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First Do Nothing.
Battle the Mischief of Assumptions By Elle Allison-Napolitano, PhD. Copyright© 2015, All Rights Reserved. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how assumptions create a lot of mischief in families, communities, and in teams and organizations. I’ve certainly blundered from my own assumptions often enough that now, whenever I catch myself feeling Absolutely Certain, I […]

Remember How Much You Mean to Others
By Elle Allison-Napolitano, PhD. Copyright© 2015, All Rights Reserved. Although neuroscientists have shown that the limbic system is open and emotions are contagious between people, many leaders fail to act on this knowledge. They go about their workday moving from task to task without noting just how much they influence the people around […]

Introducing a New Book from the ANA: Bounce Forward: The Extraordinary Resilience of Nurse Leadership
Copyright©2015 Elle Allison-Napolitano All Rights Reserved I am pleased to announce my new book available from the American Nurses Association! About This Book: An Extraordinary Form of Resilience This is a book about an extraordinary form of resilience that I call “leadership resilience.” Leadership Resilience is defined as the experience of growing stronger in the face […]

How Women Cultivate Leadership Resilience: Three Practices
Copyright©2015 Elle Allison-Napolitano All Rights Reserved In my previous article, titled “Women Leaders are Strong as Hell,” I wrote about the assets needed for resilient leadership and how those assets are harder to come by for women. In this post I focus on what women can do to cultivate leadership resilience. Leveraging qualities that help everyone grow […]

Women Leaders are Strong as Hell
Copyright©2015 Elle Allison-Napolitano All Rights Reserved. Human Beings possess incredibly reliable adaptive systems that allow them to absorb, process, and bounce back from life’s vicissitudes. Beautifully, resilience is common and it works for all of us. Because I’m interested in the nature of resilience in leadership however, I’m often asked if resilience is different for […]

That Old Harvard MBA Oath, Wisdom, and the Greater Good
By: Elle Allison-Napolitano Copyright©2015, All RIghts Reserved Inspired by a desire to win back public confidence and trust, values that were lost in a mudslide of scandals, swindles, and corporate greed, students from the 2009 graduating class of Harvard Business School wrote the MBA Oath. It opens with this paragraph: As a manager, my purpose […]

Ordinary Resilience and Extraordinary Resilience: Leaders Need Both
Resilience: Beautifully Ordinary Without resilience, the everyday setbacks and surprising derailments of “best laid plans” would eventually make us wonder if we can face another day. According to the American Psychological Association (APA, 2002), resilience is the ability to adapt well to disruptive change, and literally “bounce back” to previous levels of functioning. Here is the […]

Wisdom for the Rest of Us
By Elle Allison Napolitano, October, 2014 Copyright © 2014 All Rights Reserved When people think of wisdom, they often think of the great ones—people who have influenced positive change on a large scale: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa—Oprah. All well and good but not without a downside: comparing ourselves to these incredible individuals puts […]

Hey Leaders! Have You Wired Your Workplace for Happiness?
Copyright © 2014 Elle Allison Napolitano Some people say that “happiness” is too light a topic for leadership. But I unabashedly disagree. The sensation of happiness is like a surge of energy. This joie de vivre has a way of expanding your awareness of the world around you, increasing innovation and a sense that you are being your “true […]

Good Vibrations! Five Ways to Move Others to Action.
Copyright © 2014 Elle Allison Napolitano “Great leaders move us.” (Golman, Boyatzis, and McKee) New Year beginnings are AWESOME. Even if you choose to forego drafting a personal list of “resolutions,” you probably still feel eager to make things happen in your life and leadership work in 2014. Leaders who understand how contagious emotions are, make it their business to […]