Every day, millions of employees watch their leaders sabotage themselves. They watch, they learn, and then they do it, too. Next thing you know, everyone’s lost motivation, and nobody takes ownership. That’s how organizations fail. This book will help you break the vicious cycle of self-handicapping leadership in your organization, stop the excuses, and unleash all the performance your team is capable of delivering. Phil and Jordan reveal how and why people handicap themselves even when they know better. Next, they offer real solutions from their own pioneering research and consulting. You’ll find practical ways to strengthen accountability and self-awareness, recognize the “big picture,” improve decision-making, deepen trust and engagement, develop talent, escape micromanagement, and focus relentlessly on outcomes. Your colleagues can be far more effective, and so can you. In fact, it starts with you–right here, right now, with this book. Many leaders inadvertently create cultures of failure. They model and promote “selfhandicapping” actions, where people withdraw effort or create new problems, in order to maintain their own self-images of competence. Self-Handicapping Leadership shines the spotlight on this widespread and destructive phenomenon and presents real action plans for overcoming it.

This 2-volume set within the SAGE Reference Series on Leadership tackles issues relevant to leadership in the realm of science and technology. To encompass the key topics in this arena, this handbook features 100 topics arranged under eight headings. Volume 1 concentrates on general principles of science and technology leadership and includes sections on social-scientific perspectives on S&T leadership; key scientific concepts about leading and innovating in S&T; characteristics of S&T leaders and their environments; and strategies, tactics, and tools of S&T leadership. Volume 2 provides case studies of leadership in S&T, with sections considering leadership in informal communities of scientists and engineers; leadership in government projects and research initiatives; leadership in industry research, development, and innovation; and finally, leadership in education and university-based research. By focusing on key topics within 100 brief chapters, this unprecedented reference resource offers students more detailed information and depth of discussion than typically found in an encyclopedia entry but not as much jargon, detail or density as in a journal article or a research handbook chapter. Entries are written in language and style that is broadly accessible, and each is followed by cross-references and a brief bibliography and further readings. A detailed index and an online version of the work enhances accessibility for today′s student audience.

Leadership Development explores how leaders gain and use self-knowledge for continuous improvement and career development and describes how leaders help themselves and the people with whom they work, understand themselves, and become more self-determined, continuous learners, and make the most of resources, such as feedback and coaching. This book explains why leaders need support for self-insight and professional growth in today's business environment. It explores dimensions of effective leadership in light of business, technological, and economic trends. Focusing on the importance of leaders developing accurate self-understanding, the book defines self-insight, outlines the meaning of internal strength and resilience for self-regulation, and considers how leaders attain a meaningful and realistic sense of self-identity. This volume illustrates ways organizations support these psychological processes. Leadership development is viewed as a comprehensive, continuous process that includes evaluating organizational needs and individual competencies, setting goals for career development and performance improvement, offering needed training and growth experiences, providing feedback, and tracking change in behavior and performance over time. It describes how leaders react to feedback and how 360-degree feedback survey methods and executive coaching help leaders attain and apply self-insight to enhance their performance. In addition, this book considers challenges and opportunities for leadership development, including how leaders overcome career barriers and become continuous learners.

Leadership Development explores how leaders gain and use self-knowledge for continuous improvement and career development and describes how leaders help themselves and the people with whom they work, understand themselves, and become more self-determined, continuous learners, and make the most of resources, such as feedback and coaching. This book explains why leaders need support for self-insight and professional growth in today's business environment. It explores dimensions of effective leadership in light of business, technological, and economic trends. Focusing on the importance of leaders developing accurate self-understanding, the book defines self-insight, outlines the meaning of internal strength and resilience for self-regulation, and considers how leaders attain a meaningful and realistic sense of self-identity. This volume illustrates ways organizations support these psychological processes. Leadership development is viewed as a comprehensive, continuous process that includes evaluating organizational needs and individual competencies, setting goals for career development and performance improvement, offering needed training and growth experiences, providing feedback, and tracking change in behavior and performance over time. It describes how leaders react to feedback and how 360-degree feedback survey methods and executive coaching help leaders attain and apply self-insight to enhance their performance. In addition, this book considers challenges and opportunities for leadership development, including how leaders overcome career barriers and become continuous learners.

Explains why self-deception is at the heart of many leadership problems, identifying destructive patterns that undermine the successes of potentially excellent professionals while revealing how to improve teamwork, communication, and motivation. Reprint.

The concept of self-handicapping can be legitimately anchored in a vari ety of intellectual contexts, some old and some newer. As this volume reminds us, Alfred Adler was perhaps the first to articulate the signifi cance of various self-defeating claims and gestures for protecting the self concept. Thus the apparent paradox of "defeat" in the interests of "pro tection. " More recently (but still more than 30 years ago), Heider's "naive psychology" added attributional rhetoric to the description of self-defeat ing strategies. While predominantly cognitive in its thrust, the attribu tional approach incorporated several motivational influences-especially those involving egocentric concerns. Heider hardly violated our common sense when he suggested that people are inclined to attribute their performances in a self-serving manner: the good things I caused; the bad things were forced upon me. The notion of self-handicapping strategies, proposed by Berglas and myself a little more than a decade ago, capitalized on these homely truths while adding a particular proactive twist. We not only make ex cuses for our blunders; we plan our engagements and our situational choices so that self-protective excuses are unnecessary. In doing so, we use our attributional understanding to arrange things so that flawed and failing performances will not be interpreted in ways that threaten our self-esteem.

This book draws upon resilience research and best practices to answer the question: 'How can leaders move ahead in the face of adversity?' and aims to help leaders thrive in the face of adversity.