On Leading with Greatness

The best artists, like the best leaders, never treat their work as finished. They master their craft, then break it, reworking, searching, risking public failure rather than coasting on what already worked. Let's call that restlessness unsettlement . It's a value leaders and artists share more deeply than any other. This episode makes the case for it: not repetition, not persistence for its own sa...

So much information, and so little time to review it, which is to say nothing of comprehending and intelligently responding to it. We drift in a world awash in information, gulping it down as quickly as possible in hopes we don’t drown. Yet, “ leaders are readers ,” or so they say. Leaders gain knowledge and a degree of understanding by guzzling information. Get full access to On Leading With Grea...

What does a person’s behavior suggest about their level of competence? The most competent among us aren’t hyper-confident and are often riven with self-doubt, which you might not realize if you aren’t close to them or you actually are them. I’m not talking about imposter syndrome . The self-doubt a competent leader experiences is an entirely healthy and even necessary element of their competence....

Most leadership advice suggests that empathy is a key component to effective leadership, and I won’t disagree. Leaders empathize to improve their ability to communicate and to compromise. But … Empathy is not inherently good. Empathy can be a component of morality, but it’s not moral in itself. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Have you ever considered the inherent value of taking action and getting things done? We sometimes refer to comic book heroes as “action heroes,” but do you think action is heroic in and of itself? Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Leaders understand that justice is a key leadership value and that it must expand beyond mere retribution toward a more holistically just future. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Leaders know that silence enhances pain, trauma, and injustice. Silence is the tool of the cruel. Leaders stand tall as its sworn enemy. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

The truth is that the player who attempts to bluff always does so from a position of deficiency. You wouldn’t be bluffing if you placed a high bet on, say, a straight or a flush unless you somehow knew for a fact that your opponent held four of a kind. Therefore, bluffing is always a de facto admission of weakness even when the player wins. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvuc...

Leadership and writing have some direct parallels, not the least of which is that when done well, people don't notice. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Slide 321 of the most exhausting PowerPoint I ever sat through taught me almost nothing about advising students—but it accidentally taught me much about leadership. So did a brilliant, infuriating Korean student who could humiliate me with grammar rules but couldn't write a single clean sentence. Both stories point to the same lesson: you can know everything and still not know how to do anything....

Why do we impose thoughtless, unnecessary, even harmful rules on ourselves and our organizations? Tradition, inertia, inherited habits, the hidebound predecessor whose practices nobody questioned. Over time these ad hoc rules harden into identity—"this is just who we are"—and can even manifest as what I call bureaucratic compulsive disorder. They're garbage rules that squander time, energy, and op...

The leadership gurus I call the nabobs of negativity insist leaders need to learn to say "no" more often. But is the big problem in leadership truly leaders who don't say "no" enough, as the nabobs would have it, or leaders who say "no" too often? Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result isn't insanity, not when it benefits the bosses. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Abraham Lincoln is often cited as an exemplary president for leaders to emulate. While that's true, his leadership is far more nuanced and complicated than most people realize, and therefore he's a more useful model of leadership. Honest Age is an honest model of leadership. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Just because it’s infinitely difficult to contemplate the infinitesimal doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn all you can about Quantum Bossing—QBossing. It’s a great way to use everyone’s (even your own) profound ignorance of science to justify just about anything. And if you can convince everyone of an absurdity , such as you’re in two places at once, they’ll eventually give up, give in, and ple...

Want to hear about my dream? Sure you do. The exasperation, anger, disgust, frustration, and helplessness the dream evoked recalled my anguish working at some pretty screwy universities. In fact, I could point to particulars in my lived experience that directly paralleled my dream. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Systems thinking is a handy skill for a leader to have, and I suspect a lot of leaders are systems thinkers even if they never thought of themselves as such. So, let me hit you with systems axiom 1: There is a correlation between systems thinking and successful leadership—keeping in mind that correlation is not causation . Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/su...

What do you call someone who sits back in the face of wrongdoing? Complicit . Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Leadership is just another type of human relationship. Leadership is not much different from friendship, animosity, acquaintanceship, or even romance. It harbors no mysteries that any of these or other human relationships hold. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

What can a conscientious leader dedicated to human decency do to get a more objective self-assessment than private reflection will provide? Let me ask the question more eloquently: who calls you on your s**t ? Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

There is no leadership without justice. If you’re a leader, the means to your goal is simple: just act justly to achieve justice. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

Much bullying, even the vast majority of bullying, serves no real purpose at all. Think of the schoolyard bully. After he has successfully terrorized all his peers into submission, he really has no reason to continue bullying on a regular basis, but he does. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

The story of Odysseus and his monstrous confrontations offer lessons for leaders, both good and bad. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

What does it really mean to think and write about leadership? The best writers on leadership—even if they don’t see themselves this way—are in fact moralists in that they concern themselves largely with questions of right and wrong, good and bad. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe

One aspect of leadership that rarely gets its full due is its integral relationship to power. The pursuit of power (as with its counterparts, wealth and fame) can be corrupting but not necessarily so. While power offers myriad opportunities for abuse, it also presents positive possibilities. Get full access to On Leading With Greatness at jimsalvucci.substack.com/subscribe