A Critique of Critical Leaders

Sometimes I wonder if some leaders truly want to see their people succeed. For example, I see leaders delegate a task to a person on their team or an entire team itself, but instead of providing coaching and support along the way, they watch and criticize in how the individual or team goes about completing the task at hand. (more…)

I had coffee with a young emerging leader this week. She is learning leadership by the bootstraps (the best way in my opinion). During our conversation she said, “sometimes leaders can be too polished.” We went on to discuss how leaders that are too polished want to make leadership look good. They want to say the right things and make leading look gorgeous and important. But in reality, the best leaders to learn from and to work for are more authentic than polished. (more…)