A critical issue in leadership today is substance versus style. I addressed the distinction in a blog on September 23, titled Leadership: Beyond Style and Emotion, the Devil’s in the Detail. Recently Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner uses Style vs. Substance to compare Obama’s Rapturous Style Versus Tea Party Substance.

There’s an important message in both commentaries. Substance can lead to real change while style alone has its limits. Continue reading…

Managers are increasingly finding that “Doing what you always did will no longer get you what you always got.” Customers, business partners, and others are demanding better, faster, cheaper.  Working harder will not suffice; change is needed. Yet, the requisite resources to undertake large-scale initiatives to produce these results do not exist. 

A solution: look for meaningful, smaller changes that will affect the way separate units – departments, functions, businesses - interact with each other. Relatively small steps can yield huge dividends:  Continue reading…

There is a huge gap between talking about leadership in the abstract and putting the ideas into action. Leadership is a powerful idea – crucial to success, yet squishy. So how does a leader transform hope and new directions into tangible results?

David Gergen of Harvard describes comtemporary leadership this way: “Command and control leadership has given way to a new approach, [which is] often called the influence model. The essence of leading others is to develop empathy with them and to develop the social skills that will persuade them to work toward shared goals.”

Many authorities, like Gergen, focus heavily on leadership style. But perceptions of style are often superficial and short-lived:   Continue reading…