How Bad Leaders Get Worse over Time

Managing technology has never been more challenging. HBR IdeaCast’s new special series, Tech at Work, offers research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team. This week: how digital marketers are preparing for the end of third-party cookies—and what this change means for the open Internet.

Around 18 million adults in the U.S. alone suffer from long Covid, a chronic illness with a wide range of symptoms and severity. With approved therapies a long way off, workers with long Covid often struggle in silence. And most companies have neither a good understanding of the situation nor effective policies in place, say MIT research scientist Beth Pollack and Vanguard University professor Ludmila Praslova. They share the conditions associated with long Covid, what life is like for those workers, and the accommodations and flexibility they recommend HR leaders and organizations implement. Pollack and Praslova are coauthors with researcher Katie Bach of the HBR Big Idea article “Long Covid at Work: A Manager's Guide.”

There was a time when consumer goods companies paid musicians, athletes, and actors for endorsements, or to license their name and likeness. But in recent years, there's been an explosion of celebrities getting into business directly, selling everything from shapewear to tequila. Ayelet Israeli, professor at Harvard Business School, says the growth of social media and online, direct-to-consumer retail accelerated this trend, but notes that not all celebrity brands are a success. She explains what works and doesn't, and outlines lessons for non-famous entrepreneurs and established companies. Israeli is coauthor of the HBR article "What Makes a Successful Celebrity Brand?"

Managing technology has never been more challenging. HBR IdeaCast’s new special series, Tech at Work, offers research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team. This week: how your team can get the most out of working with generative AI.

There's plenty of advice on how to grow into a better leader. And it takes effort to become more effective. But bad leadership gets worse almost effortlessly, says Barbara Kellerman, a Center for Public Leadership Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She shares real examples from the public and private sectors of how bad leaders spiral downward, and how bad followership enables that negative trend. She gives her advice for recognizing and avoiding ineffective and unethical leaders. Kellerman is the author of the new book Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers.

Managing technology has never been more challenging. HBR IdeaCast’s new special series, Tech at Work, offers research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team. Listen every other Thursday starting May 2 in the HBR IdeaCast feed, after the regular Tuesday episode.

Worker disengagement is on the rise around the world. Even those of us who generally like our jobs sometimes find it hard to muster energy and focus. So what's the key to regaining motivation? Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and research associate Robin Abrahams share a four part process to help you get your groove back: detachment, empathy, action and reframing. They offer simple tips like thinking in the third person, helping others, and gamification to help get back on track. Groysberg and Abrahams are the authors of the HBR article "Advice for the Unmotivated."

Few leaders have been trained to ask great questions. That might explain why they tend to be good at certain kinds of questions, and less effective at other kinds. Unfortunately, that hurts their ability to pursue strategic priorities. Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor at IMD Business School, explains how leaders can break out of that rut and systematically ask five kinds of questions: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective. He shares real-life examples of how asking the right sort of question at a key time can unlock value and propel your organization. With his IMD colleagues Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, Chevallier wrote the HBR article "The Art of Asking Smarter Questions."

Many people aspire to entrepreneurship but we all know it's a high-risk endeavor. Bill Aulet, the Ethernet Inventors Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has for decades studied what it takes for start-ups to succeed and advises the next generation of founders on how to do it. He discusses the key trends and changes he's seen over the past few years, and outlines concrete steps anyone can take to get a new venture -- including those within larger organizations -- off the ground. Aulet is the author of the newly updated book Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup.

The amount of work we need to get done seems to grow daily. To avoid becoming overwhelmed, we have to become more productive than ever. Laura Mae Martin has advice on what has worked well at one of the biggest organizations in the world. She's the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google and shares the practical ways she helps her colleagues and company executives manage their time, calendars, email inboxes, and more. Martin is the author of the new book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.