There are times when it’s extremely tempting to believe that the world is composed of two kinds of leaders: stiff-necked, puritanical and rigid conservatives; and free-flowing, wishy-washy, politically-correct liberals. Tempting, but wrong. The best approach to leadership combines elements from both right and left — and it has been around since at least 1805.

An interview with Carmine Coyote, founder of the Slow Leadership blog, covering the concept of Slow Leadership, the importance of making time to think, why you should always avoid multi-tasking, and why many of today’s problems have a single cause — a pervasive lack of trust.

We can learn important, real-life lessons from Britney Spears and her professional and personal downfall. What management techniques can be employed to manage a crisis such as Britney’s? How do you turn around a bad situation? Nina Simosko explains how crises can be handled more successfully by following what she calls the STOP approach — and why you need to over-communicate in a crisis.

The Prussian general Von Moltke famously said that no plan survives contact with the enemy. There doesn’t need to be a literal enemy for this to be true of other sectors also. The real challenge for an organization is how it deals with the unexpected, bearing in mind that the unexpected is the one thing that always happens. These days, most organizations, with their cultures of central command and micro-management, don’t deal with it very well. John Fletcher explains one reason why.

Each leader must chart her own course, but as we can see from Nelson Mandela’s example, a determined focus on a clear outcome helps guide all decisions and tactics along the way. A recent interview with Nelson Mandela provides an open-minded and insightful view of leadership from someone who has both known great power and also been bereft of influence at different times in his 90 years. The interview provides eight leadership lessons we should all take to heart.

Do values count for anything, given the way marketers, spin doctors and leaders misunderstand and misuse them? Too many of today’s self-proclaimed leaders have shown themselves to be authoritarian, deceitful, dishonest and manipulative, despite all their talk of values. Values are not there as tools to be used to lead people by the nose. They are who you are. Behavior is driven by values. Whenever you do something “because it’s right” you’re acting on your values. Ethics are values. That’s why they matter.

We’re stuck with the myth of the leader as action hero. It’s time we put it aside in favor of a more thoughtful approach. Failure to do so will condemn us to repeat recent cycles of boom and bust.

Humankind has an innate need to make sense of events: to fit them into some known pattern [...]

What happens when simple over-confidence leads to a nightmare of tension and lies?

There’s a reasonable belief that a healthy dose of self-esteem is necessary in a leader; that a person placed in charge of important activities needs to be courageous in facing problems and confident in his or her ability to overcome problems and obstacles. [...]

Let’s be clear. Motivation is nothing more than finding ways to get other people to do what you want; what, in many cases, they’re paid to do anyway. It isn’t mysterious. It’s not some obscure, magic art. People do what they feel they ought to do — just as long as they are clear about [...]

Slowing down isn’t about giving things up. It’s making time first for the things in your life that matter most

Zen Habits has an excellent post on making time in your life for your personal needs and goals.
In our action-obsessed, “get it done” culture, it’s all too easy to become convinced that the more goals you [...]