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Steve Boyd has been a principal of MacDonald Boyd and Associates (MBA) since 1976. His work focuses on leadership strategy, executive team development, board governance and decision-making, retreat design and facilitation, leadership coaching, strategic planning, organizational assessment, communication skills training, transition and change management, team building, conflict management and negotiation.Steve was a Fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs from 1982-1984 where his study and research examined public participation in American foreign policy, leadership development and social change. From 1985-1994, he was the founder and President of the Washington Leadership Institute and the Washington Governors' School for Citizen Leadership, a nationally recognized civic leadership program for youth and adults. For seven years he was Executive Director of the World Without War Council of Greater Seattle and prior to that he served as Program Administrator and Director of the Youth Division, City of Seattle's Office of Human Resources.

Steve Boyd

If you develop capabilities to increase manager involvement in learning—by managers consistently coaching employees—micro-coaching will create a practical “stickiness” to all learning.

Micro-Coaching: Maximize Impact and Minimize Time

At a recent ATD Forum ConnectSpark, Dana Koch interviewed Elliot Masie about what we’ve learned and what learning professionals can anticipate going forward.

The Modern Learning Dance: Pivot, Pause, Pivot 

Would you say leaders in your organization tend to be more bold or more cautious when they make important decisions? Not sure? Here are a couple case studies for comparison.Case Study 1:A new CEO took the helm at a technology company and quickly eliminated 70 percent of the product line and announced a partnership with the company’s biggest rival.Case Study 2:At a different technology company, a new CEO was promoted from within, and instead of making bold changes, the CEO began methodically tuning the company culture and carefully analyzing trends and opportunities to refine the directional focus.AnalysisOn the surface, these case studies represent opposite leadership styles, one bold and one cautious. Which would you want to train for in your organization? Is it better to train leaders to measure twice or to teach them that fortune favors the bold?While they appear to be in conflict, caution and courage are both virtues. Knowing the outcomes of each case study adds some useful context.Case Study 1 describes the return of Steve Jobs to Apple in 1997. Jobs made the risky decision to focus on a few products like the iMac and formed a partnership with Microsoft to bring Microsoft Office software to Mac machines. Apple experienced extraordinary growth under Jobs’ second tenure.Case Study 2 describes the promotion of Satya Nadella to the top job at Microsoft. The company was struggling when he took over in 2014 and seemed to be on the fast track to irrelevance. Under his leadership, though, Microsoft has traded places with Apple as the world’s most valuable technology company.Effective Leaders Need Both Caution and CourageThe apparent contrast between courage and caution in these examples reveals a paradox, a tension between two necessary principles that on the surface appear to be contradictory. It’s tempting to dumb down the contrast and talk about different “leadership styles”—one bold, and one cautious, either of which can be effective. This explanation ignores the important reality that every effective leader needs both caution and courage. The traits are like two posts on a suspension bridge pulling in opposite directions. The tension between them is what keeps the bridge in place. For all his caution, Nadela placed big bets on AI, cloud services, mixed reality, and quantum computing. Some of those bets have not yet paid off. For all his boldness, Jobs was intensely data-driven in his obsession with the user experience, not just measuring twice, but hundreds of times and from multiple angles.Both Nadela and Jobs had big aspirational goals that, like a compass, pointed them in the direction they wanted to go. Jobs wanted to fundamentally reshape the way people use technology to create, interact, and find meaning. Nadela has a similar vision for Microsoft that is about empowering every individual and organization to achieve more by leveraging technology. Both leaders also knew they needed short-term achievable goals to measure progress toward those aspirational compass points.The Balance of Courage and CautionTo train effective leaders, you need to help them understand the balance between aspirational goals and achievable goals. They need to understand that all lasting progress is the result of an iterative process of goal setting, barrier analysis, behavior changing, and results evaluation. At Niche Academy, we call this the Progress Cycle.Effective leaders are not born. They are ordinary people who have come to understand and value paradoxes like the tension between courage and caution. Chances are that your team already has people ready to learn and implement the patterns that will move their team forward.

Bold vs. Cautious Leadership—Which Is the Best for Growth?

A ground-breaking study of global leaders is being conducted to examine the challenges facing organizations in selecting and developing global leaders. This webinar will highlight compelling findings from this research based on a global sample of 1,985 leaders, managers, and the training and development professionals who coach and develop them.
Today’s borderless world provides both extraordinary opportunities as well as a rather daunting landscape within which today’s global organizations must operate. Technology, globalization, demographic shifts, and political instability are only a few of the factors that go into the mix of this complex operating scenario. And it is within this mix that today’s training and development professionals must navigate as they look to identify top talent to cultivate and fill their leadership pipeline and so that their organizations are armed with the most highly qualified individuals over the next five to ten years.
Two experts in global leadership will present the latest compelling results from this research and help you to:

Clarify the challenges facing organizations in the global marketplace
Identify what leaders must do to succeed in global roles
Highlight how training and development professionals identify and develop successful global leaders 

The research study is being conducted by Leadership Research Institute and the American Management Association with support from ASTD, The Ken Blanchard Companies, FranklinCovey, and Marshall Goldsmith.

Leadership Development in a Worldwide Market

Steven P. Dinkin has served as president of the National Conflict Resolution Center (NCRC) since 2003. He has co-authored two books on conflict resolution: The Exchange, A Bold and Proven Approach to Resolving Workplace Conflict and The Exchange Strategy for Managing Conflict in Health Care. He is currently working on a third book regarding bystander communications.

Steven P. Dinkin 

A growing body of research suggests that the concept of “small wins” in the workplace is a key element of successful employee motivation.

Want to Fire Up Your Team?

HR professionals are talking a lot about "hiring for fit." But is there a flip side to this commonly held wisdom?

Hiring for Fit vs. Hiring for Inclusion: Which Route Should You Take?

Olga Gavrilova is a talent development leader and educator with more than 15 years of experience in both academic and corporate settings. During her career, Olga has worked with a wide variety of business verticals, including IT, insurance, hospitality, oil and gas, nonprofits, and education bodies ranging from universities to governmental agencies promoting lifelong learning and employability.

Since 2016, she has been based in the East Asia and Pacific region, where she drives talent development in the offices of NYSE-listed and S&P 500 organizations across the entire region. She actively collaborates and contributes to educational initiatives in India, Kazakhstan, the Middle East, and Europe. She has experience designing, customizing, and delivering learning solutions for mid and senior leaders, HR professionals, business owners, and academic institutions. Olga has delivered on topics such as ESG and sustainability, agile project and program management, DEI, different aspects of emotional intelligence for business leaders and HR professionals, negotiation, and consulting. She has also coached high-potential women leaders and women returning to work after long career breaks.

In addition, she has developed and delivered many unique regional projects supporting cultural adaptation for relocated staff (Relocation Ambassadors group, Buddy programs), faster and hands-on AI adoption (AI Advising Group), onboarding and adaptation of newcomers to the organization (Lightning Talks Series), and award-winning intensive engineering and data science boot camps in cooperation with external vendors and SMEs (Emerging Engineers Academies, JS and Data Science Academies).

During her time in the East Asia and Pacific region, Olga has partnered with many regional institutions, from schools to universities, promoting STEM education for kids and teenagers, advising on career decisions for students, and providing reskilling for mid-career changers.

The talent development strategy and programs Olga supported in the region won multiple local awards from SkillsFuture Singapore, Employee Experience Awards, and Stevie Awards, among others.

Outside of work, Olga promotes and practices quality de-noise and digital detox practices, such as nature bathing, traveling to new destinations, and gardening. 


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