Modern Global Leadership

Western analytical tools are important to the process of understanding industries and competitors, but true insights can be achieved with what the Buddha called beginner’s mind. In this The Tao of Strategy excerpt, the authors explore how Eastern philosophy complements Western strategy-making and offer 12 principles that can inform business leaders

Change is a concept that organizations live through every day — especially in days since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Darden Professor Lynn Isabella discusses how people interpret change as it unfolds, the stages of adjustment as they make sense of change and how interpretations to change unfold in a predictable pattern.

A Matter of Strategy: The laptop industry is competitive, and the product is highly available and highly interchangeable. Faced with unfavorable market dynamics, how did Apple carve out its niche among laptop makers? What implications are there for other organizations and industries? The answers lie in a capacity to rewrite the playbook.

The value of a culture of integrity: Using linguistic analysis of public communications, researchers studied which CEOs are likely to mislead investors and fail to follow through on promises. The CEO behavioral integrity index provides systematic evidence of the consequences of low integrity — here’s what it means for auditors and the bottom line.

Strategic thinking, sound decision-making, critical thinking, persuasion, empathy. There are a host of qualities that effective leaders should model in the workplace if they want to influence others and deliver truly positive outcomes. But chief among these is one that might not be on your radar: the willingness and ability to act courageously.

It doesn’t matter how big your leadership toolkit is if you won’t be courageous enough to use those tools when it counts. Just like any other competency, you can learn, practice and strategically deploy the ability to act skillfully in high-stress moments. Here we dig into practical recommendations for getting to the other side of workplace fears.

University of Virginia Darden School of Business faculty share ways in which business leaders should prepare for 2022.

Courage: the lynchpin of leadership. It’s also the key to solving problems, innovating, pursuing opportunities and safeguarding the welfare of others. In a new book — and this Darden Ideas to Action series — Professor Jim Detert discusses courage as a skill that can be learned and developed.

Remote work has its challenges. And research shows that we tend to focus on what we are losing in the midst of change. But as we see the picture of the new take shape, we can positively and proactively see benefits to our situations. Here, experts discuss five advantages of remote work, which we can embrace if we move with intention.

The goal of social justice movements is to bring about deep institutional and community change, and it’s unavoidable that such a massive mission would spark intense debates. But what happens when people bring that passion to the workplace? Leaders need to be prepared for how to handle sensitive emotional issues among organizational stakeholders.