HBR On Leadership

Some leaders spend their careers honing their relationships with employees. But Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and corporate communications expert Michael Slind argue that leaders are at their best when they simply talk with their teams...

Etsy, the online seller of handmade and vintage goods, was founded as an alternative to mass-manufactured products. The company grew substantially in its first decade but remained unprofitable.

When Etsy went public, stakeholders demanded a new level of financial returns and accountability. But the company continued to struggle to contain costs—until a new CEO arrived with a plan for a purpose-driven turnaround...

The key to success as a leader is to strike a careful balance between ambition and humility. But how do you stay humble while also proving your worth? And how do you advance without showing too much ambition?

In this episode, Amer Kaissi offers advice on how to find a better balance between our desire to achieve and the qualities that earn more respect from colleagues...

If you’re leading innovation, you need very specific leadership skills.

Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill has studied leadership and innovation for decades and is the coauthor of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation. She says that leaders who shepherd innovation can’t rely on formal authority...

John Kerry has spent more than 40 years in public service, including several decades in the U.S. Senate, leading the U.S. Department of State from 2013 to 2017, and more recently serving as U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate...

Julie Zhuo was Facebook’s first intern, and she became a manager there in her mid-twenties. Those early years as a manager at the company—now named Meta—were tough. She says she often felt like she was in over her head and she made a lot of mistakes.

But Zhuo did eventually learn how to manage team dynamics. When she left Facebook in 2020, she was leading a team of hundreds, as vice president of product design...

As the host of two successful business podcasts, Guy Raz has interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs and leaders. His podcasts How I Built This and Wisdom From The Top offer an inside look at how visionary leaders build their careers and their companies.

Raz has identified three key behaviors successful leaders have in common: They create a culture of collaboration. They encourage risk-taking. And they allow for failure...

If you’re a leader, you know how critical feedback is to your team’s success and growth. But giving the kind of feedback that motivates people to improve is harder than it may seem...

Do you have a culture of respect on your team?

Kristie Rogers, an associate professor of management at Marquette University, has identified two types of respect that employees value: owed and earned. She says that owed respect refers to basic workplace civility whereas earned respect is related to an employee’s achievements...

When was the last time you practiced your active listening skills?

HBR contributing editor Amy Gallo says it is a skill you need to practice. In this episode, you’ll learn how you can use listening skills to make other people feel heard and understood. Specifically, you’ll learn different styles of listening and how to use each one to fit your goals...