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The purpose of this research paper is to explore soft leadership to achieve organizational excellence and effectiveness.

The paper elaborates with 11 Cs that constitute soft leadership – character, charisma, conscience, conviction, courage, communication, compassion, commitment, consistency, consideration and contribution. It differentiates between hard and soft leadership.

It concludes that exploring soft leadership helps greatly for the leaders to satisfy all stakeholders to achieve organizational excellence and effectiveness.

It unfolds that soft leadership can work for any company and country regardless of its size or budget.

The social implications of this research suggests that stakeholders of both profits and nonprofits must reap the rewards of soft leadership.

It emphasizes that soft leadership creates a resourceful environment to enhance employee engagement to achieve organizational productivity and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a new leadership style – “soft leadership” – which is needed in a interconnected, global, and technocratic world.

This paper is a combination of research into a new leadership style with a question and answer session during an International Leadership Association (ILA) webinar.

The paper discovers how the soft leaders adopt tools such as influence, persuasion, negotiation, appreciation, motivation, and collaboration for the collective good. It explains how soft leadership is different from other leadership styles. It describes the significance of soft leadership and differentiates between soft and hard leadership through examples. It substantiates with Dave Ulrich's Leadership Code. It provides the questions posed by participants during the webinar organized by International Leadership Association (ILA) with answers. It calls upon readers to consider how leadership insights acquired from this manuscript may be applied individually and organizationally to make a difference in the lives of others.

The 11 C's that collectively constitute soft leadership is a unique concept. Globally renowned management guru, Dave Ulrich mapped 11 C's into a leadership code on the author's request which added value to this new concept. Participation of international leadership experts and their questions during the ILA webinar with the author's spontaneous answers further enriched this concept.

The purpose of this paper is to debunk myths about soft leadership.

The paper distinguishes soft leadership from other leadership styles.

It calls for companies exploring this new leadership perspective to achieve organizational excellence and effectiveness; and countries to achieve peace and prosperity.

This new leadership perspective can be adopted by leaders for companies and countries.

The social implications of this research suggests that leaders can improve employees’ performance and productivity by treating them as partners.

It defines and explains soft leadership with four OB models. It unfolds that it is the age of partnership, not followership. It unveils that employees prefer to work in an egalitarian set up. They appreciate leaders with an integrative, participative, collaborative, and relationship-oriented leadership mindset.

This paper aims to highlight the importance of soft skills for leadership and offers recommendations for soft skill development training for the next generation of leaders.

An integrated review of current research literature was conducted on management, leadership and soft skills to develop recommendations for integrating the development of soft skills in leadership development training protocol.

A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for soft skills development or measurement. Each soft skill is defined differently and should be assessed based on different behavioral actions. Progress in this area of measurement development will make a great impact on the use of soft skills. The development of assessment tools for the different soft skills across professional disciplines is assumed to enhance other aspects of transformational leadership such as coaching and mentoring.

Current strategies for the assessment and measurement of soft skills present an obstacle for including these skills in current leadership training models.

The paper includes implications for the development of soft skills for the next generation of leaders and offers recommendations for integrating the development of soft skills in leadership training programs.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how soft skills can be measured and assessed. This is important given that specific skills vary across professional disciplines and organizational contexts.

The purpose of this article is to provide an interview with Professor M.S. Rao.

The interview is conducted by an independent interviewer.

Professor M.S. Rao is a leadership development practitioner with over 30 years' experience. He has written 16 books, including Secrets of Your Leadership Success – The 11 Indispensable E's of a Leader, and Smart Leadership: Lessons for Leaders. In his book Soft Leadership: Make Others Feel More Important, Professor Rao advances his model for soft leadership, blending characteristics of soft skills training with traditional leadership theory. This approach is endorsed by management guru David Ulrich, who provided the foreword for the book. Professor Rao also maintains two popular blogs, http://profmsr.blogspot.com (Where Knowledge is Wealth) and http://professormsraoguru.blogspot.com (Knowledge Grows When Shared).

The paper provides useful information from a leading figure regarding soft leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the results from the appreciative inquiry (AI)-inspired interviews to explore the underlying values held by top managers and to identify soft aspects of leadership.

Top managers were interviewed as a part of a research project with the aim to support the development of value-based leadership that integrates company values, organizational culture, customer needs and sustainable development. A structured interview guide, inspired by AI, was developed and used to pinpoint their motivation and vision of a good organization to understand the values that the managers had and to identify soft aspects of leadership. The interviews were analyzed in workshops with the whole research team and structured and visualized through affinity diagrams.

The results showed the underlying values held by top managers and identified soft aspects of leadership.

The presented interview guide can be used to identify the top managers’ underlying values, and the presented results from the interviews can be used to inspire other managers and leaders to develop their leadership in their striving of good leadership and effective organizations.

The paper explains how to apply an AI-inspired interview guide in finding out value-based leadership and soft aspects of leadership for enhancing organizational culture.

The purpose is to examine the role of TQM in a strategy‐TQM‐performance model. More specifically, it seeks to investigate whether TQM has a driving role in the formation of strategy or has a mediating effect in the strategy‐performance relationship.

A survey was used to collect data. The instrument was assessed for its validity and reliability. Structural equation modelling was employed.

TQM influences strategy formulation process and it is a dynamic resource that contributes to the achievement of a sustainable competitive advantage. In addition, soft TQM has a higher impact than hard TQM on competitive strategy formulation and on performance.

The model developed and tested can be enriching to the TQM, strategic management, and quality management fields. Future research is recommended to use methods other than self‐report questionnaires and to account for certain behavioral factors that can influence the relationships investigated in the study.

The findings provide insights to the need to integrate TQM with the various stages of the strategy formulation process, with an emphasis on the soft elements of TQM, including customer satisfaction, management and leadership, and employee relations.

Despite the remarkable contributions of existent research, there is a lack of substantive research that examines the relationship between the hard and soft components of TQM on one hand and the two types of competitive strategy – differentiation and cost leadership – on the other. This gap is filled by this study.

Although natural science disciplines significantly contribute to sustainable development goals (SDGs), little research attends to how higher education institutions (HEIs) influence the development of leadership skills needed among sustainability leaders. This paper aims to examine the leadership development experiences of natural scientists at the forefront of disciplines associated with SDGs to identify barriers and drivers to sustainability leadership skills development at HEIs.

A mixed-methods comparative study was used, integrating qualitative interviews among 21 natural scientists and 11 non-scientists, two focus group discussions and a cross-sectional survey of 221 leaders. The theory of planned behaviour was used as the analytical frame to identify themes emerging from the data as facilitators or barriers to leadership development.

There was a statistically significant difference between scientists and non-scientists in the attitudes, beliefs and perceptions that drive participation in leadership development activities. Attitudes belittling leadership skills, limited integration of leadership skills in medical, engineering and agricultural curricula and a social identity of superior learning efficacy impede natural scientist students at HEIs from engaging in leadership development.

Further research using a larger sample could assess the prevalence and effect of the drivers and barriers on sustainability leadership effectiveness.

Beyond integrating leadership skills in HEIs curricula, the development of sustainability leadership requires deliberate elevation of the value of leadership skills within natural sciences, specifically by addressing attitudes, beliefs and workload challenges that impede scientists’ engagement in co-curricular activities.

Integrating multiple disciplines provides generalised insights into the context of leadership development among natural scientists at HEIs. This study identifies specific drivers and barriers affecting leadership development at HEIs in a developing country setting.

This paper aims to contribute to the research on the use of reflection in the work environment, highlighting its use in the development of interpersonal skills. This study presents procedures for promoting critical reflection using critical incidents, dialogue and reflective diaries, which can be a reference for researchers, managers, consultants and corporate educators.

This research was guided by an interpretative qualitative approach that is suitable for the study of critical reflection. The authors chose the method of action research because of its interactionist and interventionist character, which allows for the evaluation of the leadership soft skills development experience.

A leadership soft skills development program based on the concept of critical reflection in the work context leads to leaders having potential to promote changes in management practices and enhancing behavior, and the study points out the conditions necessary for success in instituting the desired changes and transformation.

The proposed developmental model, based on reflective conversations of critical incidents, dialogue and reflective diaries, stimulates critical reflection. This can be applied by other actors who are interested in promoting assessment and the development of soft skills.

There are few studies that discuss critical reflection in the corporate environment. In particular, few present models or tools that foster a reflective view of one’s assumptions, beliefs and values. This research not only advances this proposal by introducing considerations from practical experience as developed through action research, but it also signals the high potential of the study’s approach to promoting the development of soft skills.