What Keeps Leaders Up at Night

About the Author

Nicole Lipkin is a renowned speaker, consultant, and executive coach, known for her deep understanding of leadership psychology and management issues. She holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and an MBA, blending her expertise in psychology with practical business acumen. Lipkin is also the author of Y in the Workplace: Managing the "Me First" Generation, and her insights have been featured on NPR, NBC, CBS, and Fox Business News, among other high-profile media outlets.

Main Idea

In What Keeps Leaders Up at Night: Recognizing and Resolving Your Most Troubling Management Issues, Nicole Lipkin explores the common challenges leaders face in the workplace and provides actionable strategies to address them. The book delves into eight critical issues: miscommunication, stress, change, unhealthy competition, damaging group dynamics, loss of motivation and engagement, elusive success, and leadership snafus. Lipkin uses real-life case studies and psychological research to demonstrate how to navigate and resolve these issues effectively.

Table of Contents

1. I'm a Good Boss. So Why Do I Sometimes Act Like a Bad One?
2. Why Don't People Heed My Sage Advice?
3. Why Do I Lose My Cool in Hot Situations?
4. Why Does a Good Fight Sometimes Go Bad?
5. Why Can Ambition Sabotage Success?
6. Why Do People Resist Change?
7. Why Do Good Teams Go Bad?
8. What Causes a Star to Fade?

I'm a Good Boss. So Why Do I Sometimes Act Like a Bad One?

Lipkin identifies three overarching reasons why good bosses occasionally go bad: being too busy to win, too proud to see, and too afraid to lose. These reasons are underpinned by psychological mechanisms that influence behavior and decision-making.

Too Busy to Win

Excessive busyness can overwhelm a leader's coping capabilities, impairing performance and productivity. The human brain cannot concentrate on more than one cognitive task at a time, leading to sensory overload and poor decision-making.

"Keeping busy may make you happy, but at some point excessive busyness can overwhelm your coping capabilities." - Nicole Lipkin

• Leaders become mired in trivial tasks and lose sight of strategic goals.
• The cycle of self-sabotage is reinforced as increased mistakes require more management intervention.

Too Proud to See

Pride can blind leaders to alternative perspectives and necessary feedback. Lipkin highlights the phenomenon of confirmation bias, where leaders seek information that supports their views and disregard contradictory evidence.

"The phenomenon called confirmation bias causes us to seek out information that supports our views or beliefs and to give more weight to confirming information, while discounting or not noticing information that contradicts our point of view." - Nicole Lipkin

• Leaders become overly attached to their ideas and dismiss external advice.
• Past successes can create a false sense of infallibility.

Too Afraid to Lose

The fear of failure can lead to risk aversion, micromanagement, and indecision. Leaders may question every step, avoid commitments, and become involved in minutiae, undermining their credibility and effectiveness.

"Good bosses tend to possess a strong sense of self-efficacy. However, any number of circumstances can diminish or even destroy it." - Nicole Lipkin

• Leaders who fear failure avoid necessary risks and stifle innovation.
• Micromanagement and indecision create a toxic environment.

Why Don't People Heed My Sage Advice?

Lipkin discusses the importance of influence and persuasion in leadership. She distinguishes between influence, persuasion, and manipulation, emphasizing that true influence requires winning the hearts and minds of the audience.

"You lose your influential powers when people do not buy into you and when people do not buy into your message." - Nicole Lipkin

Power and Credibility

Effective influence stems from different types of power, such as referent, expert, and legitimate power. Lipkin argues that referent power, based on personal traits and values, is particularly effective in building credibility and influence.