Timeless Principles To Improve Your Management Of Individuals, Teams And Yourself

I read many books about leadership and this new book is one of my favorites. It’s The Psychology of Leadership by Sebastien Page. It offers a fresh take on leadership through the lens of groundbreaking research in positive, sports, and personality psychology.

“Like exercise strengthens your body, practicing positive, sports, and personality psychology will make you a better leader,” says Page.

The book blends research, fascinating true stories, humor, and self-improvement advice to deliver simple yet powerful principles to master the mental game of leadership.

Page reveals timeless strategies for achieving lasting impact, fostering growth, and promoting well-being. He demonstrates how leaders and individuals can balance measurable goals with practical approaches to maximize performance and fulfillment.

“Effective leadership is not merely about achieving measurable outcomes. It requires aligning goals with intrinsic motivations and psychological insights,” explains Page. “Plus, the psychology of leadership requires you to understand yourself so you can understand others. It’s about empathy, leading by example, and personal resilience. You put on your oxygen mask before helping others.”

The book’s three parts are:

Setting Long-Term Goals
Executing Your Goals
Unleashing the Power of Personality Psychology

Within those three parts, Page discusses 18 core principles including:

Don’t Die on Everest – Beware of the side effects of measurable goals.
Don’t Fake It – When you talk about meaning, mean it!
Think About Death – Always work backwards from your goals. Work backwards through a wide range of scenarios and decisions and solve for the optimal course of action.
Sit On It – Learn strategic patience.
Read The Room – Call on introverts. Giving everyone a chance to share the spotlight makes your meetings more productive and keeps everyone mentally alert.
Learn to Love to Worry – Harness the positive side of neuroticism.
Be Disagreeable, Sometimes – Don’t run your business like a democracy.
Eat Your Vegetables – Unleash the power of good habits.

Some of my favorite takeaways from the book include:

High-performing organizations diligently use goals.
Set goals that balance challenge and capability.
As a leader, you must create an environment where people can disagree because there’s enough trust and mutual respect to maintain positive relationships.
Winning at all costs is for losers.
Rally your team against a worthy competitor. Make internal competitive friendly and enjoyable.
Don’t assume all stress is bad. For optimal performance, you shouldn’t eliminate stress.
When things get tough, people look to you as a leader to remind the organization of a brighter long-term outlook.
When it comes to group decision making, let your team speak first. Don’t bias the discussion by stating your opinion too early.

Whether you’re a seasoned executive, an aspiring leader, or someone passionate about human psychology, The Psychology of Leadership is an invaluable guide that challenges conventional wisdom, encourages self-reflection, and provides practical insights to transform leadership from a transactional process into a deeply human endeavor.

Leaders will develop what feels like mind-reading abilities for interpreting workplace personalities, hidden motivations, and group dynamics. They will learn how to inspire their organization to move mountains, improve their ability to listen, communicate and, when necessary, persuade. Along the way they will dramatically improve their own mindset and resilience.

Sebastien Page

Page shares these additional insights with us:

Question: What inspired you to write The Psychology of Leadership?

Page: I wanted to become a better leader and build resilience. I met a sports psychologist, and the story he told me during our first discussion was the spark that started this project. It put me on a path of discovery.

What I learned has been life-changing and worth sharing with the world. I became a better leader at work, acquired wisdom, and developed resilience in all aspects of my life.

Question: Which of the 18 principles from the book do you think people most often overlook?

Page: Most people overlook the pitfalls of measurable goals. In the psychology literature, Mt. Everest deaths are a common case study.

The spring 2023 Everest season was the deadliest in history. If we include five missing climbers presumed dead, the death toll stands at 17. Yet, there were no massive earthquakes or extreme weather events. Experts and Nepali officials blame many factors, including climber errors, inexperienced guides, crowdedness, and climate change. Most Everest deaths aren’t predictable or preventable.

The reality is that climbing Everest is a deadly idea to begin with. If you’ve reached the summit of Everest, I admire and respect you. At the same time, let me ask you: why?

Question: “Leadership” is at once a broad concept and one that’s often siloed in business to refer to management. How do you define it?

Page: Management refers to the formal relationship between and boss and an employee, or a boss and her team.

Leadership is the ability to inspire others, to help them perform at their highest level. It’s the job of the leader to set goals. Leadership requires humility. It requires making tough decisions. Always remember why your company exists in the first place. It doesn’t exist to boost your ego.

Question: What’s one of the most common pitfalls that people encounter when setting goals?

Page: Goal-induced blindness happens when you’re so obsessed with reaching a goal that you don’t see the negative consequences of your actions. You lose sight of the big picture. Mt. Everest deaths are an example of goal-induced blindness cited in the psychology literature. Climbers obsess over the measurable goal of reaching the summit; they sacrifice safety and sometimes die in the process.

There are many other ways in which the focus on outcomes leads to undesirable side effects. Some people decide to bend the rules. Others sacrifice their work-life balance, even their health.

___

Page is Chief Investment Officer and Head of Global Multi-Asset at T. Rowe Price.

He has written two finance books: Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know, and the co-authored Factor Investing and Asset Allocation, and he has won six annual research-paper awards: two from The Financial Analysts Journal and four from The Journal of Portfolio Management. He appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, and in 2022 was named a Top Voice in Finance by LinkedIn. He has been quoted extensively in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Barron’s.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Comments

How To Become Your Best-Self Leader Everyday

“By focusing in specific ways on five key leadership elements— Purpose, Process, People, Presence, and Peace —you can increase your time, capacity, energy, and ultimately your leadership impact,” explains Amy Jen Su , author of the book, The Leader You Want To Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self—Every Day . Su shares both Western management thinking and Eastern philosophy to provide a holistic yet hands-on approach to becoming a more effective leader with less stress and more equanimity. She draws on rich and instructive stories of clients, leaders, artists, and athletes. And, she focuses on three foundational tenets: s elf-care, self-awareness, and personal agency . Most important, Su explores in depth, chapter-by-chapter the Five Ps : Purpose – Staying grounded in your passions and contributions, doing your highest and best work that has meaning and is making a difference. Process – Relying on daily practices and routines that honor your natural energy rhyt...

The Five Critical Roles You Need To Build A Winning Team

The book, Team Players , by leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author, Mark Murphy , explains why a team needs more than strong leaders—it needs the right mix of five roles and talents to succeed. In addition, Murphy reveals that the secret to extraordinary teams isn’t making everyone the same—it’s embracing and leveraging fundamental differences through those five distinct team roles. No amount of teambuilding, trust, or cohesion can overcome having the wrong mix of people in the room. The five essential roles and talents are : The Director assumes a leadership role within the team, guiding its direction and making important, difficult, and even unpopular decisions. The Achiever immerses themselves in the details of accomplishing tasks and getting things done, with a keen eye for delivering error-free work. The Stabilizer keeps the team on track with meticulous planning, processes and procedures, clear timelines, and organization. ...

Daily Intentions For Leaders

Everyone can benefit from the book, Dear Friend , which features bite-sized, daily notes for contemplation, inspiration, connection, and clarity. Busy and stressed business leaders can particularly benefit from the 365 profound, heartfelt reflections from author Michelle Maros , founder of Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life and cohost of the podcast, Life Happens with Barb and Michelle . Dear Friend invites readers to go deep and use the notes as a daily practice that compounds over time, nurturing strength, resilience, and clarity. In just a few minutes each day, this book will offer you a daily reprieve when you feel burned out, beaten down, or overwhelmed by the strains and stresses of modern life. The heart of Dear Friend began in the quiet mornings Michelle shared with her mom, Barb. Every day, they would sit together, reading affirmations or passages from Barb’s beloved books. These small rituals—simple but powerful—set the tone for each day, grounding them in g...

Seven Ways To Stay Motivated

To learn how to stay motivated, read High-Profit Prospecting , by Mark Hunter . It's a powerful read that includes counter intuitive advice and cutting-edge best practices for sales prospecting in today's business world. Today, I share one of my favorite sections of the book where Hunter describes his seven things motivated people do to stay motivated : Motivated people ignore voices in their lives . These might be people in the office and friends who have bad attitudes. They're out there, and if you're not careful, they'll control you, too. Motivated people associate with highly motivated people . Just as there are negative people in the world, there are also positive people. Your job is to make sure you spend as much time with the positive people as possible. Motivated people simply look for the positive in things . Positive people count it an honor to live each day, learn from others, and impact positively those they meet. Positive people take great satisfaction...

Effective Listening: Do's And Don'ts

Here are some great tips from Michelle Tillis Lederman's book, The 11 Laws of Likability . They are all about: what to do and what not to do to be a leader who's an effective listener : Do : Maintain eye contact Limit your talking Focus on the speaker Ask questions Manage your emotions Listen with your eyes and ears Listen for ideas and opportunities Remain open to the conversation Confirm understanding, paraphrase Give nonverbal messages that you are listening (nod, smile) Ignore distractions Don't : Interrupt Show signs of impatience Judge or argue mentally Multitask during a conversation Project your ideas Think about what to say next Have expectations or preconceived ideas Become defensive or assume you are being attacked Use condescending, aggressive, or closed body language Listen with biases or closed to new ideas Jump to conclusions or finish someone's sentences

How To Maximize Employee Involvement

Here are 10 tips for how to maximize employee involvement : Have active ways to listen to your employees. Check often with employees to see if the information you are sharing with them is what they need and what they want. Share information about customer satisfaction with employees. Discuss financial performance with your employees and be sure everyone understands the importance of profitability and how they can contribute to profitability. Allow ad hoc teams among employees to form to address organizational problems and work with those teams to tackle the identified issues. Encourage employees to make suggestions for improvement whether those ideas are large or small. Take an idea from one employee and share it with other employees and teams and let everyone make a contribution to build upon that idea. Train! For long-term employees, find ways to keep their jobs interesting through new assignments and challenges. Conduct meetings around specific issues and brai...

Six Leadership Actions To Leverage Employees' Differences To Strengthen Teams

The new book, All The Difference: Six Leadership Actions To Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value , teaches how leaders can turn their team's individual differences into deeper trust, greater creativity, and winning results. “The greatest risk of unmanaged difference isn’t conflict: it lies in the ideas, insights, and opportunities that may never surface,” explain the book’s authors, Susan MacKenty Brady , Stuart D. Kliman , and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Leslie C. Smith . They suggest that you look around your team to fully see people with different communication styles, perspectives, cultural norms, and capabilities. These differences are expressed in all kinds of ways, such as casual gestures in a meeting, a colleague's opinion on a current event, or an intense work style. Often, those differences can lead to friction, even conflict. You may try to manage around them. But, for you and your organization to fully leverage the strengths of your team’s diffe...

Four Ways To Put People First In Your Company

According to a survey as reported in John Baldoni’s book, Lead with Purpose , more than 80 percent of those surveyed say that leaders can best demonstrate that they truly do put people first by : Delivering intrinsic awards (comp time, bonuses, etc.) Offering developmental opportunities Providing timely recognition Promoting from within

Creating A People-First Culture In Your Workplace

If you want to create a heart culture and a people-first culture at your workplace, read the book, Advisory Leadership , by Greg Friedman . Although the book is authored by an award-winning financial advisor and primarily written for professionals in the financial services industry, this book is a must read for any leader who wants to create a nurturing heart culture that hinges on the human-centric values the next generation of employees hold in high regard. And, what exactly is heart culture ? Friedman says, "At its core, heart culture symbolizes how a company values more than just an employee's output. It's not about the work, but rather, the people who do the work." He further explains that leaders can no longer afford to ignore the shift toward a people-first culture and its direct influence on a healthy, effective work environment. Friedman teaches that there are seven steps , based on human virtues we all stri...

Critical Questions To Ask New Hires

In Paul Falcone ’s book, 75 Ways For Managers To Hire, Develop And Keep Great Employees , he recommends asking new employees the following questions 30, 60 and 90 days after they were hired: 30-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Why do you think we selected you as an employee? What do you like about the job and the organization so far? What’s been going well? What are the highlights of your experiences so far? Why? Tell me what you don’t understand about your job and about our organization now that you’ve had a month to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Have you faced any unforeseen surprises since joining us that you weren’t expecting? 60-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Do you have enough, too much or too little time to do your work? Do you have access to the appropriate tools and resources? Do you feel you have been sufficiently trained in all aspects of your job to perform at a high level? How do you see your job relating to the organization’...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog