Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Managers in the Middle

Blind Leaders; Their Self-Defeating Habits

Blind leaders can create cultures that drive out top performers through bad attitudes and practices, and self-defeating defense mechanisms. They too often compromise trust which is the core factor in engaging people and enabling their talents to flourish and synergize. Blind leaders too often lack the core principles of integrity, accountability and servant leadership we discussed during our last episode.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Managers in the Middle

You’re a middle-manager reporting to a senior exec or perhaps a Director. You have four direct reports and several indirect reporting people. And you’ve got your share of peers across the other departments.

The Futuristic Edge of Leadership

In prior episodes I described “people for all seasons” as the most equipped leaders for 2026 and beyond in a business environment being transformed by AI. In this episode, I’m going to present two AI innovators from different walks of life who merged their unique personal characteristics and skills to develop an AI product that adds key memory utility to current AI platforms.

The 2026 Demand for Purpose Driven Leaders. Is it real?

In our last episode, we discussed the profile of the 2026 Executive as defined by a substantial executive search firm. We didn’t get to the last element of the profile: Purpose Driven Leaders: Those that align business results with a societal purpose: A broader benefit to employees, customers, vendors, communities, and perhaps the environment. As a business psychologist, I do think this leadership standard is real, but I’m a bit skeptical as to whether it is really in higher demand today. I’m glad we didn’t cite this Purpose Driven profile aspect last time because I think it deserves a full show focus today.

Encore: The 2026 Executive

As a result of Covid and technology shifts, there are three major changes for executive hiring: 1.      Rise of Hybrid Leadership 2.      Stronger focus on Traits vs Tenure and Experience 3.      Growth in Shorter Term Leadership Models