YouTube – Imagine Leadership | By XPLANE & Nitin Nohria.

Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School’s Leadership Initiative collaborated with XPLANE to create this video in order to generate a discussion of the value and importance of leadership to address critical problems–useful for program leaders and leaders of leaders.

IT-Driven Innovation – Special Report – MIT Sloan Management Review.

If you lead project-based work in IT this is an excellent set of resources for looking at IT and innovation. Notice the variety of ways that IT enables the exceution of an organization’s strategy. Enjoy and grow!

Best of HBS Working Knowledge 2009 — HBS Working Knowledge.  This is an excellent overview of top 10 articles and working papers from the Harvard Business Review.

TOP 10 ARTICLES OF 2009

1. Understanding Users of Social Networks
   Many business leaders are mystified about how to reach potential customers on social networks such as Facebook. HBS professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski provides a fresh look into the interpersonal dynamics of these sites and offers guidance for approaching these tantalizing markets.
2. Social Network Marketing: What Works?
   Purchase decisions are influenced differently in social networks than in the brick-and-mortar world, says Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta. The key: Marketers should tap into the networking aspect of sites such as Facebook.
3. Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times
   As companies batten down the hatches, we need leaders who don’t compromise on standards and values that are essential in flush times. Fortunately, such leaders do exist. Their insights can help other organizations weather the current crisis, says HBS professor emeritus Michael Beer. Q&A.
4. Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Teams
   The ability to lead teams is fast becoming a critical skill for all managers in the 21st century. Here are four HBS Working Knowledge stories from the archives that address everything from how teams learn to turning individual performers into team players. Questions asked include: How does a team leader win the confidence of the group? What’s the best method for developing team goals? How can individual performers be developed into team players? How do teams learn?

Walking Through Jelly: Language Proficiency, Emotions, and Disrupted Collaboration in Global Work — HBS Working Knowledge. In this recent paper, our Stanford APM (SAPM) program’s own Pamela Hinds has co-authored a very useful study for leaders of large globally, distributed teams.

As organizations increasingly globalize, individuals are required to collaborate with coworkers across international borders. Many organizations are mandating English as the lingua franca, or common language, regardless of the location of their headquarters, to facilitate collaboration across national and linguistic boundaries. What is the emotional impact of lingua franca adoption on native and nonnative speakers who work closely together and often across national boundaries?

This study examines the communication experience for native and non-native English speakers in an organization that mandates English as the lingua franca for everyday use, and the impact of the lingua franca on collaboration among globally distributed coworkers. The paper details how emotions and actions were intertwined and evolved recursively as coworkers attempted to release themselves from unwanted negative emotions and inadvertently acted in ways that transferred negative experiences to their distant coworkers. Their findings have implications for managers who are charged with overseeing internationally distributed projects. Key concepts include:

• Disparities in English language proficiency were a major challenge for workers in the study.
• These disparities not only disrupted information sharing, they often triggered a cycle of negative emotional responses that interfered with collaborative relationships on the teams.
• It is important that workers engage in perspective taking with the goal of understanding the experiences and constraints of their colleagues.
• Building awareness of the experiences of coworkers with different language backgrounds and proficiencies and empathizing with those experiences can circumvent the negative cycle.