In this episode, Dr. Julian Barling joins host Ben Tepper to discuss how the smallest actions can define truly effective leadership. Together they explore why leadership development and training should start before people move into management roles, the impact of leaders’ mental health on performance, and how evidence-based research can help create stronger, more human-centered leaders.
1 min read
Small Things Make Great Leaders with Dr. Julian Barling
Dr. Julian Barling joins host Ben Tepper to discuss how the smallest actions can define truly effective leadership.
Host, Ben Tepper:
"In your opinion, what is the most pressing leadership challenge today, something that organizations have to deal with?"
Guest, Julian Barling:
"...when I ask people in the classes that I teach of executives, how many of you received leadership development...training before you ever got put in your first significant leadership position? I'm going to guess it's between five to 10%. We would never do that in any other important area in the school. We wouldn't do it without chief financial officer. We wouldn't do it with a surgeon...they would always get training beforehand, but somehow with leadership, it's different. And I think if we're going to make the biggest change to the quality of leadership in organizations, it's to recognize that we have to change that entire way of thinking. Leadership development...must take place before we put people into these positions of very significant responsibility...I think only then can we really expect to see the kind of meaningful cultural changes that we rather than the hopeful individual changes that we get to a few people who were lucky enough to be sent on exec development courses. So I would pose that to organizations."
Julian Barling is a Distinguished University Professor and the Borden Chair of Leadership in Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business. He is the author of over 200 articles, book chapters, and books including Brave New Workplace: Designing Productive, Healthy, and Safe Organizations and The Science of Leadership: Lessons from Research for Organizational Leaders. Julian is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Canadian Psychological Association. To learn more, check out his new CBT Workbook for Leaders.
