The keys to inspired leadership

Bill Gates writes about leadership lessons he has learned. (Stefan Postles/Getty Images)

Leadership. What is it, exactly? What are the hallmarks of leadership? And why does it seem so hard to find good leaders?

The topic was at top of mind for a number of LinkedIn Influencers this week. Among them: JP Morgan Chase & Co chief executive Jamie Dimon — who recently succeeded in keeping his CEO and chairman title at the bank, Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates, Yahoo! Inc product leader, Anand Chandrasekaran and Johns Hopkins Medicine International CEO Steven Thomson.

JPMorgan Chase & Co's Jamie Dimon. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Each brought a different perspective to leadership, including highlighting characteristics of good leaders, passing on lessons learned from volunteer work and sharing insights from one of the world’s most famous investors.
A look at leadership, from people who’ve been there and done it.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co
“Leadership is an honor, a privilege and a deep obligation. When leaders make mistakes, a lot of people can get hurt. Being true to oneself and avoiding self-deception are as important to a leader as having people to turn to for thoughtful, unbiased advice,” Dimon writes in his Influencer post on the hallmarks of a good leader. “I believe social intelligence and ‘emotional quotient,’ or EQ, matter in management. EQ can include empathy, clarity of thought, compassion and strength of character.”
Other traits upon which Dimon expounds: discipline; high standards; the ability to face facts (even when they aren’t pretty); openness; building a setup for success; morale-building; loyalty; meritocracy and teamwork; fair treatment; and humility.
Then there’s what Dimon calls the “grey area of leadership” that are open to interpretation.
“This grey area contributes to the complexity of the challenges that leaders — and those who govern them — face.” Among them: motivators, compensation and performance.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Gates, in his inaugural Influencer post, writes about what he has learned from famous investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Gates writes that Buffett’s “brilliant way of looking at the world” doesn’t just apply to building a business.
“It’s not just about investing. [Buffett] has a whole framework for business thinking that is very powerful. He says a shareholder has to act as if he owns the entire business, looking at the future profit stream and deciding what it’s worth.”
“Use your platform. He’s been willing to speak frankly and criticize things like stock options and financial derivatives [in his company newsletter]. He’s not afraid to take positions, like his stand on raising taxes on the rich, that run counter to his self-interest.”
“Know how valuable your time is. There are only 24 hours in everyone’s day. Warren has a keen sense of this. He doesn’t let his calendar get filled up with useless meetings. On the other hand, he’s very generous with his time for the people he trusts. He gives his close advisers at Berkshire his phone number, and they can just call him up and he’ll answer the phone.”
Anand Chandrasekaran, product leader at Yahoo
Chandrasekaran, who leads Yahoo’s global search business, writes on the leadership lessons he has learned from volunteering around the world, concluding that “our best work comes when purpose, passion and profit are aligned. However, experiencing moments when you can feel them coming together are few and far between.”
Lessons include:
“Playing for the long term. One of the first things I learned was that any problem you're  tackling … has been around for decades, if not centuries. When one is tackling such a long-term challenge by definition one develops a long term mindset.”
“Assuming positive intent. We've all been there — speculating what someone's intent is. Partnerships between volunteer groups are uniquely driven by deep trust and shared purpose. It's incredible how things get simplified when one starts by assuming positive intent by all the other parties in any interaction.”
“Problems without passports. Very few things (especially challenges) that come along can be solved by one person. Collaboration is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
Other influencers who weighed in on leadership this week:
Steven Thomson: CEO of Baltimore, Maryland-based Johns Hopkins Medicine International. Thomson offered solutions to the traps which trip up many promising leaders.
Michael Moritz: Chairman of California-based venture capital firm Sequoia Capital wrote on the delicacy of conveying the truth.
Influencers is an occasional column that takes a peek at what LinkedIn Influencers, thought leaders in their fields, have to say about topics or events in the news.

Justin Timberlake: The secret of his success

(Photo: Getty Images)

Teen pop idols tend to disappear when their fans grow up. So how did child star Justin Timberlake become one of America’s biggest stars? Greg Kot explains.

Justin Timberlake and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis lead this year's MTV Video Music Award nominations with six each.

Justin Timberlake is only 32, but his CV is already stuffed with Grammy Awards, critical accolades and multi-platinum albums. His recent one, 20/20, his first studio release since 2006, is the year’s biggest-seller so far in the US, with a sequel on the way in September. In between, he’s squeezing in a few stadium concerts with his pal Jay-Z, as one half of Legends of the Summer, which is shaping up to be  one of the summer’s biggest tours.
But his most impressive accomplishment just might be that he hasn’t turned into Shaun Cassidy, Tiffany or any number of former teen idols. Nobody thinks of him as the former singer in N’Sync anymore, let alone a Mouseketeer.
For what might’ve been, check out 19-year-old Justin Bieber. “I’m an artist and I should be taken seriously,” Bieber complained at the Billboard Music Awards a few weeks ago. This from a guy who tried to smuggle his pet monkey across international borders. He appears to have entered the temper-tantrum stage of his kiddie-pop years, prompting many pundits to question whether he’ll have any kind of career left once he hits adulthood.
Such is the way for most pop idols who find fame around the same time they reach puberty. The usual lifespan for most is about three or four years, and then they become punch lines or has-beens. Each decade had a few who burned holes in the hearts of adolescents and then burned out when their audience grew up. The ‘60s packaged the Monkees and the Cowsills; the ‘70s served up Bobby Sherman, the Partridge Family andthe Osmonds,; for a brief time in the ‘80s, it was all about Debbie Gibson, Tiffany and New Kids on the Block; the ‘90s produced Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync; and the 2000s brought the flourishing of the Disney/Nickelodeon franchise and the emergence of Lindsey Lohan, Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus.
A cunning plan?
So how did Timberlake avoid tumbling from pin-up to afterthought like so many others before him? He had a sense of humour, for starters. Even as N’Sync was selling millions of albums to giddy pre-teens, he appeared to be in on the joke. A few seconds say it all in the video for one of the group’s biggest hits, Bye Bye Bye: the music stops and a curly-haired Timberlake lifts his head, smiles slyly, laughs and darts off. Who really knows if that’s Timberlake’s little take-the-money-and-run inside joke, but it sure plays that way in retrospect.
The turning point arrived with his 2002 solo debut, Justified. The energetic and surprisingly sophisticated mix of dance tunes and ballads, pop and soul, instantly cast him as an adult, and earned comparisons to the Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson, another teen star who grew into a substantial artist (at least until it all started to go horribly wrong in the ‘90s). Timberlake took his notoriety to a whole new level when he accidentally-but-not-really ripped Janet Jackson’s costume during the 2004 Super Bowl half-time, which gave the world the indelible phrase ‘wardrobe malfunction’. Even that bit of naughtiness couldn’t tarnish the singer’s likeability rating, though. He dutifully apologised at the Grammys a few weeks later and went home with two awards.
Hollywood beckons
A series of films followed and then a second solo album, FutureSex/LoveSounds, another leap in ambition with its suite-like songs. On tour, he presented himself not just as a piece of gyrating eye candy, but as a serious musician and band leader, a lithe, loose-limbed singer-songwriter fronting a 12-piece band.
Yet as his Hollywood profile ramped up, questions arose about whether Timberlake would ever make another album. The carefully orchestrated campaign to introduce 20/20 was his response. The music pushes even further than its predecessor, with seven songs clocking in at seven-plus minutes.
The album’s genre-busting sprawl is another example of Timberlake’s survival instinct. He’s surveyed the musical landscape and realises he can’t compete with Nicki Minaj or Katy Perry for sheer pop pizzazz. So instead he’s moved into a hybrid area, gliding through a series of Frank Ocean-like moves in the way he’s mixing and matching styles. It’s a bit of a stretch – too often 20/20 sounds unfocused, emotionally remote, a series of unnecessarily busy arrangements that convey ambition more than heart.
As resilient as Timberlake has been, he still has a way to go as an artist. When he appeared at the Grammys this year, wearing a tuxedo in a sepia-toned Cotton Club-style big-band setting, he looked fantastic, a suave retro-soul man for the 21st Century. But as this former teen idol surely realises, making sophisticated music for adults requires more of an investment than just looking good. Somehow, one senses Timberlake will figure it out. He usually does.
Greg Kot is the music critic at the Chicago Tribune. His work can be found here:
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Nelson Mandela biopic to have world premiere at Toronto

 

Elba is one of several actors to have portrayed the former South African president on screen

The film version of Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom is to have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

Luther's Idris Elba plays Mandela in the biopic, one of a host of titles confirmed by organisers on Tuesday.
Others include The Fifth Estate, a film about Julian Assange starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the WikiLeaks founder.
The Railway Man starring Colin Firth and August: Osage Country with Meryl Streep will also debut at the event.
The 38th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) runs from 5 to 15 September.
Other films that will screen for the first time include 12 Years a Slave, the new film from Shame director Steve McQueen, and The Invisible Woman, actor Ralph Fiennes's drama about Charles Dickens.
Additional British film-makers in the line-up include Stephen Frears, Roger Michell and The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade, who will use the festival to launch his comedy The Double.
Titles already tipped for awards success include Dallas Buyers Club, in which Matthew McConaughey plays a Texan who takes on the medical establishment after being diagnosed HIV positive.

 

 Rush, Ron Howard's film about racing driver James Hunt, will have its international premiere

The festival will close with Life of Crime, an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch, featuring characters previously seen in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.
Piers Handling, chief executive officer and director of TIFF, said the first round of films "offers a taste of the powerhouse line-up at this year's festival".
"These are the works that will have everyone talking because they capture the mood of the times."
Toronto is now regarded as a crucial launchpad for films hoping to impress voters and juries during the annual film awards season.
Silver Linings Playbook won its top prize last year, the first of many David O'Russell's romantic comedy amassed in the run-up to February's Oscar ceremony.
Some are already tipping Elba for accolades for his work in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, which tells of the anti-apartheid campaigner's rural upbringing and how he coped with being in prison for 27 years.
Naomie Harris plays Winnie Mandela in Justin Chadwick's film, which is scheduled to have its UK release next January.

Rolls-Royce at the drive-in

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In a reciprocal gesture 60 years in the making, the British have sent back across the Atlantic the 563-horsepower, 6.6-litre, twin-turbo Rolls-Royce Ghost Extended Wheelbase. It similarly pairs incomparable luxury with improbable speed, thanks to its combination of leather, wood and V12 muscle.
In an age when darty handling has displaced cushiness as the desired luxury-car behaviour, the term “boat” rings as an automotive pejorative, chasing most carmakers away from nautical analogies. But Rolls-Royce continues to embrace the land-yacht persona, touting proportions that intentionally recall a vintage mahogany Chris-Craft.
But how to introduce English royalty to workaday America?
As our colleagues at BBC Culture recently observed, there are few more traditionally American automotive activities than going to the drive-in to catch a double feature. Drive-ins were once commonplace, but today they belong to a specialised realm of nostalgia-inducing entertainments, not unlike vinyl records (and manual transmissions). Though every US city contained them a half-century ago, only the hardy few remain.

It is considered poor form in rural Virginia to run over speaker posts in your Rolls-Royce.

Among these is the Family Drive-In Theatre in Stephens City, Virginia, about a 90-minute drive from Washington DC, nestled in Virginia’s historic Shenandoah Valley. This particular drive-in dates from 1956, and the hospitality and low prices could convince visitors that little time has passed since.
Parking spaces that often accommodate pickup trucks and Chevy Suburbans were just the place to moor the Ghost for the evening. The Rolls stretches 219.3in, a scant 3in shorter than those Suburbans. While such proportions are not problematic at the drive-in lot, a pilot should take care not to mow down the speaker posts sprouting across the grounds. (It is considered poor form in rural Virginia to run over speaker posts in your Rolls-Royce.)
The view from the Ghost's front seat is splendid, unsurprisingly. In many cars back-seat viewing would be made difficult by the roof’s intrusion, but the Ghost's sofa-like rear seats position occupants low enough for a clear view of the screen through the windshield. Traditionalists mount a classic drive-in metal speaker to the window for audio. But with the Ghost’s 600-watt, 16-speaker sound system, tuning in Hollywood surround sound via the car’s radio dial seemed the more suitable choice.
Granted, few sounds emanating from those speakers could compete for sheer drama with the Ghost’s V12, which even sounds expensive on start-up, sparking to life with the high-speed whirr of a jet engine. On the trip west to the drive-in, flattening the accelerator made the Ghost assume the nose-high attitude of a powerboat climbing up on plane. In such moments the Rolls’ Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament sooner resembled a ship prow’s figurehead.
Of course, the hydraulically smooth V12 never betrayed any effort, despite its tremendous output and hefty load. The Ghost’s eight-speed automatic transmission also faded into the background, with the only discernable shifts coming when changing from forward to reverse gear.
The Ghost is a luxury liner and never fails to remind occupants of this truth. At highway speed the car shoulders aside the air with its bluff front, but passengers never notice, as no wind noise penetrates the Ghost’s vault-like sheet metal, and the car’s air shocks erase any bumps not flattened by the optional 20in tires.
The English White worn by this tester was complimented by Seashell-hued leather upholstery. The white-on-white layout underscored the Ghost’s extravagance; who could live with such a colour scheme? Children with a modicum of dirt on their jeans would be forbidden passage. Even better, only passengers in all-white ensembles would be allowed inside.
Maybe this was the Ghost’s arch way of conveying that it truly was intended for the yachting set. But as the Hollywood studios know, it sure is fun to play make-believe.
Vital stats: 2013 Rolls-Royce Ghost Extended Wheelbase

• Base price: $296,000
• As tested: $356,290
• EPA fuel economy: 13mpg city, 21mpg highway
• Powertrain: 6.6-litre, 563hp, twin-turbocharged V12 engine, eight-speed automatic transmission
• Standard equipment: Electronically retracting Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament, 600w audio system, GPS navigation, power-closing rear doors, umbrellas built into front doors, leather and wood interior appointments
• Major options: 20in forged aluminium wheels, front and rear ventilated massage seats, lambs’ wool floor mats, head-up display, night vision, panoramic sunroof

P-Square draws massive crowd in Congo, gives great performance

P-Square draws massive crowd in Congo, gives great performance

P-Square performed in Congo Brazzaville last night Saturday July 13th to thousands of fans who showed up at Brazzaville Stadium for the Fespa Pan African Music Concert. Heard they gave a great performance.

singer Praiz wins his first music award

Singer Praiz wins his first music award

Praiz this evening won his first ever music award at the City People Awards for Best Rhythm and Blues Singer of the Year. Finally! Congrats to him!

Rihanna hooking up with Drake?

Rihanna hooking up with Drake?

Now that Rihanna and Chris Brown are done for good, new reports claim she's back with someone she dated briefly in the past... Drake. Below is how MediaTakeOut is reporting it...

MediaTakeOut.com confirmed this morning that Rihanna is back together with Drake. This is not a rumor - it is fact - confirmed by a person on Rihanna's tour. According to a snitch Drake has been spending time with Rihanna - flying around the world to secretly meet her.

Tells the insider, "Rihanna and Drake have history, and they really want to make this into a real relationship - so they're keeping this quiet. I think Rihanna's in love."

Read another report after the cut...




From The Daily Mail

Away from the stage Rihanna is said to have rekindled her romance with Canadian rapper Drake following her break-up with Chris Brown.

‘When she was dating Chris, he banned her from talking to Drake,’ a source told Look magazine.

‘She really missed him that time – yes, they went out years before but he was also a good friend to her – so calling him was one of the first things she did when she realised she was over Chris.