What to do when a mentor blocks your career

Herminia Ibarra Leadership The Financial Times

Too many bosses are failing to pull up the promising people below, says Herminia Ibarra “You have to kill the mentor,” said one of my students. A murmur of agreement went round my executive MBAs class. We were discussing the case of a 39-year-old manager who had been promised a big promotion by his mentor but the new post was …

Freedom or identity crisis? The portfolio career mystery

Herminia Ibarra Career Management The Financial Times

Taking on a variety of roles is not easy, especially when young, writes Herminia Ibarra “My friends tell me I’m too young to have a portfolio career,” confessed one of my former MBA students when I asked what he was up to. Recently, he had left a lifetime career in finance to pursue a mix of things: some private investments, …

When a leader is not a manager and other modern myths

Herminia Ibarra Leadership The Financial Times

It is instructive to trace this archetype back to its origins “My job was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible. That’s the difference between leadership and management,” reads the back cover of Alex Ferguson’s new book, Leading . It’s hard to think of a business idea that has had more sticking power than the distinction between leadership …

Why Companies Are So Bad at Treating Employees Like People

Herminia Ibarra Career Management Harvard Business Review

Few disagree that the time is ripe for reimagining complex organizations so that they are more human and more agile. But existing models for how to make the shift seem to offer a choice between a rock and a hard place. Take the thorny problem of developing people. Anachronistic annual performance appraisal systems, everyone agrees, must give way to more …

Between a rock and a hard place

Herminia Ibarra Career Management Drucker Society Europe Blog

Few disagree that the time is ripe for reimagining complex organizations so that they are more human and more agile. But, existing models for how to make the shift seem to offer a choice between a “rock and a hard place.” Take the thorny problem of developing people. Anachronistic annual performance appraisal systems, everyone agrees, must give way to more …

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 …