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If the name Paul O’Neill rings a bell, it’s probably because of the “Apprentice”-like way President George W. Bush fired him as Treasury Secretary. But in the business world, O’Neill is better known for his visionary leadership of Alcoa prior to his brief tenure in the Bush Administration. It’s a story that offers insights for all CEOs who want to cultivate the habits of highly effective organizations.

“Got Empathy?,” last month’s Leap Update, struck a resonant chord with many of you. After hitting “send,” we got dozens of notes from readers who felt motivated to share their own stories of the living linkage between empathy and effectiveness. To build on this theme, we want to feature a nonprofit leader who speaks eloquently about why caring about clients leads so naturally to caring about performance and then offer some reflections on why empathy is just as powerfully helpful for funders as it is for their grantees.

In December’s newsletter, we had the chance to shine a bright spotlight on Hamzah Latif, a youth worker who won a prestigious national award for his deeply personal and highly effective work to steer young men away from the kind of bad choices that led Hamzah to 19 years behind bars. Hamzah’s story was so powerful that

EFCT [Einhorn Family Charitable Trust] has truly been wonderful and the ideal funder and partner. One small idea, however, might be to share their experience and strengths with others in philanthropy in order to inspire other investors to adopt similarly transformational relationships. We love the quotation above, which is just one of the glowing comments…

Today, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) CEO Nancy Roob sent a letter unveiling Blue Meridian Partners, a new funding collaborative that will provide the largest-ever infusions of private capital to high-performance nonprofits serving children and youth.

Hamzah Latif, 44, received a nice holiday gift last week. Along with three other human-services workers, he won a Veronica Award, and its cash prize of $5,000, for his outstanding support of his clients and use of data to ensure his efforts lead to the intended outcomes. His score was the highest ever recorded…

Perhaps it’s cliche to start off a newsletter at this time of year by talking about gratitude. But in a world whose axis is tilted too far toward tragedy right now, we’re more than willing to risk being trite.

Last month, we shared our excitement about research into the “growth mindset” by the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. This month, we want to go a little deeper into the concept and show just how critical it is for inspiring and sustaining the journey toward high performance. Because busy leaders rarely click on links, here’s a quick synopsis of Dweck’s research.

A big, bright bulb just lit up over our heads. We’re convinced that this insight—courtesy of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck—is powerfully relevant for all of us who aspire to high performance.

Some things just can’t be measured. Like the loss we and so many others are feeling following the shockingly out-of-the-blue passing of the psychologist Dr. Ethan Schafer, 39, who contributed an outstanding essay to Leap of Reason. He contributed far more to children with dyslexia and other learning differences…