Scroll to top
Smarter change

Leadership, Levels and History

Leadership is not just one thing but many. Here are some different approaches.

  • First, an interesting summary of Drotter’s Leadership Pipeline. 6 passages between 5 levels of leadership. Nicely summarises the issues of moving from one level to the next. If you’re ambitious, you need to know where you sit and start addressing your next challenge! Read it here.
  • Second, a podcast from the talented Dan Pink, interviewing Nancy Koehn on his 1 3 20 podcast. Nancy teaches history at a business school. She tells some great stories about Shackleton, Rachel Carson, Lincoln and some others. Nancy’s book is Forged in crisis: the power of courageous leadership in turbulent times: my favourite quotes from Nancy Koehn

history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme

Sometimes the best thing to do is to wait 24 hours before taking action

  • Third, another podcast, this time from NPR Invisibilia, looking at leading on oil rigs. My favourite quote so far:

If you can’t tell people you’re scared you can’t make it safe

giving men on the oil rig training to allow themselves to be vulnerable decreased safety incidents by 84%: it was now OK to own up to an error or ask for advice, whereas before it was not OK to do that.

I’ve also just finished reading the Culture Code, and it synchs very nicely with this last quote.

Other posts in this blog about leadership:

Related posts