Leadership & management

A couple of years ago, during a strategic review process at SunTrust, an analysis of the banking financial services industry revealed something very interesting: Strategy alone did not differentiate high- from low-performing firms. The true differentiator between winners and losers turned out to be how well the strategy was executed.

Darden Professor Mark Haskins discusses the significance of an oath of office to leaders and their organizations' stakeholders.

Ambivalence is a bad thing. And a good thing. Is that confusing?

When you ask someone to do something, you could get a variety of responses. These responses, what many business managers call “buy-in,” range in analog, not binary, fashion from outright revolt to passionate acceptance — it’s a sliding scale.

Because conflict happens in all teams (even the most effective ones), the presence of conflict has little bearing on whether one team is more successful than another. The factor most important to team success is how teams handle conflict when it does arise.

Conflicts among co-workers are ubiquitous in business. Sometimes they generate positive momentum, but they can often disrupt and stand in the way of workplace efficiency.