To Step Up as a Leader, You Need to Step Out

Herminia Ibarra Leadership IESE Insight

Most professionals aspiring to positions of greater responsibility have little time to map out a strategy for reaching their long-term career goals. But what made executives successful in the past does not guarantee their success in the future. In this article, the author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader discusses how executives can step up their leadership …

Friendships forged outside work can hold women back

Herminia Ibarra Women & Work The Financial Times

In a recent Financial Times column, Sarah Gordon was right to take the Garrick Club to task, not just on its second vote to refuse women members but on the most disingenuous of explanations about why some members think such an exclusion is harmless. Work is never discussed or business conducted at the club, they told her; it is verboten. …

Interact with a wider circle and your ideas will take flight

Herminia Ibarra Leadership The Financial Times

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “I live my life in widening circles, that reach out across the world.” Widening circles on social media make for more novel business contributions, according to a recent report in MIT Sloan Management Review. In a study of five companies, authors Salvatore Parise, Eoin Whelan and Steve Todd found that employees with diverse Twitter …

How HR should reinvent leadership development

Herminia Ibarra Career Management,   Leadership HR Magazine

HR professionals rely too much on formal training for leadership development. More strategic ways of learning and experiences outside the norm will help create future leaders. While study after study shows that increasing leadership capacity remains at the top of most firms’ strategic priorities, the same reports find that most companies’ leadership development efforts fail to deliver on expectations. HR …

Leading with outsight

Leadership The Smart Manager

“Aristotle observed that people become virtuous by acting virtuous; if you do good, you’ll be good. His insight has been confirmed in a wealth of social psychology research showing that people change their minds by first changing their behavior. Simply put, change happens from the outside in, not from the inside out.” Professor Herminia Ibarra elaborates on this thought that …

Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader

Herminia Ibarra Leadership The European Business Review

In this excerpt from her book, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader Herminia Ibarra discusses what she describes as the ‘Outsight’ Principle: the cycle of acting like a leader and then thinking like a leader; change from the outside in. She argues that people become leaders by acting their way into a leadership position. The “Outsight” Principle: How …

Tech tools to measure performance can fall short

Herminia Ibarra Career Management The Financial Times

Benjamin Franklin could be considered a pioneer of the modern “quantified self” approach to personal improvement. In the late 18th century, he famously used a chart to monitor his behaviour, including acts of virtue, and reviewed his record of daily activities every night. In the Fitbit era, companies have a dizzying array of tech tools for setting and tracking work …

Develop Leaders From the Outside In

Herminia Ibarra Leadership Chief Learning Officer

Increasing leadership capacity is an increasingly important part of a company’s business strategy. Unfortunately, formal leadership development efforts often fall short of expectations. At best, managers gain valuable personal insights but fail to learn how they can apply them to create value for their organization. As managers step into bigger leadership roles, there are pitfalls to popular, self-awareness-centered approaches to …

The Most Productive Way to Develop as a Leader

Herminia Ibarra Leadership Harvard Business Review

Everybody loves self-improvement. We want to get smarter, network better, be connected, balance our lives, and so on. That’s why we’re such avid consumers of “top 10” lists of things to do to be a more effective, productive, promotable, mindful — you name it — leader. We read all the lists, but we have trouble sticking to the “easy steps” …