Dr. Linda Hill

What makes a great leader?

by

Leaders of the future must master 3 key roles to drive impact and innovation: architect, bridger, and catalyst

Writing in Harvard Business Review, Paradox Strategies Founding Partner Linda Hill (with Emily Tedards, Jason Wild, and Karl Weber) describes how great leaders of the future must master 3 key roles – architect, bridger, and catalyst – to drive innovation and impact.

As architects, they build the culture and capabilities for co-creation.

As bridgers, they curate and enable networks of talent inside and outside their organizations to co-create.

And as catalysts, they lead beyond their organizational boundaries to energize and activate co-creation across entire ecosystems.

These ABCs require leaders to stop relying on formal authority as their source of power and shift to a style that enables diverse talent to collaborate, experiment, and learn together — a challenging yet essential personal transformation.
Read the full article on HBR

Linda Hill and Brené Brown on leading with purpose in the digital age

by

Linda Hill and Brené Brown on leading with purpose in the digital age

Paradox Strategies Founding Partner Dr. Linda Hill joins Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast to discuss her research on leading in the digital age. Listen to the full episode in the player here, or access the episode on Brené’s website for the full description, show notes, and a special link to Linda’s 5 favorite songs on Spotify.

Linda Hill is named to Thinkers50 Top 10 for 2021

by

Congratulations to Linda Hill, named to Thinkers50 Top 10 for 2021

LONDON (Nov. 17, 2021) – Thinkers50, the premier ranking of global business thinkers, today announced its 2021 ranking of management thinkers and the winners of its 11 Distinguished Achievement Awards.

Included in this year’s Top 10 ranking is Paradox Strategies Founding Partner Linda A. Hill, who is a Harvard Business School Professor and faculty chair of its Leadership Initiative and a new Women of Color Leadership Program. She is recognized as “a top expert on leadership and innovation, focused on global strategies, and how to harness creativity and engagement for strategic implementation.”

“It’s very humbling to be included on a list with so many individuals whose work I admire,” Linda said. She was first named to the Top 10 in 2013 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015, and she also ranked in 2019 (22), 2017 (15), 2015 (16),  and 2011 (16).

“We’re so proud of Linda and honored to work with her every day at Paradox Strategies,” said Taran Swan, managing partner, on behalf of the entire team. “Aside from having a brilliant mind, she is truly interested in people, which drives the great research she does all over the world with leaders at innovative organizations. She is humble, has a generous spirit, and a deep commitment to learning and helping leaders grow.”

Linda’s consulting and executive education activities focus on leading change and innovation, developing innovation ecosystems, the role of boards in governing innovation, talent development and implementing global strategies. Organizations with which Linda has worked include AIDA, General Electric, RELX, Accenture, UnitedHealth Group, IBM, MasterCard, Mitsubishi, Morgan Stanley, National Bank of Kuwait, AREVA, The Economist, Salesforce.com, and The World Economic Forum.

Linda has been at the forefront of developing cutting-edge learning programs for managers, including Breakthrough Leadership, the winner of the 2013 Brandon Hall Group Award for Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology. She is author of several highly-regarded books and articles on leadership, including Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press 2014) and Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader.

The 2021 Thinkers50 ranking is topped by Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School. “Amy is already a Thinkers50 Award winner and has risen steadily up the ranking over recent years,” says Thinkers50 cofounder Des Dearlove. “Her work on teamworking is significant and more recently she has been the pioneer of the concept of psychological safety and author of The Fearless Organization, a ground-breaking blueprint on creating a fear-free culture. Her work is repeatedly cited by the practitioners we talk to as practical and inspiring. It combines practicality with intellectual rigour.”

The new Thinkers50 ranking is the most diverse and global to date. It features a majority of women for the first time and includes thinkers from more than ten countries (including the US, China, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, the UK, Switzerland, Canada, Belgium and France). The new entrants to the ranking are: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic , Chen Jin, Erica Dhawan, Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Hubert Joly, Katy Milkman, Tsedal Neeley, Paul Polman & Andrew Winston, Navi Radjou, Megan Reitz, Laura Morgan Roberts, Sanyin Siang, and Amy Webb.

Thinkers50 Ranking 2021

1. Amy C. Edmondson (3)
2. Rita G. McGrath (5)
3. W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne (1)
4. Alex Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur (4)
5. Roger L. Martin (2)
6. Adam Grant (10)
7. Scott Anthony (9)
8. Whitney Johnson (14)
9. Dan Pink (6)
10. Linda Hill (22)

Others in the top 50 are listed alphabetically: Marshall van Alstyne & Geoff Parker, Sinan Aral, Rachel Botsman, Tiffani Bova, Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Chen Jin, Subir Chowdhury, Dorie Clark, Susan David, Erica Dhawan, Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Francesca Gino, Heidi Grant, Lynda Gratton, Hal Gregersen, Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang, Morten T. Hansen, Herminia Ibarra, Sheena Iyengar, Michael Jacobides, Hubert Joly, Frederic Laloux, Martin Lindstrom, Nilofer Merchant, Erin Meyer, Katy Milkman, Tsedal Neeley, Gianpiero Petriglieri, Paul Polman & Andrew Winston, Navi Radjou, Megan Reitz, Laura Morgan Roberts, Zhang Ruimin, Sanyin Siang, Simon Sinek, Michael Watkins, Amy Webb, Liz Wiseman, Ming Zeng.

Also announced at Thinkers50 2021 were the recipients of the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards, dubbed the “Oscars of Management Thinking”. The award winners included the father of modern marketing, Philip Kotler, Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix), and Hubert Joly (former CEO of BestBuy). Among the Thinkers50 landmarks were the first Australian award winner (Amantha Imber, winner of the Innovation Award), the Trinidadian duo Leon Prieto and Simone Phipps for their work on cooperative advantage, and two Africa-based winners: Louise van Rhyn (Ideas into Practice) and Nankhonde Kasonde-van den Broek (Coaching).

About Thinkers50

Founded in 2001, Thinkers50 identifies, ranks, and shares the very best management ideas globally. Every two years, the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards recognize individual achievement 2 across a range of management categories, and the definitive global ranking of the 50 most influential business thinkers is published. The previous winners are W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne, Roger Martin, Clayton Christensen, CK Prahalad, Michael Porter, and Peter Drucker.

Paradigms that don’t work + 5 upper-level career boosters

by

“There is a direct link between whether you get those stretch assignments and whether you have expertise.”

Building Diversity: Part 3 of 3 

Making meaningful advances in diversity, equity, and inclusion hinges on having an organizational culture that can support strategies to help managers from all walks of life become “stars” who can shine with all 5 of these executive-level qualities:

  1. Competence
  2. Credibility
  3. Confidence
  4. Relationships
  5. Resiliency

According to Dr. Linda Hill, founding partner at Paradox Strategies and head of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School, years of research have made it clear that “what you know is based on what you get to do” and “what you get to do is based on who you know,” which determines your success much more than any other factor, including performance.

Underrepresented groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and especially those in the upper ranks, are hurt by this pattern given they rarely look like or know those in power. Ultimately, they miss out on key stretch assignments or other career boosters and plateau or become deskilled.

How can we prevent those plateaus from happening? First, leaders need to make a fundamental shift in mindset as well as put a specific focus on the development all upper-level managers need to further perfect their readiness for the top ranks.

The mindset shift depends on how an organization’s leaders perceive DEI. An outdated, ineffective paradigm assumes diversity is achieved by assimilation:

  • “We’re all the same.”
  • Hire diverse staff, encourage uniform behavior

But a more realistic and effective paradigm, Dr. Hill says, is one of differentiation:

  • “We celebrate differences.”
  • Match diverse staff to “niche” opportunities and their unique abilities

Especially important are these 5 career boosters that help make upper-level managers ready for the top:

  1. Proactive in addressing potential soft skill deficiencies
  2. Mentoring gives way to effective sponsorship from senior level executives
  3. Maintenance and renewal of heterogeneous network (inside and outside)
  4. Excellent performance record
  5. “Tempered radicals” – These are Individuals who are willing and able to be change agents when necessary to ensure that a company lives up to its values like being inclusive. When they see some behavior or policy that is inconsistent  with that value, they will step up and address the inconsistency even though to do so is risky in that it might cost them in terms of their relationships or career.

Listen in as Dr. Hill explains the “meritocracy myth” during a recent workshop session of Stars Are Made Not Born. (audio 01:32)

Building diversity, equity, and inclusion with Paradox Strategies

Contact us for details.

Dr. Hill is a founding partner at Paradox Strategies and a professor at Harvard Business School, where she chairs the Leadership Initiative. She advises organizations and Fortune 500 companies on how to take a strategic approach to nurturing individual differences to unleash an organization’s full potential

Dr. Linda Hill
Dr. Linda HIll

“If you’re in the minority, one of the things that happens to you is that you become deskilled. You didn’t get to work in those stretch assignments so, frankly, you don’t have the expertise.”

 

“And then when it comes time to decide who should get that promotion, there aren’t any people that look like you who actually do have the expertise, and you become ‘a token.’ “

Stars Are Made Not Born

A DEI initiative from Paradox Strategies featuring Dr. Linda Hill
GET AN INSIDE LOOK

6 mid-level career boosters minority managers typically miss out on

by

“When you become more credible, you get a right to have a stretch assignment. Your network grows. People are attracted to work with you and be with you.” 

Building Diversity: Part 2 of 3 

Most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor indicates that senior management in the U.S. remains overwhelmingly White. Specifically, the bureau reports that 88% of chief executives are White, 4% are Black or African American, 5% are Asian, and 11% are Hispanic or Latino.

Research shows that minorities are typically promoted to middle-upper ranks of leadership later than their majority peers, and many minority managers plateau if they don’t get the opportunities they need to prove themselves fit for the executive level (Source: Thomas and Gabarro).

According to Dr. Linda Hill, founding partner at Paradox Strategies and head of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School, their years of research have revealed 6 career boosters managers need to experience that minorities and underrepresented groups typically miss out on. Each is critical for developing their fitness for upper-level roles:

  1. Opportunities to broaden beyond a narrow specialty
  2. Acquisition of new and more powerful sponsors and mentors
  3. Stellar performance in one or more high-visibility (strategic) assignments
  4. Deepening level of commitment to career and organization
  5. Effective integration of personal and professional identity
  6. More rapid upward mobility

Listen in as Dr. Hill talks about how managers become “stars” during a recent workshop session of Stars Are Made Not Born: The Meritocracy Myth.

Establishing the perception of credibility needed for bigger “stretch assignments” (audio 01:25)

The 3 characteristics of a “stretch assignment” (audio 01:18)

Building diversity, equity, and inclusion with Paradox Strategies

Contact us for details.

Dr. Hill is a founding partner at Paradox Strategies and a professor at Harvard Business School, where she chairs the Leadership Initiative. She advises organizations and Fortune 500 companies on how to take a strategic approach to nurturing individual differences to unleash an organization’s full potential.

Dr. Linda Hill
Dr. Linda HIll

“In an ideal world, when your network grows, if you’re the person who’s in the center of the network, you’re the person who can connect the two sides, the different worlds, different geographies, different products, different services.

 

“The people who have those roles, frankly, are the people who can contribute more to the organization over time, and they tend to develop unique expertise that really lets people understand that maybe they’re ready to move to the next stretch assignment.”

Stars Are Made Not Born

A DEI initiative from Paradox Strategies featuring Dr. Linda Hill
GET AN INSIDE LOOK

6 questions talent management must get right to build diversity at the executive level

by

“None of us are expert at this. It is not easy to work through it. And one of the things that I know is that the answers or the actions you should take really need to be bespoke to your organization.” 

Building Diversity: Part 1 of 3 

To achieve more diversity at the executive level, companies need to provide diversity of opportunity and development among their potential leaders.

Abundant data shows that companies building diversity outperform homogeneous ones. Companies that fail to achieve a diverse and inclusive organization ultimately stifle innovation and underperform.

Many organizations recognize they need to become more diverse and inclusive, yet most believe they have not been effective at increasing diverse representation, particularly at the executive level, which is typically 85% White.

Dr. Linda Hill, founding partner at Paradox Strategies and head of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School, has spent much of her career researching innovation and helping companies unleash their potential. Building diversity, she says, starts with taking a strategic approach to nurturing individual differences.

Here are 6 questions Dr. Hill says leaders in talent management must get right if their organization wants to grow a more diverse field of “stars” fit for promotion:

  1. What are the key “fit” criteria?  Are they changing?  What evidence do you rely on to determine if someone “fits?”
  2. What mindsets/competencies/behaviors are required?  Are they changing?
  3. What evidence do you rely on to determine if someone has potential?
  4. What stretch assignments do people need?
  5. What developmental relationships do people need?
  6. What are you doing to develop the next generation of talent?  How robust is your pipeline?  How diverse is your pipeline?

At the core of minority advancement are transparent talent management systems to ensure that minority populations understand the criteria for advancement, Dr. Hill says.

Listen in as Dr. Hill talks about the challenges of building diversity, equity, and inclusion during a recent workshop session of Stars Are Made Not Born: The Meritocracy Myth.

Introduction: The positive effects and challenges of building diversity  (audio: 02:44)

Finding the perfect fit – a matter of YES and NO (audio: 01:25)

Building diversity, equity, and inclusion with Paradox Strategies

Contact us for details.

Dr. Hill is a founding partner at Paradox Strategies and a professor at Harvard Business School, where she chairs the Leadership Initiative. She advises organizations and Fortune 500 companies on how to take a strategic approach to nurturing individual differences to unleash an organization’s full potential.

Dr. Linda Hill
Dr. Linda HIll

“Now we all know that all are not fit to be leaders; all are not fit to be stars. I will never be a professional basketball player. Having said that, what we also know from lots of research is that more people have more potential than we realize.” 

Stars Are Made Not Born

A DEI initiative from Paradox Strategies featuring Dr. Linda Hill
GET AN INSIDE LOOK

CONTACT US

© Copyright 2016-2024 Paradox Strategies. All Rights Reserved.