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Leadership

A Very Un-American Response to the Murder of Brian Thompson

Disturbingly, a vocal fringe has cheered the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, write Yale SOM leadership expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Steven Tian, but most Americans admire business leaders and see them as a stabilizing force.

Police at the site of the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on December 04, 2024.
  • Do leaders need to be authentic?

    Roger Brown is the president of the Berklee College of Music. He previously cofounded Bright Horizons, a childcare provider that grew into a billion-dollar, publicly traded company, and ran relief operations in Asia and Africa. He talks about lessons he’s learned from these leadership experiences—including the importance of authenticity and the value of a little music.

  • What kind of leaders do we need now?

    Rosabeth M. Kanter discusses her vision of the advanced leadership needed to address the unique challenges of the complex global environment of the 21st century.

  • What Can You Learn from Machiavelli?

    “It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong.” Advice like this, offered by Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, made its author’s name synonymous with the ruthless use of power. But Robert Harrison suggests you should be careful before looking for leadership lessons in The Prince.

    Niccolò Machiavelli
  • What do leaders need to understand about diversity?

    In globalized, multicultural organizations, leaders need to learn to create value out of diversity.

  • Can you find leadership in the numbers?

    Cade Massey and a former student, Rufus Peabody, developed a new way to calculate power rankings for NFL teams. Massey discusses the importance of clean, bias-free statistical analysis, and considers how a study of leadership in athletics might be applied to the business world.

  • Who needs leaders?

    Decisions made by those at the top of major companies, nonprofits, and government organizations can affect millions of lives. Yale’s president and SOM’s current and future deans discuss how business schools can train leaders with the long-term perspective and sense of integrity to create durable value in their organizations.

    A conductor with an orchestra
  • Are leaders one size fits all?

    Should you take charge? Should you work to build consensus? Victor Vroom argues that effective leaders are sensitive to the nuances of their organizations, cultural environments, and short- and long-term objectives.

  • Are CEOs today's heroes?

    All cultures and all eras have their heroes—individuals who set out on a quest and overcome great adversity to attain a glorious end. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld suggests that CEOs today are living out this age-old narrative. He explains why society is looking for its heroes in the corner office.

  • Do we listen to opinion leaders?

    Are there leaders in everyday life? A long body of literature argues that a small number of individuals have an outsize influence on what the rest of us buy, wear, and consume. But marketing professionals and scholars have been debating how to make use of these opinion leaders.

  • How do you lead when lives are on the line?

    Combat leadership involves making countless decisions, with limited information, shifting variables, and extreme time constraints. Colonel Rich Morales ’99 and soldiers from his battalion describe their 15-month deployment in Iraq.