100 Great Leadership Ideas. From successful leaders and managers around the world

Leaders should not feel threatened by the process of democratization. The organization should be guided by the leader, not controlled.

Democracy in organizations is not about deciding everything via the ballot box, it is about allowing the intelligence of the organization as a whole to influence the organization’s future

Leaders must be truly accountable to the front lines; employees must feel free to express the right of dissent; policy-making must be as decentralized as possible: activism must be encouraged and honored.

The essence of leadership is the idea of continuous improvement. No matter what, you can always coach people to do a little better, and if everyone does that, the whole organization moves up ... It’s not romantic and not revolutionary or headline-getting, but over time, that’s what generates success.

The most talented must be identified as potential managers and leaders of the futures.
• It must be open to anybody in the organization to be able to join this team of potential leaders.

We would move away from the peanut butter approach of spreading ratings and merit pay evenly across the organization. Managers were expected to evaluate employee performance honestly and stand behind their decisions. Step by step we would learn to become, once again, a meritocrac

It became very much a mantra for me, to [create] a culture that assessed people accurately and really dealt with people fairly. The other piece is the importance of talent development. Not everybody is created equal, and it’s important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently, accelerate their development and pay them more. That process is so incredibly important to developing first-class leadership in a company. I think sometimes companies get confused with egalitarian processes that they think are the fairest, and that is not what companies need. Companies need to be very selective about identifying talent and investing in those leaders of the future.

Effective leaders work as part of the team. They motivate and inspire people as part of a group effort.

If you want people to enjoy themselves at work, try to make work a more fun place to be.
• Having fun at work breaks down barriers and creates informal groups that cross established hierarchies.
• When there is fun at work, people are less keen to leave.
• In difficult human enterprises, shared laughter can be the vital element that keeps the endeavor alive.

Consider giving a high degree of autonomy to devolved operations; give them overall objectives and allow them to deliver results within these parameters.