Comedian Drew Carey, part owner of the Seattle Sounders soccer team, has a novel idea: Let fans vote on management. He got the idea from Spanish teams whose fans vote on key members of the club’s front office.

Within a week of Kevin Johnson becoming CEO of Juniper Networks in 2008, he met with all his direct reports in a group. He told them he wanted to listen and learn, so he asked four questions.

As a leader you can tell people what to do. But barking orders rarely endears you to your team. A better way to instruct and inspire staffers is to share personal anecdotes.

Top executives often take up hobbies such as golf and sailing. But Mark Hellerstein is probably the only CEO who is also a professional ventriloquist. Hellerstein served as chief executive of St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. from 1995 to 2007. During that time, the oil and gas firm—now known as SM Energy Co.—grew from an $80 million private company to a $2.5 billion public company.

Many leaders pride themselves on their ability to listen. But to listen well, you must do more than concentrate on what you hear: You need to ask smart questions. Follow these steps to ex­­tract more information through probing.

If you dread administering performance reviews, you may sugarcoat your appraisals by telling employees they’re doing “great” when they need to improve. Dishing out undeserved praise can backfire. By giving honest, thorough appraisals, you can avoid these traps.

Run down this list to see if your behavior aligns with the “high influence style” of leadership.

You don’t win, as a coach, more men’s college basketball games than any other without being a phenomenal leader. Duke University's Mike Krzyzewski is a leader who happens to coach basketball. He knows that his efforts and successes are about others, not about himself ...

Leaders of large organizations cannot meet regularly with every employee to reinforce important points. So a CEO needs to take creative steps to communicate to a far-flung workforce. At Chipotle, the burrito chain, founder and co-CEO Steve Ells sends messages through multiple channels.