Claim OwnershipHBR On Leadership
Subscribed: 6,548Played: 96,860
Subscribe
© Copyright 2026 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.
Description
Leadership isn’t just a personality trait, it’s a set of skills that you can build. Whether you’re managing up or motivating a team, HBR On Leadership is your destination for insights and inspiration from the world’s top leadership practitioners and experts. Every Wednesday, the editors at the Harvard Business Review hand-picked case studies and conversations with global business leaders, management experts, academics, from across HBR to help you unlock the best in those around you.
160 Episodes
Reverse
Communicating clearly sets you up to have the leadership impact and influence you need to drive change. But what if you’re running on empty? Expressing your ideas and giving direction when you’re sleep-deprived, burned out, or simply overwhelmed can feel nearly impossible. So, what helps? Leadership development coach Muriel Wilkins, author of Leadership Unblocked and host of the podcast Coaching Real Leaders, talks us through communication techniques that meet you where you’re at mentally and emotionally so that you can rise to the moment (even when you’re worried you can’t).
Difficult change is inevitable, but few of us have the skills to it navigate well. Dr. Maya Shankar, cognitive scientist and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, shares ideas that can leaders understand, react, reframe, and better adapt to change in life or work. She offers evidence-based strategies for how leaders can build resilience in the face of personal, organizational, and technological upheaval while also finding paths to growth and learning. Shankar is author of the book The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans.
Once you’ve committed to a leadership role—whether formally or informally—getting everyone else at work to buy in requires relationship management. The steps to transition from individual contributor to leader can seem daunting, especially when so many aspects of work and the world are in a constant state of flux. How do you successfully shift the role you’re playing on your team? What sorts of conversations help clear the way? Is this transformation harder to make if you work remotely? To address these questions and more, we revisit a 2019 Women at Work interview with leadership development experts Amy Jen Su and Muriel M. Wilkins.
Johnson Security Bureau is one of the oldest Black-owned security firms in the United States, providing services to New York-area banks, public works, hospitals, transportation facilities, and other industries. In order to grow the business, CEO Jessica Johnson-Cope considered partnering with security firms in other states, something that threatened to put some of the company’s founding priorities on the back burner. In this conversation with host Brian Kenny, Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Henry McGee and CEO Jessica Johnson-Cope discuss the leadership dilemmas the heart of the case “Johnson Security Bureau: Building Multigenerational Success.”
Most organizations struggle to kill initiatives, even those that no longer support their strategy. Rose Hollister and Michael Watkins, consultants at Genesis Advisers, explore the problem of initiative overload and how it can trickle down to employeeds who are already dealing with more projects than they can handle or do well. They offer practical tips on how to truly prioritize your company’s most important initiatives—or risk losing top talent. Hollister and Watkins are the authors of the 2018 HBR article “Too Many Projects.”
There’s nothing easy about being a manager today. But for team leaders who are feeling burnt out or overwhelmed with their job, workplace strategist Daisy Auger-Domínguez has advice on how to regain some of your joy at work. She recommends various techniques to incorporate optimism and well-being into your role. They include remembering your purpose, embracing a beginner’s mindset, keeping a folder of positive feedback as inspiration, and celebrating the contributions of team members. Auger-Domínguez is a workplace strategist, global people leader, and the author of the HBR article “Finding Joy as a Manager—Even on Bad Days.”
1After leading Yum! Brands, which includes chains such as KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, David Novak wanted to help others become better leaders. He believes the key is to put learning at the center of everything you do, whether you’re an entry-level worker or a C-suite executive. Novak outlines three main areas for learning and offers ideas on how the most effective leaders turn their learnings into action, something that takes insight and practice. Novak wrote the book How Leaders Learn: Master the Habits of the World’s Most Successful People.
If a company starts to veer off track, whether amid technological change, marketplace conditions, or otherwise, it is daunting to get back on a path to growth. But big turnarounds are possible, provided you have the right team and mindset. When he was president and CEO of Marvel, Peter Cuneo oversaw the resurgence and sale of the media company, but even before that he had a long track record for turning around many types of consumer-facing businesses at brands from Clairol to Black & Decker. He shares the strategies that work best for shaking up organizations and teams and boosting their performance.
Phil Knight, co-founder, former CEO, and Chairman Emeritus of Nike, tells the story of starting the sports apparel and equipment giant after taking an entrepreneurship class at Stanford and teaming up with his former track coach, Bill Bowerman. Together, they changed how running shoes are designed and made. In this conversation from 2017, Knight reflects on the company’s enduring culture of innovation, as well as the company’s succession process for the CEO role.
Jay Barney, a professor at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, studied leaders who successfully led culture change and found one thing in common: they created and spread authentic and memorable stories. The new stories then emanated throughout the workforce and rewrote the old narrative. Barney explains the six rules leaders need to follow to drive cultural change with storytelling.
Around the world, we’ve become increasingly cynical about other people, public institutions, and corporations. Back in 2022, Edelman’s Trust Barometer found that nearly 60% of respondents across 27 countries reported that their default is to distrust. And that’s bad for business, says Stanford University associate professor of psychology Jamil Zaki. He says that cynics damage trust, and in workplaces they breed toxicity and lead to poor outcomes. He explains how to identify and change this kind of behavior at your organization. Zaki wrote the HBR article, “Don’t Let Cynicism Undermine Your Workplace.”
Companies of every size in every industry and part of the world are basing more of their work around projects. And yet research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, who has studied projects and project management for decades, explains how we can do better. He offers advice on the right way to frame projects, how to structure organizations around them, and pitfalls to avoid. Nieto-Rodriguez is the author of the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook and author of the article “The Project Economy Has Arrived.”
Wayne Baker, professor emeritus at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, has spent much of his career researching the best way to effectively ask for help at work. Whether you’re soliciting support on a tricky assignment or more resources for your team, it can feel uncomfortable to approach bosses and colleagues with hat in hand. But we rarely get what we need or want without asking for it. Baker highlights some of the most effective strategies for defining your goal, figuring out who to ask, and crafting your message so it will be positively received. He is also the author of the book All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success.
Eugene Soltes, professor at Harvard Business School, studies white-collar crime and has even interviewed convicts behind bars. While most people think of high-profile scandals like Enron, he says every sizable organization has lapses in integrity. He shares practical tools for managers to identify pockets of ethical violations to prevent them from ballooning into serious reputational and financial damage. Soltes is the author of the HBR article “Where Is Your Company Most Prone to Lapses in Integrity?”
Leading a team that spans countries and time zones brings communication challenges that go far beyond working remotely. Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, explains why global teams are especially vulnerable to misunderstandings and why leaders often don’t realize there’s a problem until collaboration starts to suffer. Neeley shares advice on how leaders can reduce those misunderstandings by being intentional about how people communicate and connect.
We all know that leaders need to captivate audiences and effectively convey their ideas. But not every speaking opportunity can be prepared and practiced. That’s why it’s so important to learn the skill of speaking off-the-cuff, and Matt Abrahams, lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and host of the podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart, has advice to help. He explains how to stay calm in these situations, craft a compelling message, and ensure you’ve made a good impression. Abrahams is author of the book “Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot,” as well as the HBR article “How to Shine When You’re Put on the Spot.”
If you’re feeling distracted, mentally fogged, and unable to pay attention to the task at hand, you’re not alone. The human brain is highly susceptible to often unproductive mind-wandering, and modern technology has only made the problem worse. But we all know that the best work comes when you're able to really zero in on an idea or problem for a sustained period of time. So, we need better strategies for blocking out the external and internal noise. Dr. Amishi Jha, a neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the University of Miami and the author of “Peak Mind,” offers recommendations based on studies of people in some of the most high-pressure jobs in the world.
Jonah Berger, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says that most of us aren’t approaching persuasion the right way. Pushing people to behave how you’d like them to or believe the same things you do just doesn’t work, no matter how much data you give or how many emotional appeals you make. Studying both psychology and business, he’s found better tactics for bringing people over to your side. One of the keys? Asking questions so people feel like they’re making the decision to change. Berger is the author of the book “The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind.”
Nathan Furr, professor of strategy at INSEAD, researches what makes great innovative leaders, and he reveals how they develop and spend “innovation capital.” Like social or political capital, it’s a power to motivate employees, win the buy-in of stakeholders, and sell breakthrough products. Furr argues that innovation capital is something everyone can develop and grow by using something he calls impression amplifiers. Furr is the coauthor of the book “Innovation Capital: How to Compete—and Win—Like the World's Most Innovative Leaders.”
Anne Curzan, English professor at the University of Michigan, studies the evolution of language. While many of us roll our eyes at bizspeak—from synergy to value-add to operationalize—Curzan defends business jargon. She says the words we say around the office speak volumes about our organizations and our working relationships. She shares how to use jargon more deliberately, explains the origin of some annoying or amusing buzzwords, and discusses how English became the global business language and how that could change.
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
regrettably no update any more
Best For Dropout Students
Great episode
outstanding podcast
pretty interesting
great stuff
I recently had the opportunity to dive into the latest issue of Harvard Business Review (HBR) focusing on leadership, and I must say, it was an enlightening read. The articles within the issue provided a comprehensive and thought-provoking exploration of various facets of leadership in today's ever-changing business landscape. https://www.wattpad.com/user/Wax-Paperie One particular piece that stood out to me was the one discussing the evolving role of emotional intelligence in effective leadership. The authors highlighted the increasing significance of self-awareness, empathy, and interpersonal skills for leaders to navigate complex organizational challenges. It's fascinating to see how this aspect of leadership has evolved from being viewed as merely a "soft skill" to a critical determinant of success. https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Wax-Paperie