Weekend Reads - June 9, 2023

The?Elite Leadership Insights?newsletter publishes Weekend Reads each Friday with resources from some of the top academic and business leadership minds. It is a resource for you to utilize as you continue your leadership journey and packaged so you can casually read them over the weekend. Continuous learning is a critical part of leadership improvement. In each Weekend Reads you will find links to articles, videos, podcasts and other resources, as well as some recommended leadership books.

We curate resources from?Harvard Business Review,?McKinsey & Company,?PwC,?Forbes,?Inc. Magazine,?Kellogg Insight,?Knowledge at Wharton,?MIT Sloan Management Review,?Chief Executive Group?and many others.

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Here are this week's Weekend Reads. Enjoy and feel free to share this with your colleagues.

Utilizing an Evidence-Based DEI Strategy, Elite Leadership Insights Newsletter, June 8, 2023. The most frequent arguments against DEI programs are focused around competence and merit. On competence, they argue that a less competent person is receiving an opportunity because they are from a historically disenfranchised group. On merit, they argue that opportunities are given to people solely for DEI purposes and not based on merit. To counteract these arguments, organizations should incorporate an evidence-based component to their DEI strategy.

Do You Overprepare? Here Are 4 Ways to Curb This Perfectionist Tendency, Kellogg Insight , June 1, 2023. For many women perfectionist tendencies are an early career boon. Overpreparing and overdelivering help perfectionists become valued, even indispensable colleagues. But eventually perfectionism can become a liability. It can prevent women from seeking out or being offered new responsibilities.

Every Business Probably Has at Least 1 Jimmy Butler. Are You, as a Leader, Embracing the Opportunity?, Inc. Magazine , June 7, 2023. To some, Miami Heat superstar Jimmy Butler may not have seemed like the stereotypical team player. Turns out they--and maybe you--were very, very wrong. Every company has a few people who are misunderstood. They're argumentative, but only because their standards are high. They're annoying, but only because they're frustrated by a lack of commitment and effort from others. They're undervalued because the skills they possess don't add up to the "total package."

Are Empathetic CEOs Losing Empathy?, 光辉国际 , June 5, 2023. One-third of workers think the corner office lacks a trait that was critical during the pandemic. But the so-called “empathy deficit” may be more complex than it seems. According to a new annual survey of 3,000 HR professionals, fully one-third do not find their CEO to be empathetic, a 16% drop from 2022.

How to Move the Needle on Innovation, strategy+business , June 5, 2023. As CEOs continue to call employees back to the office, their rationales often include remote work’s deleterious effects on innovation. There is some basis for these claims, but it’s a stretch to peg the success—or failure—of a company’s innovation efforts to the number of rears in seats. The truth is innovation in large companies is a perennial challenge for leaders, no matter where employees are working.

Author Talks: What Does it Mean to be a Good Middle Manager?, 麦肯锡 , June 1, 2023. In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey partners discuss the critical impact of middle management in vision creation, coaching, and skill development, and share the often-overlooked role that middle managers play in promoting connectivity and creativity across organizations.

Why More Companies Should Have a Sabbatical Policy, Harvard Business Review , June 6, 2023. Sabbaticals have long been thought of as an academic privilege, but a growing number of companies offer them, especially since the pandemic. In this article, the author shares the surprising impacts that extended time off—paid or unpaid—can have on workers, teams, and the overall organization and explains how organizations can make sabbaticals work both financially and culturally.

Please let us know which article(s) you enjoyed the most in the comments. Your feedback will help us fine tune the sources and content included each week. Thank you.

{The?Elite Leadership Academy, the publisher of the Elite Leadership Insights Newsletter, is a privately funded leadership training and advisory organization dedicated to the improvement of leadership in all industries and organization levels using a personalized, process-based approach that is adaptable to almost any leadership encounter while producing measurable results.}