"Climbing Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, is something only a few will accomplish," but the journey "can also serve as a guide for leaders and teams to successfully scale their own mountains," writes Steffan Heuer in this Think:Act Magazine coverage of mountaineers who have reached the summit. One climber, Alison Levine, a former Goldman Sachs executive who now teaches at West Point, has used her experience climbing Everest to prepare a "mental packing list" that climbers and business leaders alike can use to inspire people, create cohesive teams, and reach lofty goals.

The list is:

1. Define the big Why to center your purpose and attract people, ideas, and resources.
2. Seek out mentors and coaches.
3. Honestly assess your skills and address deficiencies.
4. Pick your mantra and keep it with you.
5. Assemble a team based on experience, expertise, and ego.
6. Build a network that goes beyond your inner circle.
7. Realize that progress will sometimes mean going backward.
8. Define your red flags to know when to turn around.
9. Don't push the river and waste time and effort.
10. Consider your failures as lessons for the next attempt.

To explore the lessons in greater detail, get the full story here.

As November marked the observance of the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, many leaders felt called to reflect on the power of gratitude in both their personal and professional lives. Skip Prichard, in this blog post, remarks that gratitude in leadership is "more than a courtesy; it's a cornerstone in building resilient, motivated teams." He writes that even a simple "thank you" works wonders in "infusing life" into a workplace because it recognizes "worth, effort, and value." And he adds that "gratitude is the currency of excellence in leadership." To inspire leaders to incorporate gratitude into their daily routine, Prichard offers seven small gratitude habits anyone can use to "foster an atmosphere of appreciation at work."

1. Start Meetings with Thanks. Set a positive tone at the outset "by expressing gratitude for specific  contributions and achievements."
2. Gratitude Journal. Keep a record of employee contributions and share them with your team.
3. Appreciation Board. Create a space in a common area or online where team members can post notes of thanks.
4. Personal Notes. Send personal thank-you notes to team members when they "go the extra mile."
5. Public Acknowledgement. "Use company-wide meetings or newsletters to highlight individual or team successes."
6. Gratitude Roundtable. "Dedicate a few minutes in meetings for team members to share what they are thankful for, whether work-related or personal."
7. Random Acts of Kindness. Encourage random acts of kindness, like "bringing in coffee," or "helping out with a small task."

Get the full story here.

**For more on gratitude, read how ConantLeadership Founder Doug Conant sent 30,000 thank-you notes to transform company culture and performance as CEO of Campbell Soup Company. Then read his classic post from the archives on the ConantLeadership blog, "Lead with Gratitude."

New research covered in this Harvard Business School Working Knowledge piece shows how quickly "collective emotions" can spread throughout a team or organization and offers insights for how to manage the contagion. HBS professor Amit Goldenberg says that "emotions intensify within groups," and "negative emotions" in particular become amplified, leading to bad decision making and low morale. He says the key to managing collective emotions is to think about it like "controlling a fire," meaning that you focus less on "the individual trees," and more on whether the fire is spreading and at what rate. Goldenberg says that leaders can instill a sense of calm and mitigate the spread of negative collective emotions through a process called "reappraisal," which reframes a negative situation and focuses on "the prospect of a positive outcome." There are two kinds of reappraisal:

Repurposing. This "involves reframing the circumstances that are causing the negative emotions in a more positive light, also known as looking at the bright side."

Reconstruing. This "involves broadening the perceived scope of the situation, either by looking back at a longer history, forward at a longer time horizon, or by contextualizing it more broadly."

Research shows both types of reappraisal can be fast-acting: "Unlike other approaches to emotional regulation, such as avoidance, manipulation, or suppression, which are harmful," collective reappraisal "is a good, quick solution to try to help a group face a challenge." Get the full story here.

Could the key to leading a more meaningful life be found in the "hero's journey"—a timeless "storytelling blueprint" which maps a protagonist's path through setbacks, transformation, and ultimately victorious redemption? The authors of this Scientific American piece say that new research shows "people who frame their own life as a hero's journey find more meaning in it," and, "when people start to see their own lives as heroic quests," they report more happiness and resilience. Scientists observe that the "human brain seems hardwired to make sense of the world through stories," so mapping one's own journey to "an overarching narrative" can "help people define who they are and make the experience of life more coherent." The good news is that with the right interventions and prompts, "anyone can frame their life as a hero's journey," and begin "taking small steps towards a more heroic life." The way to start is "by identifying your values and keeping them top of mind," as well as setting goals that resemble "quests," and challenging yourself "to improve your skills." Being more intentional about your beliefs and behaviors helps you to "become a hero in the context of your own life." Get the full story here.

In 2023, most of us are accustomed to reading widely about the unyielding pace of change and the ubiquitous swirl of volatility in the world. But what can we learn from the things that stay the same year after year? In this excerpt from his new book, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, Morgan Housel, an award-winning business writer, shares five timeless truths that have stood the test of time. These five insights can help leaders contextualize the past, present, and future to make wiser decisions.

1. Best story wins. "Whoever tells a story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads is the one who tends to be rewarded."
2. Does not compute. "A lot of things don't make any sense. The numbers don't add up, the explanations are full of holes, and yet they keep happening," because "most decisions aren't made on a spreadsheet," and there will always be "a human element that's hard to quantify and explain."
3. Expectations and reality. "Your happiness depends on your expectations more than anything else. So in a world that tends to get better for most people most of the time, an important life skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. It's also one of the hardest."
4. Calm plants the seeds of crazy. The world exists in a never-ending cycle of calm and chaos. There is a "psychological process that basically goes like this: When an economy is stable, people get optimistic. When people get optimistic, they go into debt. When they go into debt, the economy becomes unstable." Essentially, "stability is destabilizing."
5. When the magic happens. "Necessity is the mother of invention, and a constant truth you see throughout history is that the biggest changes and the most important innovations don’t happen when everyone is happy and things are going well. They tend to occur during, and after, a terrible event."

Dive into each of the timeless truths in greater depth in the full story here.

Much has been written on the detrimental effects of burnout, a process of profound mental depletion due to overwork and lack of rest. But what happens in the opposite scenario, when you're suffering from an idle mind instead of overwhelmed synapses? This New York Times coverage of the book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, by organizational psychologist Adam Grant, suggests leaders should be equally as wary of "bore out," as they are of burnout. Bore out is "the emotional exhaustion we feel when we're chronically under-stimulated." To avoid bore out, you should work to "keep things interesting" by "incorporating play and novelty into your learning routines." Grant says that variety helps people improve faster than rote repetition. And when you feel stuck on a certain task, rather than "hitting your head against the wall," it's better to "take a break and work on something else you enjoy." By focusing your creative energy on something different "you can often discover new confidence and new skills, and that can give you momentum that will help you on the uphill climb." Get the full story here.

          

A recent piece in Forbes, "Working At These Companies May Be Your Stepping Stone to CEO," tracks the Fortune 500 companies that have the highest percentage of ex-employees who are now CEOs. Campbell Soup Company is ranked in the top ten of all CEO-producing companies, continuing a legacy of best-in-class leadership development started by ConantLeadership founder Doug Conant during his tenure as CEO of Campbell Soup Company from 2001-2011.

In this blog resource from ConantLeadership, learn why a top Microsoft executive says that leaders must be courageous in order to innovate in the modern age, and get tips for strengthening your "courage muscle."

In this interview in LEADERS Magazine, Doug Conant shares why a philanthropic spirit is central to his leadership work and reminds other leaders that "it's all about the people."

Did You Miss The BLUEPRINT Leadership Summit?

This fall, ConantLeadership hosted the 6th biannual BLUEPRINT Leadership Summit, a week-long special event bringing together the top leadership minds and luminaries in the business space.

If you missed it, no worries—we've made all the recordings available in our video library, which also includes an archive of every previous summit session including conversations with Brené Brown, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, Bill George, Indra Nooyi, Amy Edmondson, and many more.