Every tough challenge provides an opportunity to build more mental muscle. And each step you take toward becoming mentally stronger is one step toward reaching your greatest potential. Amy Morin, psychotherapist and bestselling author, explains on forbes.com how to stay mentally strong when faced with an anxiety-provoking situation: Take a Couple of Deep Breaths Anxiety is not all in your mind—it's also waging a war with your body, producing a variety of physical symptoms lik

The saying “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” needs an upgrade—because when hard times hit, what we need more than anything from our staff (and ourselves) is resilience. My friend and colleague Robert Goldberg weighs in on this topic in a recent article on fortune.com. "Resilience,” says Robert, founder and managing partner of Greensboro, NC-based consulting firm Organization Insight, “is like a force field. If a group learns it can withstand pressures, failures

The keys to competitive success in the new decade will be different from those of the past. This interactive bcg.com article explains steps to create a company equal to the challenges of the 2020s. An Era of Uncertainty and Volatility: Accelerating technological change, social polarization, political gridlock, geopolitical power shifts, and increased public scrutiny of business all point to an era of protracted uncertainty and volatility. Company lifespans are shrinking. Only

You’re bright. You have good ideas, insights, and the ambition to take on more. But you aren’t getting the opportunities you want, and your manager has not been helpful. How do you get noticed by senior leadership without going over your boss’s head? Try these ten steps. If followed, these actions can help you grow and move toward greater opportunities—without coming off as a braggart or upsetting your direct manager. Demonstrate your commitment to your growth and to the comp

Diversity at the top, it seems, can pay. Firms with female CEOs and CFOs produce superior stock price performance compared to the market average, and firms with a high gender diversity on their board of directors are more profitable and larger than firms with low gender diversity, according to a study from S&P Global Market Intelligence. “The evidence is getting louder,” says Beatrice Grech-Cumbo, head of Korn Ferry’s Advancing Women Worldwide initiative. The study builds on

If you want to understand how to run a successful business today, you might want to study jazz. Why jazz, and not accounting, business administration, finance, international relations, or some other discipline or genre of music? Because jazz involves the simultaneous exercise of cooperative teamwork and freewheeling innovation. Imagine multiple composers, writing and playing in the same instant and together in the same groove, playing new thoughts simultaneously, and interwea

For many businesspeople, the last thing you want to worry about (or do) is managing people. You want to get out, meet customers, create awesome products, bring exciting new opportunities through the front door. But unless you've got others managing your employees, then you're still on the hook. The good news is you can make the task a little easier for yourself by remembering 7 essential leadership keys that will benefit your organization as a direct result: Delegate wisely—b

What’s the secret to a satisfying second-act career? Don't assume meaningful work is the key—research shows that people tend to overestimate the importance of the what when they should be focusing on the who. Passion, purpose and a paycheck are all important, but the people you work with, and the quality of those relationships and interactions, are critical to career success. If you invest in work relationships that nourish and create a sense of purpose, you can feel as fulfi

In a study coordinated by Harvard Business Review of 500 college-educated professionals, research found that people need the most help not at the beginning of their careers, but mid-career—especially when it comes to making important decisions. Just when people attain management roles and need to make the decisions that could improve the enterprise and advance their career, many become trapped in the status quo and stay in their comfort zones rather than setting new direction

In a recent hbr.org article, Dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Bill Boulding, describes how successful leaders today and in decades to come must possess triple-threat leadership capability: IQ+EQ+DQ—the familiar intellect and emotional intelligence aspects, plus one that must be recognized and elevated: decency. Competency in business is essential, and intellect, or IQ, is the broad idea of business competency and an understanding of what it takes to be succ

New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker, and leading social scientist for business performance Joseph Grenny and his colleagues have spent 30 years studying best practices for dealing with dreaded but crucial conversations. How they are dealt with predicts the magnitude of our influence, health of our teams, consistency of innovation, and strength of customer (and other) relationships. Unfortunately, the recurring observation is that when it matters most, we do our

In an age of constant change, it pays to be trailblazer. Harvard author Francesca Gino draws on her experiences studying the behavior of business leaders and organizations in her new book, “Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life,” to identify the common traits and practices among successful renegades that give them their creative and competitive edge. What makes rule-breakers successful, and how can we tap into our inner rebel? Positive deviance: Ita

Josh Bersin, founder of Bersin by Deloitte, studies corporate HR, talent, leadership, recruitment, and all aspects of HR and workplace technology. In a recent LinkedIn article, he discusses an important find in a study in the 2019 LinkedIn Learning Report—that the #1 thing holding people back from learning is time. And it is the job of the business or HR leader to give people more time. A few important findings of the report: The L&D market is growing explosively. Now over a

Jennifer Porter, an executive and team coach at The Boda Group, recently wrote on HRR.org that leaders and teammates often describe their team as “dysfunctional," their teammates as "annoying," and everyone else as not knowing how to operate effectively. As an experienced team development practitioner, Jennifer knows that these are not accurate or helpful assessments of the situation. Teams are complex systems of individuals who bring different preferences, skills, experience

A recent article in the APA Monitor by Chris Palmer reminds us that the character Mentor in Homer's "Odyssey" serves as the trusted older counselor to Odysseus's son, Telemachus. "Mentor" has since come to mean someone who gives guidance, shares knowledge and imparts wisdom. But great mentors actually do much more, from serving as role models to helping incubate research projects to bringing protégés into a network of colleagues. Barriers to good mentoring include the fact th

I worked with Mark Nevins when he was at Booz Allen. He recently wrote a great article for Harvard Business Review about a simple but serious problem: collaborating with people you don’t like. Ultimately, while not particularly easy or comfortable, developing a handful of useful strategies are helpful, and it is possible to collaborate effectively with people you don’t like — but you have to take the lead. Here are some helpful tips: Reflect on the cause of tension and how yo

Korn Ferry contributor Daniel Goleman describes the spontaneous joy, even rapture, of optimal mental performance, or "flow", as a state of neural harmony. The experience of losing yourself in a creative project, like developing an app or writing a story, or having competed at the top of your game, either athletically or mentally. Flow is a state that underlies our best performance on the task at hand as we channel positive feelings in an energized pursuit with an undistracted

McKinsey & Company has partnered with LeanIn.Org for the past 4 years to conduct its ongoing study Women in the Workplace 2018. Their research probes the issues found in data drawn from 462 companies employing more than 19.6 million people, as well as from a survey of over 64,000 employees and a series of interviews. The vast majority of companies say that they’re highly committed to gender and racial diversity—yet that commitment has not translated into meaningful progress.

Over the past year, Ron Ashkenas, Partner Emeritus at Schaffer Consulting, and Brook Manville, Principal of Brook Manville, have been writing the Harvard Business Review Leader’s Handbook — a primer for aspiring leaders who want to take their careers to the next level. Part of the research for the book was interviewing over 40 successful leaders of large corporations, startups, and non-profits on their views about what it takes to become a leader. They explored years of publi

As humans, we are conditioned to seek affiliation through families and tribes, together establishing rules to create safety, belonging, and even accomplishing something meaningful. In business, our tribes are linked by a leader, a shared purpose or goal, a common culture, or an organizational boundary. Belonging to a business tribe awakens our collaborative instincts, where we can identify key competitors and work collectively to defeat them. We must also recognize that triba