From food drives to park cleanups to winter-coat donations, there are a lot of ways for us to contribute to our favorite charities. But is our desire to feel like we’re helping undermining our efforts?

This week, we look at new research into the relative effectiveness of cash versus time when considering charitable giving, and we discuss how leaders can encourage their teams to open their wallets in lieu of rolling up their sleeves.

Plus, we look at how to break cycles of misleadership.

Why you should encourage your team to give money over time

When considering where to direct our charitable giving, most of us are interested in getting the most bang for our buck, impact-wise. That often means choosing between making cash donations or volunteering our time to help our favorite causes. But according to research from Kellogg’s Rima Touré-Tillery and a colleague, while people generally prefer to donate their time, the two forms of giving are not equally effective.

The reason people are more likely to donate their time is that they find it makes them feel as if they are giving more of themselves in the process.

“The result,” Touré-Tillery says, “is that people will choose to donate time instead of money, even if it is objectively less effective in the end.”

In their studies, the researchers tested people’s willingness to donate time and money. They found people were more likely to rate their donation as more impactful the closer they felt to it—and they generally felt their time was more valuable than their money.

“People want to make a difference, but their perception of what makes a difference is often biased,” Toure-Tillery says.

One lesson here for business leaders is that, when encouraging your teams to be generous and donate to their favorite charities, it is important to raise awareness about how they can be most helpful—even if their own feelings may need to take a back seat for the greater good.

Read more at Kellogg Insight.

Understanding the architecture of misleadership

What happens when you come across a problematic leadership style?

Philip Kotler, an emeritus professor of marketing at the Kellogg School, and Christian Sarkar recently wrote about “the architecture of misleadership” and the way a pattern of behavior they call “thugpower” gains traction.

The pair describe “thugpower” as occurring “when leadership stops protecting the common good and starts behaving like a protection racket.”

This kind of misleadership commonly presents as “strong leadership” and gradually evolves toward “an environment where legality is selective, truth is negotiable, and public life becomes stage-managed for intimidation.”

Sarkar and Kotler view this leadership behavior as cyclical—and ultimately destructive of institutions and the flow of knowledge in organizations. Their nine-step cycle, which they present in infographic form, illustrates how thugpower develops—from the personalization of authority to the stifling of criticism to demands for loyalty.

This model has implications for any organization where decisions and culture can be compromised by misleadership.

Read more here.