Herminia Ibarra

“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 …

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 …

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 …

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” …

To become a successful leader, you have to ditch the conventional “think before doing” logic and instead start acting like a leader in order to start thinking like a leader. “I’m like the fire patrol,” says Jacob, a thirty-five-year-old production manager for a mid-sized European food manufacturer. “I run from one corner to the other to fix things, just to …

“I’m like the fire patrol,” says Jacob, a thirty- five-year-old production manager for a midsized European food manufacturer. “I run from one corner to the other to fix things, just to keep producing.” To step up to a bigger leadership role in his organization, Jacob knows he needs to get out from under all the operational details that are keeping …

Many top business schools — Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley, Kellogg to cite a few — have overhauled their MBA curricula in recent years. Among the most popular changes is increasing “leadership” learning. This trend seems to be driven by a troika of stakeholders: employers, who no longer want to have to train new recruits from scratch; students, who know …