Effective Leadership and Mentoring for Those Who Want to Succeed, Part 17

This blog post curates excellent content on effective leadership and mentoring from a variety of websites to keep you informed on what’s happening in the areas.

What Would Thomas Edison Do? At GE, It’s a Guiding Business Question: In this article by Tim Fernholz, Good Business editor, he reports that GE is going back to its core business – energy, transportation, and medical equipment – and is investing a lot in RD and creating new markets for its products. Thomas Edison cofounded GE, and though he was an inventor, he was unusual because he was also interested in the commercial viability of its products. Should companies go back to their roots after they have moved away significantly?

The Changing Role of Global Leaders: In this Harvard Business Review blog post, the author, Matthew Gitsham, Director at the Ashridge Centre for Business and Sustainability writes about a new kind of leaders who are socially responsible and put people’s well-being and quality of life first. Gitsham uses Unilever as an example, “The company would double the size of its business, by channeling its efforts toward achieving eight ambitious goals by 2020 — among them, doubling the proportion of Unilever’s portfolio that meets the highest nutritional standards, and halving the water associated with the consumer use of its products.”

An Entrepreneur’s Top Leadership Challenges — and How to Meet Them: In this article, the writer Kelly K. Spors, outlines three challenges: Challenge No. 1: Hiring the right people — and keeping them; Challenge No. 2: Expanding prudently, not prematurely; and Challenge No. 3: Managing through big changes, then uses mini cases studies to build her argument. It’s a short article and worth the read.

Whitney Houston’s Rise and Fall: Lessons for Small Business Owners: This is an excellent article by Rohit Arora, which touches on some important points such as attaining success too quickly, squandering your talents, expanding into related fields after mastering your first, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and leading an integrated life. And I would argue that the lessons from Whitney Houston are not only for small business leaders. They are appropriate for any leader.

Leadership lessons from Meryl Streep: As the title of the article suggest, writer, John

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Baldoni shares some leadership lessons from Meryl Streep such as being authentic, and possessing the ability to control your emotions. It’s always interesting when a writer uses a highly recognizable figure to demonstrate important lessons.

Grounds Zero: A Starbucks-Free Italy: Howard Schultz, Chairman, President and CEO of Starbucks got his idea for the present version of the company while on a business trip to Milan in 1983, yet nearly 30 years later, there still aren’t any Starbucks in Italy, why? In this in-depth article, you get a look at the culture in Italy, and how they perceive coffee, which is very different from North America. While reading the Bloomberg Businessweek article, I was reminded of how Isadore Sharp would transport ideas from other countries and industries to the Four Seasons, however, he would build on those ideas before he implemented. Italy is the birthplace of cappuccino, would Starbucks risk its reputation by opening cafés there?

A more peaceful world if women in charge? This article by Joseph Nye, Project Syndicate, asks some important questions: Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? and does gender really matter in leadership? These are very tough questions and the writer weighs in on the debate and presents his point of view. He also includes information on the percent of women leaders, and concludes the article, “The key choices about war and peace in our future will depend not on gender, but on how leaders combine hard- and soft-power skills to produce smart strategies. Both men and women will make those decisions…”

Wondering ‘Am I a Good Leader?’ Take the Sheryl Sandberg Test: In this blog post, executive coach Scott Eblin asks three questions based on what he has learned from researching Sheryl Sandberg: 1.) Do I have followers? 2.) Do I have a cause bigger than myself? and 3.) Do I get stuff done? How would you answer, would you pass the good leader test?

Know Which Kind of Mentor You Need: In the Management Tip of the day from Harvard Review, three types of mentors are proposed: co-mentor, remote mentor and invisible mentor. The tip takes a couple of seconds to read and is worth pondering.

What do you have to add to the conversation? Please write your comments in the box below.