Platform Overview
See our features at a glance
Recommendations
Gather interests and customize learning
Integrations
Easily connect with Big Think+
Transcription & Translation
Make content more accessible
Analytics
Analyze learning programs
Instructional Design
Engage learners with best-in-class tools
Curations
Save and group lessons
Assessments
Gain deeper insights
Built for leaders at every level
Ginni Rometty, the former president and CEO of IBM, believes that power should be wielded in a way that enables respect, unity, and progress. After years of seeing power used to create a culture of fear or selfishness, she established five principles for leading in a way that has a positive impact on people, organizations, and the world — or as she calls it, leading with “good power.”
Leadership is an unnatural act, one that can engender feelings of self-doubt, insecurity, or indecision. In this expert class, executive coach Alisa Cohn offers a series of principles and practices to help you become a more natural leader for your team.
It’s easy to take credit when everything is running smoothly, but when times get tough, only true leaders shoulder the responsibility, assume command, and proclaim, “I’ve got this!” As CEO of ServiceNow Bill McDermott notes, that level of accountability is mandatory. The right to win isn’t given; it’s earned.
Hospitality is often viewed as something to extend to customers or guests. But restaurateur Will Guidara doesn’t want you to stop there. By extending hospitality to your employees as well, you make them feel seen and heard, enabling them to bring their best selves to work. His approach to building such a culture centers on embracing shared values, purposeful communication, and prioritizing everyone’s well-being.
Like many, acclaimed actor and director Jesse Eisenberg knows what it’s like to feel anxious and panicked on the job. He’s learned that — for him — the most effective way to handle these emotions is not to push them aside but to channel them in the direction of his desired outcome. The methods he shares, hard-earned through his experience wearing different hats in the film industry, can help us all do the tough work of managing fear and self-doubt, creating community when we’re new to leadership, and forging a flexible and unabashedly human path toward reaching our goals.
Humans are hardwired for hierarchy, but we want a leader we can respect, not just someone to follow. To earn that respect, leaders must be clear about why they want to lead. They also have to be human. If they demonstrate compassion and loyalty to their team, says leadership consultant Simon Sinek, their team will return that commitment in spades.
People used to think a leader is strong, the most intelligent person in the room, and driven by the pursuit of money, fame, or power. Today, we are renovating this cultural antique. And Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, says the key is to explore an overlooked essence of leadership: authenticity.
Trust is an invaluable resource that fuels collaboration, creativity, and productivity while bonding employees, leadership, and the mission into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. And this doesn’t come about by accident. According to Joel Peterson, former chairman of JetBlue, you have to actively nurture a “high-trust organization.”
Meet Dan Pontefract, “Chief Envisioner” at TELUS, a $12 billion communications firm with one of the highest employee engagement rates in the industry. At TELUS, good leadership is a core part of company culture, distributed throughout the organization. In this masterclass, Pontefract explores why and how to engage your talent with a sense of common purpose, and he empowers the individual to take the lead in finding purpose in her work. He also introduces you to his Collaborative Leader Action Model. It’s a 6-step process for humane and connected leadership on any project, and it begins, appropriately enough, with human connection. Click the following links to download discussion guides for Individual Contributors, Team Managers, and Senior Leaders.
If your job involves selling something for a living, you already know the importance of making customers feel listened to and cared for. So why up the ante and engage in what restaurateur Will Guidara calls “unreasonable hospitality”? Because being relentless in making others feel valued might be your best competitive advantage – especially in a business landscape stuffed with competitors constantly offering the latest and greatest version of your product or service. Luckily, being “unreasonable” doesn’t have to be draining; it can be creative, generative, and even systematizable.
You know it when you feel it … that sensation of being “at your best.” Tasks flow. To-do lists are crushed. And the sense of accomplishment that follows spurs even more energy. Psychologist Daniel Goleman calls this the “optimal state.” And he says you don’t have to wait for it to appear magically; you can conjure it yourself by invoking mindfulness, focus, and emotional intelligence – as an individual, a team, and an organization.
How do you recognize power gaps within your organization and adjust your leadership style accordingly? How do you engage a rapidly changing workforce? Answering these questions is essential for leaders navigating today’s fast-paced and globalized world. Jane Hyun, founder and president of Hyun & Associates, will help you discover how.
Fostering business relationships is an important part of leadership, and Emil Michael suggests that expanding our emotional intelligence is a key component to nurturing those relationships effectively. By cultivating qualities such as forthrightness, self-awareness, empathy, and cultural competence, we can build teams and forge connections that help everyone, including ourselves, feel more known, heard, and ready to spark innovation.
Modern business and modern warfare have more than a few things in common. In both settings, you have to adapt to unpredictable tactics and changing conditions. Retired General Stanley McChrystal and his former right-hand officer Chris Fussell suggest the best way to do so is to deemphasize traditional hierarchy and adopt a “team of teams” approach.
A world shaped by non-human intelligence is quickly becoming our reality. AI isn’t just a tool — it’s a force transforming what’s possible, uncovering strategies beyond human imagination, and altering how we engage with information. As many rush ahead, Professor Yuval Noah Harari urges us to slow down and ask critical questions: What will coexisting with a new creative entity mean? How can we lead responsibly in an AI-driven world? And what must we do to harness AI’s power while safeguarding what makes us human? Our answers to such questions will profoundly affect the contours of humanity’s future.
Making the transition into a new leadership role can require precarious maneuvering. To make sure you thrive and succeed at achieving your objectives, Michael Watkins recommends cultivating a deep understanding of the organization’s culture. Additionally, assessing the organization’s circumstances and needs will help you evolve your team and your leadership style accordingly. By following Watkins’ advice, you can gain the support of superiors and reports while navigating this process.
Unnecessary meetings, micromanagement, overly complex procedures — these are a few common examples of the phenomenon Bob Sutton calls workplace “friction.” And while friction can feel inevitable, regularly slowing us down and causing frustration, he argues that it doesn’t have to be that way. By eliminating pointless barriers, we can streamline work, sharpen decision-making, and fuel creativity.
What is “strategic thinking”? In a nutshell, Michael Watkins’ research suggests that “it means looking beyond the present situation and thinking critically and creatively about the many potential futures.” Sounds great in theory. But how do you actually do it? Watkins has an answer for that, too. He breaks his overarching, forward-looking mindset into six specific disciplines you can practice to build your strategic thinking intentionally and holistically.