article thumbnail

How to Manage an Insecure Employee

Harvard Business Review

Insecure employees are “hard to evaluate, hard to coach, and hard to develop,” says Ethan Burris, an associate professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin. ” Your interpersonal relationships with insecure employees also tend to be more complicated, says Mary Shapiro, a professor at Simmons College School of Management and the author of HBR Guide to Leading Teams. hamzaturkkol/Getty Images.

McCombs 11
article thumbnail

Loyalty to a Leader Is Overrated, Even Dangerous

Harvard Business Review

I teach a course on ethics at the McCombs School of Business and have run the McCombs Speaker Series on Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility for the last seven years. In truth, this archetype bears very little relationship to the actual day-to-day operation of an organization, where leaders are actual flawed humans who are (hopefully) more interested in meeting common goals than in living out a dramatic narrative. In real life, though, he would make a terrible manager.

McCombs 12
article thumbnail

Why Organizations Forget What They Learn from Failures

Harvard Business Review

For example, it increased both the number and status of safety personnel, and it strengthened safety operating procedures. My research with Pamela Haunschild (Professor Emeritus at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin) and David Chandler (Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Denver) examines this question. Further, managers should remain especially vigilant in the promotion of a culture of safety.

McCombs 11