to examine their opinions more closely. At other times, leaders get into trouble because they are surrounded by followers who fool them with flattery and isolate them from uncomfortable realities. Charismatic leaders, who are most susceptible to this problem, need to make an extra effort to unearth disagreement and to find followers who are not afraid to pose hard questions. Organizational mechanisms like 360-degree feedback and executive coaching can help these leaders get at the truth within their companies. Finally, unscrupulous and ambitious followers may end up encroaching on the authority of the leader to such an extent that the leader becomes little more than a figurehead who has responsibility but no power. There's not much leaders can do to guard completely against a determined corporate Iago, but those who communicate and live by a positive set of values will find themselves better protected. And because followers tend to model themselves after their leaders, the straightforward leader is less likely to have manipulative followers. In this article, George Washington University Professor Lynn Offermann explores each of these dynamics in depth, arguing that leaders need to stir debate, look for friends who can deliver bad news, and communicate and act on a solid set of values.

Although a number of business scholars have explored the psychology of executives, Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries has made the analysis of CEOs his life's work. In this article, Kets de Vries, a psychoanalyst, author, and Insead professor, draws on three decades of study to describe the psychological profile of successful CEOs. He explores senior executives' vulnerabilities, which are often intensified by followers' attempts to manipulate their leaders. Leaders, he says, have an uncanny ability to awaken transferential processes--in which people transfer the dynamics of past relationships onto present interactions--among their employees and even in themselves. These processes can present themselves in a number of ways, sometimes negatively. What's more, many top executives, being middle-aged, suffer from depression. Midlife prompts a reappraisal of career identity, and by the time a leader is a CEO, an existential crisis is often imminent. Not all CEOs are psychologically unhealthy, of course. Healthy leaders are talented in self-observation and self-analysis, Kets de Vries says. The best are highly motivated to spend time on self-reflection. Their lives are in balance, they can play, they are creative and inventive, and they have the capacity to be nonconformist. "Those who accept the madness in themselves may be the healthiest leaders of all," he concludes.

Managers and leaders are two very different types of people. Managers' goals arise out of necessities rather than desires; they excel at defusing conflicts between individuals or departments, placating all sides while ensuring that an organization's day-to-day business gets done. Leaders, on the other hand, adopt personal, active attitudes toward goals. They look for the opportunities and rewards that lie around the corner, inspiring subordinates and firing up the creative process with their own energy. Their relationships with employees and coworkers are intense, and their working environment is often chaotic. In this article, first published in 1977, the author argues that businesses need both managers and leaders to survive and succeed. But in the larger U.S. organizations of that time, a "managerial mystique" seemed to perpetuate the development of managerial personalities-people who rely on, and strive to maintain, orderly work patterns. The managerial power ethic favors collective leadership and seeks to avoid risk. That same managerial mystique can stifle leaders' development-How can an entrepreneurial spirit develop when it is submerged in a conservative environment and denied personal attention? Mentor relationships are crucial to the development of leadership personalities, but in large, bureaucratic organizations, such relationships are not encouraged. Businesses must find ways to train good managers and develop leaders at the same time. Without a solid organizational framework, even leaders with the most brilliant ideas may spin their wheels, frustrating coworkers and accomplishing little. But without the entrepreneurial culture that develops when a leader is at the helm of an organization, a business will stagnate and rapidly lose competitive power.