WB WilsonBrooks
Consulting on organization design, leadership, change, teams, strategy; and coaching with executives
Resources
From time to time we will post links to useful resources.
Coaching
What CEOs Really Want from Coaching, by Gretchen Gavett , HBR Blog Network, August 15, 2013 http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2013/08/research_ceos_and_the_coaching.html
Gavett reports that "Two-thirds of CEOs don't receive any outside advice on their leadership skills, and yet almost all would be receptive to suggestions from a coach. These stats are from a Stanford University/The Miles Group survey released this month, which asked 200 CEOs, board directors, and other senior executives questions about how they receive and view leadership advice. [She] asked the survey's co-authors some questions about what they found and how it applies to CEO coaching specifically.
Leadership
Stop Overdoing Your Strengths by Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser, Harvard Business Review, February 2009
Describes the versatility that succesful leaders require -- a flexible repertoire of leadership behaviors, without overusing or underusing their strengths.
http://hbr.org/2009/02/stop-overdoing-your-strengths/ar/1
On Leadership
Ongoing series of articles in the Washington Post by Jena McGregor
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-leadership/
Motivation
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink, Riverhead Books, 2011
Pink manages to make the complexities of motivation understandable, and hence clarifies how best to use recognition and reward activities. http://www.danpink.com/books/drive/
See also his animated talk on this subject: http://www.danpink.com/2010/06/whiteboard-magic
Teams
Research: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build a Perfect Team, by Charles Duhigg, The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, February 28, 2016.
Google's research on why some teams thrive and others falter, found that the teams that thrive had established productive norms for how team members treat one another, norms that create psychological safety. In particular in those teams, 1) all were able to speak up in relatively equal amounts, and 2) all were good at reading each other's feelings.