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Rost found that writers on leadership had defined it in more than two hundred ways. Often, they glided between incompatible definitions within the same book: they argued that leaders should be simultaneously decisive and flexible, or visionary and open-minded. The closest they came to a consensus definition of leadership was the idea that it was “good management.” In practice, Rost wrote, “leadership is a word that has come to mean all things to all people.”

“The End of Leadership,” from 2012, Barbara Kellerman, a founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, wrote that “we don’t have much better an idea of how to grow good leaders, or of how to stop or at least slow bad leaders, than we did a hundred or even a thousand years ago.” She points out that, historically, the “trajectory” of leadership has been “about the devolution of power,” from the king to the voters, say, or the boss to the shareholders. In recent years, technological and economic changes like social media and globalization have made leaders less powerful.

Max Weber distinguished between the “charismatic” leadership of traditional societies and the “bureaucratic” leadership on offer in the industrialized world.

Khurana found that many companies passed over good internal candidates for C.E.O. in favor of “messiah” figures with exceptional charisma.

Charismatic C.E.O.s are often famous, and they make good copy;

y the mid-twentieth century

“process-based” approach. T

if you read a detailed, process-oriented account of Jobs’s career (“Becoming Steve Jobs,” by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, is particularly good), it’s clear that Jobs was a master of the leadership process. Time and time again, he gathered intelligence about the future of technology; surveyed the competition and refined his taste; set goals and assembled teams; tracked projects, intervening into even apparently trivial decisions; and followed through, considering the minute details of marketing and retail. Although Jobs had considerable charisma, his real edge was his thoughtful involvement in every step of an unusually expansive leadership process.

some organizations the candidate pool is heavily filtered: in the military, for example, everyone who aspires to command must jump through the same set of hoops. In Congress, though, you can vault in as a businessperson, or a veteran, or the scion of a political family.

whether times are bad enough to justify gambling on a dark-horse candidate.

Leadership BS

five virtues that are almost universally praised by popular leadership writers—modesty, authenticity, truthfulness, trustworthiness,

and selflessness—and argues that most real-world leaders ignore these virtues. (If anything, they tend to be narcissistic, back-stabbing, self-promoting shape-shifters.) To Pfeffer, the leadership industry is Orwellian.

Reading Samet’s anthology, one sees how starkly perspectival leadership is. From the inside, it often feels like a poorly improvised performance; leading is like starring in a lip-synched music video. The trick is to make it look convincing from the outside. And so the anthology takes pains to show how leaders react to the ambiguities of their roles. In one excerpt, from the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Samet finds him marching toward an enemy camp. Grant, a newly minted colonel who has never commanded in combat, is terrified: “My heart kept getting higher and higher, until it felt to me as though it was in my throat.” When the camp comes into view, however, it’s deserted—the other commander, Grant surmises, “had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him.” Leaders, he realizes, are imagined to be fearless but aren’t; ideally, one might hide one’s fear while finding in it clues about what the enemy will do.

32KeyFindings•About26%oftheoverallNTENCommunityconsiderstheirorganizationstobeatthe“Leading”levelontheTechnologyAdoptionSpectrum.Thisisaslightincreasecomparedtolastyear’ssurveyinwhich23%reportedthattheirorganizationswereatthetopendofthespectrum.•Aswe’veseeninpastyears,NTENMemberstendtoratetheirorganization’sapproachtotechnologydecisionshigheralongthespectrum:over82%ofcurrentNTENMembersindicatethattheirorganizationsareatthe“Operating”levelorabove,comparedto59%ofNon-members.•WhileLeadingorganizationsdotendtohavelargerannualoperatingbudgets—aswe’veseeninpreviousyears—wealsocontinuetofindLeadersacrossallbudgetsizes,including20%whocomefromorganizationswithbudgetslessthan$250K.•Weseeasignificantincreaseinthepercentageofrespondentswhoseorganizationshavetechnology-relatedtrainingandprofessionaldevelopmentallocationsintheirbudgets:71%thisyear,comparedto49%previously.•WhilethereisclearcorrelationamongNTENMembersbetweenTechnologyAdoption(TA)levelandhavingtechnology-relatedtrainingbudget–withnearly90%ofLeadingrespondentsindicatingtheyhavetechnology-trainingbudgets–wedon’tseecorrelationbetweenTAandtrainingbudgetsamongNon-members.ThismightsuggestthatthereismorevaluetoNTENMembership,intermsofTAlevel,thantrainingalone.•“Tobepartofthecommunityofnonprofitleaders”istheprimaryreasonrespondentsbecomeMembersofNTEN,followedcloselyby“generalprofessionaldevelopmentandtraining.”•Anewquestiononthisyear’ssurveyasksrespondentsabouttheirkeyprojectsandprioritiesoverthecomingtwelvemonths.Respondentsindicatedtheyweremostlikelytobe“Expandingexistingprogramorservices”inthecomingyear.•The“timeliness”ofNTENresourcesandinformationwasrankedhighestbyrespondentsintermsofNTENMembersatisfaction.•WecontinuetoseeExecutiveDirectors/CEOsasagrowingconstituencyamongtheCommunity,especiallyamongNon-members,andseemoreFundraising/DevelopmentprofessionalsparticipatingintheCommunityasMembersthisyear.•

funding”and“budget”—inotherwords,money—isakeyissueforrespondents.Likelastyear,weseethattheword“integration”appearsfrequently,especiallyamongresponsesbycurrentNTENMembers.ForNon-members,theword“management”showedupoften

struggling:“Wearestruggling;wehaveafailinginfrastructure,andourtechnologytimeandbudgetgenerallygotowardscreatingworkarounds,repairingoldequipment,andduplicatingtasks.”Functioning:“Wekeepthelightson;wehavebasicsystemsinplacetomeetimmediateneeds.Leadershipmakestechnologydecisionsbasedonefficiencies,withlittle-to-noinputfromstaff/consultant.”Operating:“Wekeepup;wehavestableinfrastructureandasetoftechnologypoliciesandpractices.Leadershipmakestechnologydecisionsbasedonstandardlevelsaccordingtoindustry/sectorinformationandgathersinputfromtechnologystaff/consultantbeforemakingfinaldecision.”Leading:“We’reinnovators;werecognizethattechnologyisaninvestmentinourmission,andleadershipintegratestechnologydecisionswithorganizationalstrategy.Technology-responsiblestaffareinvolvedinoverallstrategicplanning

econd, addressing information overload requires enormous self-discipline.

Third, since senior executives’ behavior sets the tone for the organization, they have a duty to set a better example.

Resetting the culture to healthier norms is a critical new responsibility for 21st-century executives.

What’s more, multitasking—interrupting one task with another—can sometimes be fun. Each vibration of our favorite high-tech e-mail device carries the promise of potential rewards. Checking it may provide a welcome distraction from more difficult and challenging tasks. It helps us feel, at least briefly, that we’ve accomplished something—even if only pruning our e-mail in-boxes. Unfortunately, current research indicates the opposite: multitasking unequivocally damages productivity.

he root of the problem is that our brain is best designed to focus on one task at a time

When we switch tasks, our brains must choose to do so, turn off the cognitive rules for the old task, and turn on the rules for the new one.

arely helps us solve the toughest problems we’re working on. More often than not, it’s procrastination in disguise.

the likelihood of creative thinking is higher when people focus on one activity for a significant part of the day and collaborate with just one other person.

survey of managers conducted by Reuters revealed that two-thirds of respondents believed that information overload had lessened job satisfaction and damaged their personal relationships. One-third even thought it had damaged their health.8

ome leaders now explicitly refuse to respond to any e-mail on which they are only cc’d, to filter out issues that others think require no action from them. Y

some combination of focusing, filtering, and forgetting.

Managing it may be as simple—and difficult—as switching off the input.

A good filtering strategy, therefore, is critical. It starts with giving up the fiction that leaders need to be on top of everything, which has taken hold as information of all types has become more readily and continuously accessible.

feeling connected provides something like a “dopamine squirt”—the neural effects follow the same pathways used by addictive drugs.9

giving our brains downtime to process new intellectual input is a critical element of learning and thinking creatively

Getting outside helps—recent research has found that people learn significantly better after a walk in nature compared with a walk in the city.

The strategies of focusing, filtering, and forgetting are also tougher to implement now because of the norms that have developed around 21st-century teamwork.

But there is a business responsibility to reset these norms, given how markedly information overload decreases the quality of learning and decision making. Multitasking is not heroic; it’s counterproductive. As the technological capacity for the transmission and storage of information continues to expand and quicken, the cognitive pressures on us will only increase. We are at risk of moving toward an ever less thoughtful and creative professional reality unless we stop now to redesign our working norms.

First, we need to acknowledge and reevaluate the mind-sets that attach us to our current patterns of behavior.

eaders need to become more ruthless than ever about stepping back from all but the areas that they alone must address.

eaders have to redesign working norms together with their teams.

Ensure Engagement Besides being visible,

Timing Is Everything

Technology distracts us. We’re wired to our smartphones. It’s increasingly challenging to be present and to listen. It’s tempting to fire off texts and emails during meetings; to surf the Internet while on conference calls or in classes; and, for some, to play games rather than tune in. While offering us enormous conveniences, electronic communication also leads to misunderstandings. It’s easy to misread intentions. We can take out our frustrations, hurl insults and take people down a notch from a safe distance.

Incivility shuts people down in other ways, too. Employees contribute less and lose their conviction,

To be fully attentive and improve your listening skills, remove obstacles. John Gilboy told me about a radical approach he took as an executive of a multibillion-dollar consumer products company. Desperate to stop excessive multitasking in his weekly meetings, he decided to experiment: he placed a box at the door and required all attendees to drop their smartphones in it so that everyone would be fully engaged and attentive to one another. He didn’t allow people to use their laptops either. The change was a challenge; initially employees were “like crack addicts as the box was buzzing,” he said. But the meetings became vastly more productive. Within weeks, they slashed the length of the meetings by half. He reported more presence, participation and, as the tenor of the meetings changed, fun.

2006 study

Bridgespan predicted that there would be a huge need for top-notch nonprofit leaders, driven by the growth of the nonprofit sector and the looming retirement of baby boomers from leadership posts.

the need for C-suite leaders5 grew dramatically.

the majority of our survey respondents (57 percent) attributed their retention challenges at least partially to low compensation, an issue that can feel daunting to many nonprofits. Lack of development and growth opportunities ranked next, cited by half of respondents as a reason that leaders leave their organizations.

those jobs keep coming open.

Surprisingly, little is due to the wave of retirement we have all been expecting: only 6 percent of leaders actually retired in the past two years.6

major reason is turnover:

losing a star performer in a senior development role costs nine times her annual salary to replace.

supply grew with it. Organizations largely found leaders to fill the demand.

corporate CEOs dedicate 30 to 50 percent of their time and focus on cultivating talent within their organizations.1

lack of learning and growth

lack of mentorship and support

he number one reason CEOs say they would leave their current role, other than to retire, was difficulty with the board of directors.

respondents said that their organizations lacked the talent management processes required to develop staff, and that they had not made staff development a high priority

combination of learning through doing, learning through hearing or being coached, and learning through formal training.

skill development can compensate for lack of upward trajectory. Stretch opportunities abound in smaller organizations where a large number of responsibilities are divided among a small number of people.

found that staff members who feel their organizations are supporting their growth stay longer than those who don’t, because they trust that their organizations will continue to invest in them over time.1

“When you invest in developing talent, people are better at their jobs, people stay with their employers longer, and others will consider working for these organizations in the first place because they see growth potential.”

define the organization’s future leadership requirements, identify promising internal candidates, and provide the right doses of stretch assignments, mentoring, formal training, and performance assessment to grow their capabilities.

Addressing root causes may steer funders away from supporting traditional approaches, such as fellowships, training, and conferences, and toward helping grantees to build their internal leadership development capabilities, growing talent now and into the future across their portfolio of grantees.

lecture model

reduced the lecture to a commodity

Mazur has developed an interactive teaching technique called peer instruction, in which the lecture is broken into chunks. Between topics, Mazur poses questions and students work together to answer them.

lectures and posts them online as homework,

time in the lecture hall as a sort of “office hours for everybody,

Class time is devoted to writing programs and solving problems, with students working together and posting solutions on a projected screen.

put lectures online.

Active learning is hard work. Students say the interactive classes are more taxing than any lecture.

their employees spontaneously started building wikis to document important discoveries and share scientific information.

They are replacing offices entirely. For people who work in virtual teams, apps like Slack are the workplace.

social media works in the office when it brings like-minded colleagues together for collaboration.

But when you work on a virtual team, your choice is either adopt the new software or stop coming to work. In other words, there is no real choice. You have to accept the new platform, regardless of the changes it brings

The one user survey the company has conducted, however, shows that the majority of Slack administrators believe their teams are up to 40 percent more productive.

Slack founder Stewart Butterfield has said the boost in productivity comes from eliminating e-mail, but Henderson scoffs at that idea. He thinks Slack teams are more productive because they can communicate better. Plus, they can catch up on what's happened while they were gone because conversations are held in searchable logs. Most of all, he says, Slack is about stepping up productivity by "reducing meetings." That's the "big one," Henderson emphasizes.

Create activities that encourage adult learners to use sites like LinkedIn and Google Plus as invaluable tools. This can help them to not only build their social network, but collaborate with those who share the same interests.

However, mature learners prefer to engage in eLearning experiences that help them to solve problems they encounter on a regular basis (in the here-and-now, rather than the future).

Motivation is key with adult learners. As such, you will need to motivate them to learn by offering them a reason for every eLearning activity, assessment, or eLearning module they'll need to complete.

Research published in academic journal Applied Economics earlier this year included a survey of 1000 Australian employees. It found as work environments become more shared, workers report increased demands and decreased supervisor support. Workplace friendships are not improved as a result.

The research suggests the practice of movement creates additional work and a sense of marginalisation for hot-deskers.

For me the most fascinating insight was the finding that a social structure emerges distinguishing employees who settle in one place and become quasi-owners of a desk, and others who have to move constantly. That's certainly true from my experience.