HBR On Leadership

HBR On Leadership

Leadership isn’t a trait, it’s a set of skills. Whether you’re managing up or motivating a team, HBR On Leadership is your destination for insights and inspiration from the world’s top leadership practitioners and experts. Every Wednesday, the editors at the Harvard Business Review hand-picked conversations and case studies with global business leaders, management experts, academics, from across HBR to unlock the best in those around you.

Episodes

How to Fix Dysfunctional Team Dynamics

May 7, 2025 • 31 mins
Is your teamwork not working? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. They talk through what to do when your team isn’t communicating, doesn’t respect its ...

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How to Bring Out the Best in Your Team

April 30, 2025 • 27 mins
Frances Frei, professor at Harvard Business School, says that trust, empathy—and even a bit of tough love—are all essential ingredients to strong leadership in today’s world. Successful managers focus on the effect they have on others, not themselves. They also define a strategy and create a culture that drives employee behavior in their absence. Frei is the coauthor, along with Anne Morriss, of the book Unleashed: The Una...

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When Over-Collaboration Leads to Indecision

April 23, 2025 • 23 mins
Being too collaborative can actually hold you back at work, argues leadership coach Rebecca Shambaugh. Instead of showing how well you build consensus and work with others, it can look like indecision or failure to prioritize. She explains what to do if you over-collaborate, how to manage someone who does, and offers some advice for women—whose bosses are more likely to see them as overly consensus-driven. Shambaugh is the...

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How—and When—to Adapt Your Leadership Style

April 16, 2025 • 12 mins
In the past, executives were usually taught to practice command-and-control leadership. Today they’re often advised to be nimbler, more adaptive, and less controlling. The truth is that most executives need to be able to move back and forth between those two leadership styles. IMD leadership professor and social psychologist Jennifer Jordan offers tactics for navigating these tensions.

Key episode topics include: leadershi...

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When One of Your Employees Is Working Against You

April 9, 2025 • 33 mins
Do you have an employee working against you? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Adrian Gostick, an executive coach and the coauthor of Leading with Gratitude: Eight Leadership Practices for Extraordinary Business Results. They talk through what to do when your direct report is creating problems only to fix them, one team member is h...

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Why Your Frontline Employee Turnover Is High

April 2, 2025 • 26 mins
Many people blame the shortage of low-wage workers on the enduring impact of the pandemic. But management professor Joseph Fuller and senior researcher Manjari Raman of Harvard Business School say that the real reason has been long in the making. Their studies show that companies view low-wage workers as people who will be in the job only for a short time. Instead, the researchers find that these employees are loyal and wa...

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How to Prepare For—and Lead Through—a Crisis

March 26, 2025 • 25 mins
Over her career, Simmons University President Lynn Perry Wooten has studied crisis leadership and managing uncertainty. Her most recent book, The Prepared Leader, breaks down successful strategies for navigating crises—whether it’s a pandemic or a viral customer complaint. She taught leaders how to deal with these predicaments during a master class at HBR’s Future of Business C...

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How to Earn Respect as a First-Time Manager

March 19, 2025 • 38 mins
Getting taken seriously as a new manager is challenging for anyone. You can go from being friends with your peers to suddenly being their boss. It’s easy to make missteps, like playing the part too much—acting the way you think a manager is supposed to act. On the other hand, you may feel you have nothing to offer your direct reports, some of whom may have more experience than you. You may even fall back too much on what y...

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Helena Rubinstein: A Pioneer of the Modern Beauty Industry

March 12, 2025 • 23 mins
In the early 20th century, Helena Rubinstein defied gender, class, and cultural expectations to become one of the first pioneers of the modern beauty industry. Today, her namesake luxury cosmetics brand is worth more than one billion dollars. Harvard Business School professor Geoff Jones wrote a case study about the visionary leader. He explored her journey—and the lasting impact she made on global beauty standards—on Cold...

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How CEOs Make or Break Sales

March 5, 2025 • 26 mins
A CEO's involvement in B2B sales deals, while often well-intentioned, can sometimes backfire.

INSEAD marketing professor Christoph Senn has spent years studying the role top leaders play in B2B relationships. In this episode, he shares the five archetypes of CEO behavior when it comes to sales, which ones are the most effective in closing a deal, and where they fall short.

You’ll learn what to do if your CEO is either ove...

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When Hiring, Emphasize Skills Over Degrees

February 26, 2025 • 31 mins
The best leaders know that a person’s skillset and their willingness to learn are more important than the degree they have. Ginni Rometty, former Chairman and CEO of IBM, understands this deeply. She spearheaded a company-wide shift to skills-based hiring and development during her tenure.

In this episode, Rometty’shares how her mother’s commitment to education helped her family overcome adversity and inspired her persona...

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How to Develop Your Executive Presence

February 19, 2025 • 44 mins
If you’re a leader or aspire to be one, you’ve probably thought about how you project confidence and competence—or, what some call your executive presence. It’s as much a vibe you give off as it is a skill you can develop. And it’s important to exhibit if you want to assure others you’re ready to lead. 

 

Megan Bock, the COO of an insurance technology company, has mastered executive presence. And Laura Sicola is a cognitiv...

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How CEO Ed Bastian Is Transforming DEI at Delta Air Lines

February 12, 2025 • 30 mins
In December 2020, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and his leadership team were deciding whether or not to commit to recruiting, hiring, training, and advancing one million Black Americans into stable, well-paid jobs over the next decade, as part of the OneTen coalition. But if Delta joined, Bastian faced a key challenge: how could he make the airline truly inclusive and create systemically equal access to career opportuniti...

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How to Give Your Team the Feedback They Actually Need

February 5, 2025 • 23 mins
How does critical feedback affect your team’s success? Researchers Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall argue that many managers invest too much energy in correcting weaknesses. Instead, they encourage leaders to focus on developing employees’ strengths.


Buckingham and Goodall are the authors of the book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World ...

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How to Make Better Decisions Under Pressure

January 29, 2025 • 28 mins
Many people believe that leaders instinctively make the best decisions based on past experience, almost like muscle memory. But Carol Kauffman, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the founder of the Institute of Coaching, challenges this view. She explains why falling back on automatic behaviors can lead to poor decisions, especially when the stakes are high.

In this episode, Kauffman outlines her framework f...

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How to Get Leadership Succession Right

January 22, 2025 • 31 mins
When Jason Buechel became CEO of Whole Foods in 2022, he faced the challenge of succeeding cofounder John Mackey, who led the company for over 40 years. This leadership transition was not only a personal challenge for Buechel but also a significant shift for the entire organization.

In this episode, Buechel tells Harvard Business Review editor in chief Adi Ignatius how he addressed employees' concerns while preserving Whol...

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How to Bridge Generational Gaps on Your Team

January 15, 2025 • 34 mins
Are you struggling to manage people who are older than you?

Lindsey Pollak explains that cross-generational dynamics in the workplace are becoming increasingly complex, driven by rapid technological advancements and longer career spans.

As a workplace expert and author of The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace, Pollak addresses listener questions about motivating older direct reports and enga...

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5 Leadership Traits That Set High-Potential Employees Apart

January 8, 2025 • 26 mins
How can you tell if you’re on your company’s leadership fast track?


Jay Conger, a leadership professor at Claremont McKenna College, notes that many organizations quietly maintain and update lists of high-potential employees.


In this episode, he of...

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Why Expertise Can Make You a Less Effective Leader

January 1, 2025 • 23 mins
Being the most knowledgeable and experienced person on your team can seem advantageous. However, Sydney Finkelstein, an expert in leadership and talent development, warns that expertise can lead you astray in two significant ways: it may stifle your curiosity about new developments and foster overconfidence in your problem-solving abilities.

In this episode, Finkelstein explores these pitfalls and proposes a crucial supple...

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What Oprah’s Leadership Journey Reveals about the Power of Authenticity

December 25, 2024 • 15 mins
Oprah Winfrey isn’t just a public figure—she’s the wealthiest woman in the entertainment industry and the first African-American woman billionaire. But how did she rise from a daytime talk show host to a media mogul? What leadership skills did she develop along the way?

In this episode, Harvard Business School executive fellow Bill George explores the challenges Oprah faced on her path to success and how she overcame them....

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