The Insightful Leader

Storytelling is a key business skill. In this month’s Insight in Person podcast, you’ll hear from two Kellogg School professors and a lecturer about the power of storytelling, as well as their tips to become a better storyteller.

The art of storytelling may conjure up images of telling tall tales around a campfire or artsy live lit events. But storytelling is also a key business skill.

Stories let you connect with your audience on an emotional level. Stories help you convey key information in a way that will be remembered and help you persuade your audience to take action. This holds true for both spoken and written stories as well as the stories you want to tell with data. In this month’s Insight in Person podcast, you’ll hear from two Kellogg School professors and a lecturer about the power of storytelling, as well as their tips to become a better storyteller.

Toxic workers can be extremely damaging to your company’s reputation, morale, and bottom line. In this month's Insight In Person podcast, two Kellogg School professors discuss the cost of toxic workers and how to avoid becoming saddled with these problem employees.

Have you ever worked with someone so unpleasant that they turn your office toxic?

These toxic workers might be lying or stealing, or bullies, or just plain incompetent. Regardless, they infect the workplace with their behavior and bring down everyone’s morale. What’s more, new research from Dylan Minor of the Kellogg School shows that they cost companies a significant amount of money. In fact, when measured against superstars, toxic workers are a bigger drain on a bottom line than superstars are a benefit. Minor and Kellogg School professor Brenda Ellington Booth discuss the dangers of toxic workers as well as how to avoid bringing them into your organization.

Read the transcript of this month's Insight in Person podcast.

This month’s Kellogg Insight In Person podcast looks at what to do with bad bosses and how insecure leaders can sabotage productivity.

Of all the annoyances the workday can entail—that too-early alarm, rush hour traffic, late nights stuck at your desk on deadline—having a bad boss can be the most insidious.

“Nobody wants to go to work when they don’t get along with their boss,” says Jon Maner, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School. “It really weighs on people’s everyday life.”

Maner has studied bad bosses, with the goal of understanding their behavior so that it can be curtailed. He has focused in particular on power-hungry bosses who are surprisingly willing to sideline their best performing employees—and promote incompetent team members—in order to keep themselves from being outshined.  (You can read more about Maner’s research into why bad bosses sabotage their teams here.)

“Top performers are really, really valuable members of the group,” Maner says. “These are the people who are often innovating, they’re creating, they’re pushing the organization forward. That can make power-hungry bosses nervous because these are the people who are probably the most able to take over some of their power.”

And, of course, bad bosses are not simply unpleasant for employees. They also can be disastrous for companies.

James Shein, a clinical professor of strategy at the Kellogg School, has seen power-hungry bosses ruin company after company. This is particularly true when a company is failing and the CEO needs to change course to salvage the organization.

“A sitting CEO has a very difficult time making changes because, to them, it often means, ‘I must have done something wrong previously,’” Shein says. This is when a board needs to step in to find a new leader.

“If you don’t push them out they often will just keep driving the company down into the dirt,” he says.

You can hear more from Maner and Shein about what motivates bad bosses and how to keep them in check in this month’s Insight in Person podcast.

This month’s Kellogg Insight In Person podcast looks at how business leaders can incorporate data analytics into their companies—from what the manager's role should be to how big data can be used in product development.

This month, Insight In Person looks at how business leaders can incorporate data analytics into their companies—from what the manager's role should be to how big data can be used in product development.

Florian Zettelmeyer, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School and faculty director of the program on data analytics at Kellogg, explains why every leader needs a "working knowledge of data science," and why it is important to encourage data literacy across organizations.

Eric Anderson, a professor and chair of the marketing department at the Kellogg School,  discusses how companies can use analytics to see who is buying their products—and whether they’re the kind of customer that might be a "harbinger of failure."

This month’s Kellogg Insight In Person podcast looks at how reputation and trust function in commercial transactions and in the sharing economy.

This month’s Kellogg Insight In Person podcast looks at how awareness of the causes of boom and bust cycles in real estate can help investors avoid financial crises.