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02.05.26
Leading Thoughts for February 5, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Brad Stulberg on being patient: “Remember that doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff isn’t progress. It’s just doing stuff. Be patient, you’ll get there faster.” Source: The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds—Not Crushes—Your Soul Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar on ruminating: “When a big change occurs, our negative thoughts can take on a life of their own, nestling into our psyches and stoking our biggest fears. This is known as rumination, and it can involve obsessively rehashing something in the past, grappling with perceived problems in the present, or catastrophizing an imagined future. When we ruminate, we keep going over and over the same negative thoughts, and we get stuck in a loop. Our brain trick us into believing we’re making progress on our problem when we’re often just making things worse.” Source: The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.   Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:47 AM
02.01.26
First Look: Leadership Books for February 2026
HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in February 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.
Meetings are broken. They are relics from a bygone era of top-down hierarchies and factory-like procedures—designed to issue orders, flaunt power, and keep the hierarchy intact. In today’s digital, collaborate-or-bust era, this model isn’t just inefficient, it actively harms employees and organizations. Drawing on decades of research and stories from leading companies like Google, Salesforce, Pixar, YouTube, and Dropbox, Your Best Meeting Ever provides a blueprint to transform your meetings from monotonous, soul-crushing time sinks into powerful tools for collaboration. The secret? Treat them like products. Using seven product design principles, you’ll turn your meetings into well-designed products that actually drive work forward and serve your most important users—the people in your organization.
Welcome to the Transformation Economy. To truly compete in today's marketplace, enterprises must create transformative experiences that guide customers to achieve their aspirations, whether that's improving well-being, increasing prosperity, developing knowledge, or finding purpose. These aspirations speak to customers' greatest desires, their dreams for the future, and their conceptions of who they are and who they strive to be. In this book, bestselling author B. Joseph Pine II builds on his iconic work on the Experience Economy to explain what this new shift means for companies looking to stand out and gain competitive advantage. Using examples from organizations across industries, including Noom, Symplany, Hydrafacial, London Business School, and Johnnie Walker Whisky, Pine provides practical, proven frameworks for organizations to design, create, and guide transformative offerings that help customers reach their greatest aspirations and flourish over the long term.
Answer six simple questions daily and you can change almost anything. If you’ve ever hit a goal and thought, Now what?—you’re not alone. Permanence is your tool for lasting success—not the kind that’s here one day and gone the next, but the kind that sticks with you. How? Small, consistent steps—six questions daily—that keep you focused, on track, and synced with what you care about most. The real challenge isn’t just getting there. It’s staying there. In this book, you’ll learn the Daily Question Process, how to use feedforward instead of feedback, and how to build systems of accountability that actually work. You’ll stop thinking about quick wins and start getting better and better in a sustained way—driven by who you want to be, not what others are doing.
In an AI world that can write, code, and design, what's left for humans? Everything that matters. The world is changing fast. Are you ready for what's next? Technical skills alone won't keep you ahead anymore. Creativity has now become the dividing line between those who will lead the future and those who will be automated out of it. This book shows you how to build the creative abilities AI can't touch: finding problems worth solving, linking ideas in new ways, and infusing work with meaning that only humans understand. These aren't vague ideas - they're real skills you can start building today.
A Harvard Business School professor's guide to thinking about thinking, using the creative power of the unconscious. Gerald Zaltman's pioneering research methods for understanding the unconscious desires of customers are used by companies around the world. Dare to Think Differently draws on the same groundbreaking methods to explain the deep and innovative thinking used by highly successful executives. Reflecting emerging viewpoints in neuroscience, Zaltman contends that multiple forces, not just a brain, collaborate to produce a mind. Highly effective decision-makers are able and willing to go beyond their conscious thinking and surface powerful, creative, unconscious thoughts and feelings. They candidly ask whether what they feel they "know" is actually warranted, opening their minds to new alternatives. With this book, Zaltman presents six techniques to tap into the creative power of the unconscious: serious playfulness, befriending ignorance, asking the right discovery questions, chasing your curiosity, panoramic thinking, and using the "voyager outlook."
An empowering guide to career growth that reveals how to “be more lobster” —to never stop learning and pave the way to a meaningful working life. In today’s working world, careers are characterized by change. You can take control of your own development at any time, but many of us don't as we feel held back by time, money, or imposter syndrome. Careers used to be linear and ladder-like. They were about following in other people’s footsteps and focused on getting to the top. This predictable approach to careers no longer fits—and it doesn’t reflect people’s reality or their individuality. Enter the lobster, which never stops growing.
   
“I read books because, at their best, they make me better, more empathetic, more socially aware, more in tune to the stranger beside me. They help me imagine a better future, provide me with answers to my insatiable questions, take me to places I’ll never get to go. ” — Annie B. Jones
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:53 PM
01.31.26
LeadershipNow 140: January 2026 Compilation
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:59 AM
01.29.26
Leading Thoughts for January 29, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Heidi Grant on feedback: “What happens when people lack a feeling of effectiveness? In the short term, it wipes out motivation. Research shows that when people are unable get any kind of feedback about how well they are doing on a task, they quickly become disengaged from it.” Source: Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You Simon Sinek on trust: “Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you—not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.” Source: Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:17 PM
01.22.26
Leading Thoughts for January 22, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Jason Feifer on the good ol’ days: “If we’re surrounded by the belief that yesterday was better, we’ll become less open-minded to future opportunities. To prepare for an uncertain future, we need to release ourselves from the rosy memory of our past—and begin to build a new, more durable narrative about ourselves instead.” Basketball coach Geno Auriemma on leading: “I used to think that I could affect winning and losing. I,I,I,I I keep using that word. Then it became more of, I have very little control of winning and losing, the only thing I have control of is … am I putting them in a position every day in practice to learn how to win?” Source: VIDEO The Psychology of Feedback via What Drives Winning Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:42 PM
01.20.26
Tread Carefully When Using Aggression to Achieve Your Goal
AGGRESSION carries a negative connotation. It’s often described as an attribute of anger and a lead-in to violent behavior. But aggression can also be equated with the tenacity with which someone goes after their goals. In this sense, it describes somebody who pursues their goal with great passion, enthusiasm, or intensity. An example may be a young executive, in the process of trying to impress her bosses, who utilizes unconventional tactics to increase her clientele. Her increased status leads clients of one of her coworkers to transfer to her accounts. While her goal had been to increase her sales, she had no intention of hurting her colleague. But nonetheless her coworker clearly was, even though hurting someone wasn’t the goal. Such tactics are often the case with people who become successful. Aggression has been shown repeatedly as paving the way for success. Aggression is the tenacity with which someone goes after their goals. Aggressiveness, which is the adverb describing behavior, captures this best. While there have been misunderstandings when we describe someone as aggressive, people mistakenly think that it means that they're violent. In fact, there are two main types of aggression: instrumental aggression and reactive aggression. Instrumental aggression is when somebody is pursuing their goal with great passion, enthusiasm or intensity, in order to increase the likelihood of achieving that goal. A secondary consequence of that behavior may be to harm someone, but it is not the goal. For example, a basketball player is heading to the hoop in order to score. In the process of driving the lane, they accidentally elbow an opponent in the face. There is no denying that the other player got hurt, but that was not the goal. The goal was to put the ball in the hoop. Just as the young executive whose tactics ended up stealing her coworker’s clients, people who rely on instrumental aggression can hurt others even though it wasn’t their intention. Compare this to the second form of aggression — reactive aggression. It describes behavior that has as its primary and sometimes solitary goal to do harm to someone. Reactive aggression is related to anger and often is the behavior that leads people to get into trouble. It usually appears in response to a perceived injustice, insult, or wrongdoing. A sports example of reactive aggression would be an offensive lineman trash talking a defensive lineman about his mother, saying obscene things. Furious, the defensive lineman gets up and smacks the offensive lineman in the helmet, incurring a 15-yard penalty and being ejected from the game. Note, this was in reaction to a provocation — that’s why it’s called reactive aggression. So, instrumental aggression paves the way for success, while reactive aggression paves the way for trouble. Why? People, especially men, are very sensitive to issues of power. If you can provoke somebody to fight, you control them. If you’re someone who wears your emotional buttons on your sleeve, you can be easily provoked and will often engage in reactive aggression. You’re also someone who gives your power away all the time. Think about it like this: real power is like being Teflon: nothing sticks to you and nothing breaks you. Let nearly everything roll off. Allow the things that stick to be worth it — which means: don't waste energy or emotion being easily provoked. It's just not worth it and can be really costly emotionally or materially. In short, aggression can work for you or against you. If you tenaciously go after your goals, as in engaging in instrumental aggression, you are likely to achieve success. The only caveat is you need to be aware of the price you may pay for quashing others along the way. On the other hand, if you have a hard time keeping your reactive aggression in check, you’re unlikely to get ahead. You’ll need to get better at seeing what and who matters, and what and who you have the delicious privilege of completely ignoring.  Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:31 PM
01.16.26
Leaders Who Honor “In-Between” Periods Heighten Their Insight and Power
LEADERS are under tremendous pressure to stay ahead of the curve while increasing output and notching wins. The tendency is to rush from project to project, overcome hurdle after hurdle, and never stop for a breath. But truly successful leadership requires taking time for reflection between one project and the next. Rather than diminishing leaders’ effectiveness, pausing in between heightens their insight and power. In Tibetan Buddhism, in-between periods are known as “bardos.” In these intervals, the teachings tell us, “the intellect becometh ninefold more lucid.” Bardos offer us a rich opportunity to step outside our usual ways of seeing and discover fresh perspectives. Our busy-ness can make us feel we’re on track, when the reality is that we’re drifting like a boat that’s steadily and unnoticeably veering off course. Striving to meet today’s glorified standards of productivity, we think we’re taking care of what matters most when, in fact, we’re putting it off. Tomorrow you’ll analyze what went wrong and what went right with the latest project. Next week you’ll acknowledge your team’s efforts. Later in the month you’ll take time to better understand how the processes you’re overseeing work. Next year you’ll strategize for succession planning. Now, as the new year gets underway, make a commitment to honor intermediary periods. Resolve to set aside time between projects for conscious attention to your relationships, your principles, and your purpose. By turning your attention to this kind of reflection on a regular basis, you can reset your compass, course correct and enhance your leadership skills. Here are some questions to ask yourself when you take a pause: 1. Is there something I keep doing even though it isn’t working? According to the Buddhist law of karma, or cause and effect, every result has an origin. “Karma” means “act,” and it’s about how we determine what happens with our actions. Karma as action (rather than fate) is a concept with huge power. What’s occurring today is a consequence of your actions last year, last week, yesterday, and this morning. All of that, plus what you do now, will lead to results in the future. If you don’t want what usually happens to happen, do something different. In other words, stop doing things that aren’t working. You might start by identifying a behavior that isn’t getting the results you want. Perhaps you have too many meetings to prepare for other meetings. Or you micromanage instead of setting standards. Or you request reports and metrics that no one acts on. Once you pinpoint the action, you can change it. 2. Am I living in alignment with my values? Often, we behave in ways that aren’t aligned with our values. You care about developing talent but don’t devote time to mentoring. You believe in open discussion but quash dissent in meetings. You advocate work-life balance but expect employees to be available at night and on weekends. Recognizing these points of disjunction allows you to transform behavior patterns you weren’t aware of. As your values and behavior come into alignment, you experience increased personal and professional satisfaction. 3. If I only have one more year in this role, what do I want to prioritize? Impermanence is the central concept of the bardo teachings. However immortal we may feel, we — and everything and everyone we know — will end. What’s more, this can happen at any moment. Bardo in-between periods give us the opportunity to reflect on impermanence. This may feel dark and unnecessary (why spend the time that you’re engaged in your work thinking about it coming to an end?), but it helps us make the most of our days as we see that sooner or later things will change. Best-selling author Gish Jen became acutely aware of death when she attended a funeral for the first time. She realized, “‘Oh, my god! We’re all going to die!’” The consciousness of her own mortality that struck Jen at the funeral has never left her. She says, “For every book, I ask myself, ‘If it’s only [possible] to write one more book, would this be it?’” Ask yourself: If I only have one more year to… If there’s only one more chance to… By honoring in-between periods, we undergo a profound shift in our experience of leadership and indeed, of life. Instead of feeling like we’re rushing from hour to hour, day to day — our attention fractured as we try in vain to catch up with all that we want to do and must do — we become more centered and effective. We grow confident in the knowledge that we’re doing today, not later, what’s most important and aligned for us. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:18 PM
01.15.26
Leading Thoughts for January 15, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Ryan Holiday on social intelligence: “Our curiosity, our desire for understanding should extend not just to the person in front of us but to how people function within groups. Both because it is an endlessly fascinating topic and because it’s essential to getting things done.” Source: Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. Michael J. Fanuele on inspiring others: “Passion and Reason work against each other. Passion is the energy that wants you jumping out of your seat. Reason wants you to sit and think for a little longer. Adding one decreases the other. Source: Stop Making Sense: The Art of Inspiring Anybody Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:07 PM
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Your Best Meeting Ever
The Transformation Economy
Permanence
Creativity's Edge
Dare to Think Differently
Learn Like a Lobster
Here is a selection of 
