Leadership IQ · Research & insights

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166 articles

Leadership & management

20 Qualities Of A Good Leader

Good qualities of a leader aren't abstract ideals. They're specific, observable behaviors that produce measurable outcomes—higher employee engagement, stronger team dynamics, better performance, and…

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Leadership & management

4 Signs That You're Too Power Hungry

Most executives I study are driven by power or achievement (or some combination of the two). Power-driven people want to be in charge and they want authority to make decisions that will impact others.…

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Teams & collaboration

Advantages and Disadvantages of Teamwork

Key Insight: Teamwork is a pervasive feature of modern organizations. According to organisational psychologists, a team is more than a group of people—it is a small, interdependent unit with a common…

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Leadership & management

Analysis Paralysis

Business leaders make an astonishing number of decisions each day — an estimated 35,000 daily choices for the average person[1] — yet how those decisions are made can spell the difference between…

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Goals & performance

Are SMART Goals Dumb?

Nearly everyone has set SMART goals (SMART criteria is most commonly defined as Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound). But the data shows that people who set SMART Goals are less…

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Culture & engagement

Building a Strong Teamwork Culture

A teamwork culture is the set of values, beliefs, norms and practices that encourage employees to work collaboratively toward shared goals. It is more than just placing people together—teamwork culture…

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Leadership & management

Coercive Power

Coercive power is a type of threatening power. Coercive power is, by definition, the ability of someone or some group to control or influence others through the use of threats, punishment, or physical…

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Teams & collaboration

Cultivating a Teamwork Mindset

In an era of accelerating change and digital disruption, long-term business success depends on more than individual talent. It requires a teamwork mindset—a shared way of thinking where employees view…

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Leadership & management

Differentiate A Manager From A Leader

The leader vs manager distinction isn't just academic—it's one of the most practically important frameworks in the corporate world. Leadership focuses on setting a long-term vision, inspiring people…

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Teams & collaboration

Effective Team Meetings

Meetings are ubiquitous in modern organisations. In 2025, the average professional attends at least 11 meetings per week, and executives report spending as much as 23 hours per week in meetings. While…

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Leadership & management

Employee Burnout In 2021

In 2021, companies face an employee burnout crisis. Employee burnout (aka job burnout) is chronic workplace stress that causes exhaustion, reduces optimism and resilience, increases mistakes, causes…

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Executive leadership

Executive Failure Rates

Reported "executive failure rates" vary widely because researchers and advisory firms measure different things under the same label. Across the most-cited empirical and industry sources, the underlying…

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Leadership & management

Frustration At Work In 2022

Leadership IQ surveyed 2,553 employees and discovered that for about 60% of people, their work frustrations are so severe that they want to look for other jobs.

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Teams & collaboration

Groupthink

The Bay of Pigs invasion has to rank pretty high on the list of American foreign policy fiascos. The ill-fated 1961 plan was a CIA-sponsored military operation in which a force of Cuban exiles, trained…

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Executive leadership

How To Speak To Impatient Executives

Lots of executives don't have the time or patience to listen to never-ending details; they're over-scheduled, stressed, and have 30 other meetings today. BUT you still need to get them to listen and…

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Leadership & management

How To Speak To Impatient People

Most people that seem impatient aren’t suffering from some chronic character flaw. Typically, they just have a particular communication style that likes things at a high level, without too much detail…

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Leadership & management

Leadership Blind Spots:A New Study

A study of 1,204 employees finds that the average boss has 3 to 4 blind spots their team sees clearly—and even when told directly, 84% fail to change. The biggest obstacles aren't just overconfidence…

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Leadership & management

Managers Don't Love Innovators

While the business press and the typical management book loves innovators like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, it turns out that corporate managers don't enjoy innovators nearly as much. The first part of…

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Leadership & management

Mentoring in Leadership Development

Mentoring in the workplace is a widely adopted strategy to develop leadership talent and strengthen the leadership pipeline. In fact, 84% of Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs [1]…

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Leadership & management

Office Politics

Office politics — the informal dynamics of power and influence that emerge among colleagues — are an inescapable reality of organizational life. Regardless of company size or industry, political…

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Leadership & management

Optimal Hours with the Boss

The research team at Leadership IQ surveyed 32,410 American and Canadian executives, managers and employees about these two big questions:How many hours per week DO people spend interacting with their…

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Emotional intelligence

Optimism: Definition And Research

People high in optimism expect that they're going to experience positive and favorable outcomes. But optimism is usually not a passive state; optimists typically expect good things to happen contingent…

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Leadership & management

Qualities of Good and Great Leaders

Leaders play a pivotal role in shaping teams, organizations, communities, and even entire societies[3]. In the business world, effective leadership is often the backbone of success, influencing…

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Leadership & management

Quiz: What Motivates You?

We all have different intrinsic motivation at work. Some people are continually reaching for a higher level of personal best, others want to be recognized for being influential and still others want…

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Leadership & management

Referent Power

Referent power is garnered through admiration. It is one of the five types of power that social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven described in 1959, and it is not a type of power that is…

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Change management

Signs A Company Is Planning Layoffs

Layoffs have become a pressing reality in recent years across multiple sectors. Headlines frequently announce mass layoffs across industries, and economic uncertainty has many firms tightening their…

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Hiring & interviewing

Study: Words That Cost You The Job Interview

If you want to cost yourself a job interview, just use words like “you”, “they”, “always” and “can’t”. New research from Leadership IQ finds that interview answers rated poorly by hiring managers…

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Teams & collaboration

Team Charters

Teamwork is the engine of organizational success, but working in teams isn't always easy. Many leaders have seen teams struggle with unclear goals, repeated miscommunications, missed deadlines, or…

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Leadership & management

The Free-Rider Problem

The modern organization stands as a testament to the power of collective effort, yet within its very architecture lies a pervasive vulnerability that threatens to undermine its structural integrity.

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Leadership & management

The Guide to Word Pictures

If you’ve ever felt frustrated that your people say they value “integrity,” “accountability,” or “customer focus”—but no one can define what that really means on Monday morning—Word Pictures are the fix.

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Leadership & management

The Leadership Skills Gap

What skills do you need to teach your future leaders? What are the specific leadership skills that today's managers and executives are lacking? And what skills(s) should your leadership development…

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Leadership & management

The Negatives of Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is one of the most praised approaches in the business world. It's a people-first management philosophy that can increase employee satisfaction and engagement. But praise doesn't mean…

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Leadership & management

The State Of Leadership Development

In this Leadership IQ study, we surveyed 21,008 employees to assess how well their leaders were performing in seven key leadership areas. And we discovered that the typical leadership development…

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Leadership & management

The State Of Working From Home

In this study, Leadership IQ surveyed 3,706 employees currently working from home to discover the truth about their work from home (WFH) experiences. Respondents answered more than two-dozen questions…

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Leadership & management

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

The sunk cost fallacy costs organizations billions of dollars annually and destroys countless careers, yet nearly every executive will fall prey to this sunk cost trap at some point. This cognitive…

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Teams & collaboration

Tuckman's Stages of Group Development

Psychologist Bruce W. Tuckman's stages of group development — often called Tuckman's model or Tuckman's theory of team development — is one of the most renowned frameworks for understanding how teams…

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Communication & feedback

Understanding the Diplomat

Diplomats prize interpersonal harmony. They are the social glue and affiliative force that keeps groups together. They’re typically kind, social, and giving, and often have deep personal bonds with…

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Leadership & management

Understanding the Idealist

Idealists are high-energy achievers who believe in the positive potential of everyone around them. They want to learn and grow, and they want everyone else to do the same. They’re often charismatic and…

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Goals & performance

Video: Goal Setting Requires HARD Goals

Ever since I wrote the book HARD Goals, which is about goal setting, I've gotten a bit of a reputation as a guy who hates SMART goals. I think it's maybe a touch unfair, but let me tell you where it…

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Leadership & management

Virtual Training Is Here To Stay

In this study, Leadership IQ surveyed 1,809 leaders about virtual training, and specifically whether their organization has started to shift away from virtual learning back to traditional classroom…

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Hiring & interviewing

Why New Hires Fail

Leadership IQ studied more than 20,000 new hires and 1,400 HR executives to determine why new hires fail — and what the best hiring managers do differently.

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