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Developing Resilience on the Path to Becoming a CEO

As a Black female CEO, Shellye Archambeau is no stranger to adversity. Now she faces her most critical leadership decision. The software company she leads, MetricStream, is losing customers, hemorrhaging cash, and struggling to make payroll. Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses Archambeau’s leadership style and the importance of developing resilience, particularly when managing through a crisis, in her case, “Shellye Archambeau: Becoming a CEO.” Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

18 Tips Managers Can Use to Lead Through COVID's Rising Waters

by Sean Silverthorne

Here are recent ideas for managing through the pandemic on the topics of people management, strategy, marketing, and organizational design. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Merck CEO Ken Frazier Discusses a COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the Talk

by Staff

VIDEO: Ken Frazier, one of only four Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, speaks with Professor Tsedal Neeley about the search for a coronavirus vaccine, how racism at the workplace holds back America’s progress, and his own upbringing just one generation from slavery. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

It’s Time To Relaunch Your Remote Team

by Tsedal Neeley

Now that we have learned the basics of working from home, managers need to relaunch their teams, advises Tsedal Neeley. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

The New Rules for Remote Work: Pandemic Edition

by Dina Gerdeman

Welcome to the new world of remote work, where employees struggle to learn the rules, managers are unsure how to help them, and organizations get a glimpse into the future. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten

Japan’s largest online retailer, Rakuten, is rapidly expanding into global markets and requiring all employees, where ever they are located, to conduct business in English. Tsedal Neeley discusses the strong connection between language and globalization. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Using Language to Build a Global Company

by Sean Silverthorne

In her new book The Language of Global Success, Tsedal Neeley describes Japanese tech giant Rakuten's five-year effort to adopt English as its lingua franca of business. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

First Look at New Research and Ideas, June 27

Sean Silverthorne

Building Hyperloop One ... Leading Coca-Cola in Turkey ... Improving profit in the mobile-money market.

How to Fix a Broken Global Team

On a Cold Call podcast, professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her recent case study about a manager charged with corralling a hugely diverse, underperforming group and leading it back to success on a global scale. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Sharpening Your Skills: New Insights into Career Development

Re: Multiple Faculty

When is a job promotion a bad thing? Does networking leave an oily substance on your clothing? From our archives we look at career change in the twenty-first century, where researchers are offering fresh insights into our dynamic workplaces.

The ‘Promotion’ That Makes You Feel Bad

by Roberta Holland

Receiving an unexpected professional status bump doesn't always feel good, especially if it wasn't really earned. Companies need to be aware of potential problems with unearned status gain, and be ready with solutions, says Tsedal Neeley. Open for comment; 2 Comment(s) posted.

Why Businesses Need a Language Strategy

Organizations that effectively marry language strategy with their global talent management process gain a leg up on the competition, say Tsedal Neeley and Robert Steven Kaplan. Closed for comment; 3 Comment(s) posted.

Language Wars Divide Global Companies

by Kim Girard

An increasing number of global firms adopt a primary language for business operations—usually English. The problem: The practice can surface dormant hostilities around culture and geography, reports Tsedal Neeley. Closed for comment; 19 Comment(s) posted.

HBS Cases: Overcoming the Stress of ‘Englishnization’

by Kim Girard

CEOs of global companies increasingly mandate that their employees learn English. The problem: these workers can experience a loss of status and believe they aren't as effective in their learned language, says Assistant Professor Tsedal Neeley. Closed for comment; 18 Comment(s) posted.

It’s Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works

by Kim Girard

Managers who inundate their teams with the same messages, over and over, via multiple media, need not feel bad about their persistence. In fact, this redundant communication works to get projects completed quickly, according to new research by Harvard Business School professor Tsedal B. Neeley and Northwestern University's Paul M. Leonardi and Elizabeth M. Gerber. Closed for comment; 65 Comment(s) posted.

Walking Through Jelly: Language Proficiency, Emotions, and Disrupted Collaboration in Global Work

by Tsedal Neeley, Pamela J. Hinds & Catherine Durnell Cramton

As organizations increasingly globalize, individuals are required to collaborate with coworkers across international borders. Many organizations are mandating English as the lingua franca, or common language, regardless of the location of their headquarters, to facilitate collaboration across national and linguistic boundaries. What is the emotional impact of lingua franca adoption on native and nonnative speakers who work closely together and often across national boundaries? This study examines the communication experience for native and nonnative English speakers in an organization that mandates English as the lingua franca for everyday use, and the impact of the lingua franca on collaboration among globally distributed coworkers. HBS professor Tsedal Neeley and coauthors describe in detail how emotions and actions were intertwined and evolved recursively as coworkers attempted to release themselves from unwanted negative emotions and inadvertently acted in ways that transferred negative experiences to their distant coworkers. Their findings have implications for managers who are charged with overseeing internationally distributed projects. Key concepts include: Disparities in English language proficiency were a major challenge for workers in the study. These disparities not only disrupted information sharing, they often triggered a cycle of negative emotional responses that interfered with collaborative relationships on the teams. It is important that workers engage in perspective taking with the goal of understanding the experiences and constraints of their colleagues. Building awareness of the experiences of coworkers with different language backgrounds and proficiencies and empathizing with those experiences can circumvent the negative cycle. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Firsthand Experience and the Subsequent Role of Reflected Knowledge in Cultivating Trust in Global Collaboration

by Mark Mortensen & Tsedal Neeley

How can workers better collaborate across vast geographical distances? Distributed collaboration—in which employees work with, and meaningfully depend on, distant colleagues on a day-to-day basis—allows firms to leverage their intellectual capital, enhance work unit performance, face ever-changing customer demands more fluidly, and gain competitive advantage in a dynamic marketplace. Research over the last decade, however, has provided mounting evidence that while global collaboration is a necessary strategic choice for an ever-increasing number of organizations, socio-demographic, contextual, and temporal barriers engender many interpersonal challenges for distant coworkers and are likely to adversely affect trust between and among workers across sites. In this paper that examines employee relations at a multinational organization, HBS professor Tsedal Beyene and MIT Sloan School of Management professor Mark Mortensen find that firsthand experience in global collaborations is a crucial means of engendering trust from shared knowledge among coworkers. Their findings reinforce the important role of others' perceptions in our own self-definition, and suggest a means of addressing some of the problems that arise in cross-cultural global collaborations. Key concepts include: As organizations increasingly move toward more global designs, with greater intersite communication and mobility, a more highly socialized view of global collaborations is required. Direct knowledge entails knowledge about physical space and facilities, cultural traits of coworkers, work processes, people, and relationships. Reflected knowledge enables people to view how their home office is both presented to and perceived by others. In global collaboration there is the distinct and important role played by reflected knowledge as opposed to direct knowledge. Both types impact trust. While direct knowledge may help to identify barriers to collaboration, there is no guarantee that any particular person can ameliorate them. In contrast, reflected knowledge provides feedback about our own context and related factors that are more likely to lie within our control. While technology may be designed to mirror the other's view, it cannot provide the full breadth of reflected information typically gained while on-site. Managers would be wise to provide for subsequent reciprocal visits to ensure that the hosts of any first meeting gain firsthand experience of their collaborators' sites. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.