When Business and Personal Values Collide "Defining moments" occur when managers face business decisions that trigger conflicts with their personal values. These moments test a person's commitment to those values and ultimately shape their character. But these are also the decisions that can make or break a career. Is there a thoughtful, yet pragmatic, way to make the right choice? Bestselling author Joseph Badaracco shows how to approach these dilemmas using three case examples that, when taken together, represent the escalating responsibilities and personal tests managers face as they advance in their careers. The first story presents a young manager whose choice will affect him only as an individual; the second, a department head whose decision will influence his organization; the third, a corporate executive whose actions will have much larger, societal ramifications. To guide the decision-making process, the book draws on the insights of four philosophers--Aristotle, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and James--who offer distinctly practical, rather than theoretical, advice. Defining Moments is the ultimate manager's guide for resolving issues of conflicting responsibility in practical ways.

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Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself (Vol. 2). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you stay engaged, be productive, and continue to grow throughout your working life.

With insights from leading experts including Susan David, Joseph Badaracco, and Laura Morgan Roberts, this book will inspire you to:

• Identify your purpose and translate it into action
• Make time to learn—and stay relevant in a world of rapid change
• Turn your strengths into superpowers
• Spend more time on the work that matters
• Tackle even your toughest decisions with confidence
• Reduce burnout from collaboration
• Take a stand for yourself and for others

How to Resolve the Really Hard Problems Every manager makes tough calls--it comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the "gray areas"--situations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, you've done the best analysis you can, and you still don't know what to do. But you have to make a decision. You have to choose, commit, act, and live with the consequences and persuade others to follow your lead. Gray areas test your skills as a manager, your judgment, and even your humanity. How do you get these decisions right? In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems. Picking up where conventional tools of analysis leave off, this book provides tools for judgment in the form of five revealing questions. Asking yourself these five questions provides a simple yet profound way to broaden your thinking, sharpen your judgment, and develop a fresh perspective. What makes these questions so valuable is that they have truly stood the test of time--they've guided countless men and women, across many centuries and cultures, to resolve the hardest questions of work, responsibility, and life. You can use the five-question framework on your own or with others on your team to help you cut through complexities, understand critical trade-offs, and develop workable solutions for even the grayest issues.

The hardest tests for leaders challenge their character as much as their skills, and a growing body of research shows that the self-knowledge gained from such tests is critical to leaders' success. In Questions of Character, Joseph L. Badaracco outlines eight fundamental challenges that test a leader's character, and proposes exploring them through the lens of literature. Badaracco argues that serious fiction provides us with memorable characters facing compelling challenges similar to those that confront business leaders. Through rich analysis of the main characters in The Death of a Salesman, The Secret Sharer, The Last Tycoon, and other stories, Badaracco addresses complex issues leaders face, such as the soundness of their vision, their readiness to take on responsibility, the depth of their compassion, and their ability to manage success. Presenting classic leadership dilemmas in a novel and valuable light, Questions of Character helps leaders and aspiring leaders prepare for the opportunities and tests before them.

How to find clarity amid the turbulence of work and life We all wish we had more time to pause and reflect about small decisions and big goals&#8212and everything in between. But since we live and work in a vortex of tasks, meetings, decisions, and responsibilities, we rarely get the chance to step back. In this practical guide, bestselling author and Harvard Business School professor Joseph Badaracco argues that you don't need long periods of solitude and tranquility to reflect well. In fact, reflection can take place in the cracks and crevices of your very busy life, and these moments can help you understand your feelings, look at problems from different perspectives, focus on what really matters, and, ultimately, lead a better life. Building on candid interviews with over a hundred executives and professionals, as well as on the classic works of Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, and Ignatius of Loyola, Badaracco offers simple, customizable principles and ideas for reflection that lend a gentle discipline to an otherwise nebulous process. Concise, smart, and pragmatic, Step Back is the guide you need to make reflection a positive force in your work and life.

Der Autor richtet sich an die vielen flexiblen mittleren Fuhrungskrafte und Unternehmer, die die vielfaltigen Wirklichkeiten einer Entscheidungssituation erkennen und annehmen, um engagiert und effektiv zu bestandigem Erfolg zu kommen. Er liefert eine Fuhrungsvision, die nicht nur abstrakt inspiriert, sondern auch umsetzbar ist. Auf der Basis einer Vier-Jahres-Studie aus Lehre und Beratung mit insgesamt 150 Fallbeispielen. Ein Bestseller in den USA.