Leadership Fundamentals

Enrique Llamas couldn't believe what he was hearing. Lacking confidence? Not a team player? Not willing to contribute to group discussions? Enrique had thought he was all of those things. So why did he receive such a negative performance evaluation? Enrique felt hurt by the news and wanted to figure out where things could have gone wrong.

Most of the 89,000 leadership books offered on Amazon.com focus on traditional interpersonal leadership: the relationships between leaders and followers. Interpersonal leadership sets up an expectation that leaders must be in dialog or at least in view of their followers.

Here is a leadership lesson: Be selfish. Be very selfish. For this message to be an effective leadership tip, we need to understand what selfishness is. Selfishness is typically defined as "concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself."

Although everyone claims to want a "win-win" deal, the sad truth is that most businesspeople are competitive and subconsciously want to "win" by making the other person "lose." Even when you enter negotiations with the best of intentions, it's fair to assume that, at some level, your counterpart wants to see you "lose" at least something.

As workplaces become more diverse and more companies do business globally, the opportunities for cultural missteps are also increasing. Cultural diversity expert and executive coach Gayle Cotton says today's many forms of communication have created many ways for missteps to happen.

shutterstock images When you started your business, you did it because you had a great idea. Or at least, you had a better idea than other people, and you thought you could make a reasonable living at it. You didn't do it so you could monitor the love lives of your employees.

Running a startup or small business is riddled with stresses that demand your attention and drain your energy. You can't eliminate stress completely, so instead aim to boost your ability to cope with stress, which will help you face bigger challenges with confidence. Each person has an optimal level of stress that they actually enjoy.

Owning your own business is enormously rewarding, but success can take a Herculean effort that often leads to isolation and exhaustion. Preventing burnout before it starts will strengthen your business and help you build a lasting career in entrepreneurship. Burned out leaders typically feel exhausted, detached, and emotionally volatile.

Andy Molinsky, author of Global Dexterity, explains why it's important to customize your behavior in a new cultural setting....

As quality guru W. Edwards Deming reportedly said, "You can expect what you inspect." Or put slightly differently, in business, you get what you inspect, not what you expect. When Jan Carlson, the former CEO of SAS Airlines, wanted to improve on-time performance, he ensured that managers would see up-to-the-minute on-time performance regularly on their computer monitors.

shutterstock images I once knew an entrepreneur who was so brilliant and so charismatic that people were drawn to him like moths to a flame. The company he founded and ran developed groundbreaking technology and award winning, top selling products. When the company went public, it looked like smooth sailing ahead.

Alex E. Proimos/Flickr Most people think that office politics is bad for business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Office politics are an integral part of getting things done, regardless of whether you're the CEO, a salesperson, or an intern working over the summer.

Single parenting is hard enough. Add in the stresses of daily professional life, and you wouldn't blame a working single parent for wanting to stay in bed all day. No matter what your profession is, working as a single parent means juggling responsibilities long after you clock out.

You've secured your funding, you've started making your idea a reality, and suddenly, the work starts piling up faster than you could have imagined. What happens when your company starts to take off and you're buried under tasks? How do you keep on top of the mountain of work that is assaulting you?

In my years of coaching founders, owners, and executives, I've found that one key skill is the doorway to just about everything else. Get this one thing right, and everything else follows. Screw it up, and you'll face an uphill battle all the way. What is this magic skill?

Henry Kravis (Credit: Wikipedia) Henry Kravis and George Roberts are back in the news again, earning a combined $137 million or more last year, when their private-equity firm of KKR & Co. posted record profits. The two men have been billionaires for so long that they seem like "old money" on Wall Street.

Picture the following: Greg O'Leary, a 32-year-old mid-level manager, is in Shanghai for the first time to negotiate a critical deal with a distributor. To prepare himself for the trip, Greg has learned some key cultural differences between China and the U.S.

Everybody loves a win-win answer to a problem. It's great when a potentially-contentious situation ends up with everybody coming out ahead. And isn't that the way most business deals should go, too? Let's all sit down and find a way for everyone to win. What could be better?

INFOGRAPHIC DETAILS: The book Business Brilliant is based on an original study of 800 households during the first three months of 2009. Two groups were surveyed in a telephone-based interview process. The first group of "middle-class" respondents had a household income between $50,000 and $80,000 and a net worth less than $1 million.