Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser
Adjusting Your Leadership Volume
When it comes to performance improvement, somehow the collective managerial mind-set places most of the emphasis on deficiencies, the areas in which managers lack capability. Take the frequently used phrase, "strengths and weaknesses." What is a weakness except, literally, the lack of a strength? Isn't it striking that the implicit model makes no place for strengths overused?... You might be saying to yourself, "Yeah, I know: strengths become weaknesses; I see it all the time in the people around me." True enough, but it's an entirely different matter to see it in yourself.

• Do you have a strength you are particularly proud of? Do you think that you might overuse it?
• Have you received feedback from others that you sometimes go overboard?
• Can you think of ways to lead that don't rely on your particular strengths? Might those approaches be more appropriate in certain situations?

Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson
The Cause Has Charisma
The concept of the charismatic leader has been getting bad press lately. The critics may be missing the point. Whether you're shy and humble or outgoing and assertive is not really the issue. Your personality is not what determines enduring success; it's what you do with your personality that counts.... Enduringly successful people--whether they're shrinking violets or swashbuckling entrepreneurs--serve the cause, and it also serves them. It recruits them, and they are lifted up by its power. When that happens to you, a bigger, more engaging version of "you" shows up.

• In your personal experience, have you encountered leaders whose passion for a cause inspires others? Have you encountered leaders with charismatic personalities who served no cause larger than themselves? Which did you find more inspiring?
• As a leader, do you have a cause that you are passionate about? Do you place the cause ahead of your own career? Why or why not?

William C. Taylor
Leading with an Open Mind
Creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, it's about who has the most compelling "architecture of participation." That is, which companies make it easy, interesting, and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems, and improve products. Ultimately, the companies that are most likely to dominate their business are the ones most adept at harnessing the collective intelligence of everyone with whom they do business.

• Are you the kind of person with whom other smart people want to work and contribute ideas?
• Do you conduct yourself as openly and transparently as you expect others to?
• Do you welcome ideas and input from diverse sources--and happily share credit?

Ronald N. Ashkenas and Robert H. Schaffer
The Leader as Capacity Builder
Capacity-building senior leaders recognize that lofty goals, new directions, expensive systems, and visionary strategies mean very little unless dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people have the ability to make creative adjustments in the way they work from day to day, both on their own and with others. What kind of leadership fosters this change capacity at the grassroots level?

• Ashkenas and Schaffer identify four key leadership actions that foster the ability to manage change at every level of the organization. What are they?
• How are major change efforts in your organization handled?
• Do you agree that senior leaders are often trapped in self-defeating behavior when confronting the need for major change? How can this behavior itself be changed?