A new UK survey identifies 5 types of office bosses: tigers, gorillas, sloths, jackals and foxes and suggests ways you can tame each of them.

In Off-Sites that Work, July 2006, Harvard Business Review, the authors argue that the core problem with most strategy off-sites or team away-days is that they're insufficiently structured and not enough thought given to how they are to be facilitated.

In Leadership Run Amok: The Destructive potential of Overachievers in the July 2006 Harvard Business Review the authors argue that by only focusing on tasks and goals, a leader can actually damage performance.

When an organisation or team or network seeks to bring about any form of change they require and expect the individuals affected to behave differently in some way. Peter Fryer describes his philosophy of small changes.

John Austin, writing in Tag your Team, discusses how Micro-managing is not Mentoring. John references an article in the Wall Street Journal which suggests that US managers see their management role as limited to one of staff control with no place for mentoring and coaching.

John Austin, writing in his excellent blog, Tag your Team, references research by Robert Kelley on ‘followership’ which examines two different traits of behaviour in team members: critical thinking and pro-activity.

New research indicates that if you feel that your organisation's leader does not know your name then it is a huge de-motivator.

The Apprentice (BBC TV) which showcases the management style of Alan Sugar, founder and chairman of Amstrad, implies that aggressive leadership is the real secret of business success. However Sally Bibb, author of The Stone Age Company, contends that much of the success achieved by such leaders is in spite of rather than a result of their ‘no-prisoners’ style.

John Austin, in Don’t forget to laugh pokes fun at low-cost leadership styles with some alternative versions of those motivational posters which team leaders, who know nothing about motivation, like to use. Dr Edwards Deming was the founder of the TQM movement and If you really have to stick something on your wall then it should only be his 14 Points.

Leading a virtual team requires different skills than leading a traditional team. For example many virtual team and virtual network outcomes are counter-intuitive due to the complex living nature of the team itself. Discovering this 'on the job' is as crazy as training airline pilots without using flight simulators! This article describes a research project which developed a PC-based simulator tool to help virtual team leaders experience decision making in various scenarios.