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Write for Us: Leadership and Management

Practical management skill-building, not motivational filler. This desk turns down more submissions for tone than for topic.

Reviewed August 2026 · The Insight Journal Editorial Team

Paid placement Sources required House byline

This desk in one box

Covers
Practical management skill-building, not motivational filler.
Written for
First-time managers and the people who promoted them
Cost
Quoted per pitch. No published price list.
Pitch this desk

What the Leadership desk publishes

In short

This desk publishes practical management writing: running a one to one, giving feedback that changes behavior, handling a first promotion, and the structural choices behind a team that works. Inspirational essays and personality-quiz leadership content are declined. Placement is paid and quoted per pitch.

Leadership is the desk most damaged by its own genre. A large share of published leadership writing is encouragement with a list attached, which reads well and changes nothing on Monday.

The pieces that run here describe a situation a manager will actually be in this week, and what to say in it. Specific enough that a reader could use the wording.

We also insist on the structural half of the subject. Span of control, decision rights, and how work is assigned shape behavior more reliably than any style label does.

Who reads it

  • First-time managers and the people who promoted them
  • Operations leaders running supervisors
  • Owners who manage without an HR function

Write for that reader rather than for a search engine. A draft aimed at the person in the job usually clears our checks on the first pass, because specificity and sourcing tend to arrive together.

Ten angles we would commission today

In short

These ten briefs are open right now. Pitch one directly, or use them to calibrate an idea of your own. They share one property worth copying: each names a decision the reader has to make, rather than a topic they might find interesting.

Anything at this altitude gets read properly. Anything below it gets a form reply, which serves neither of us.

  1. 01

    The one to one that is worth having

    Agenda ownership, cadence, and the questions that surface a problem before it becomes an escalation.

  2. 02

    Feedback that changes behavior

    Observation, effect, and request, with real wording. Skip the acronym unless you can defend it.

  3. 03

    The first ninety days as a manager

    What a new manager should stop doing, and the individual-contributor habit hardest to drop.

  4. 04

    Decision rights and delegation

    Who decides, who is consulted, and how ambiguity here produces the meetings everyone complains about.

  5. 05

    Performance conversations

    How to open a conversation about underperformance without either softening it into noise or turning it into a warning.

  6. 06

    Leadership styles, examined critically

    What the style literature does and does not establish, and where the labels stop being useful.

  7. 07

    Managing a team you inherited

    Reading an existing team accurately before changing anything, and the timeline for doing it.

  8. 08

    Remote and hybrid supervision

    What has to be written down when a team is not co-located, and which rituals stop working.

  9. 09

    Retention at the manager level

    The reasons people give when leaving and the ones they do not, and which are inside a manager control.

  10. 10

    Running a meeting that earns its hour

    Decision framing, pre-reads, and the meeting types that should be a document instead.

What this desk declines

In short

Most pitches are declined for category rather than craft. If your idea sits on this list, no amount of rewriting will move it, and we would rather you knew that before spending a day on a draft than after.

A decline usually means the piece belongs on another desk, or on the sponsored path.

  • Motivational essays, quote collections, and personal-brand content
  • Personality typologies presented as validated assessment
  • Leadership lessons drawn from a famous CEO with no verifiable detail
  • Anything about the author coaching practice or program
  • Advice that would create legal exposure if followed literally, including discipline or dismissal guidance offered without qualification

The sourcing bar, in specifics

In short

Every non-obvious claim needs a named publisher, a year, and a link a reader can open. On this desk, the sources below cover most of what a draft will need. A figure that traces back to another blog post is not sourced, and it comes out in editing.
Cite the organization that produced the data, not the article that repeated it. Include the year.
Primary sources accepted on the Leadership & Management desk
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)Occupational data, tenure, turnover, and job openings.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)The reference point for anything touching protected characteristics or complaints.
U.S. Department of LaborWage, hour, and leave rules underlying management practice.
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)Practitioner standards and HR process references.
Peer-reviewed management journalsWhen citing a leadership finding, cite the study, not the article that summarized it.

Our full method is set out in the sourcing standard we publish against.

How placement works on the Leadership desk

In short

Placement here is quoted per pitch against leadership & management scope rather than from a price list, and the link treatment is agreed before you write. The terms, the editing process, and the link policy are the same across all six desks and are set out once, in full, in the submission standard.
Read first The standard a Leadership draft is edited against Rates, link treatment, editing, revisions, and what a finished draft has to contain. Wrong desk? The five desks that are not Leadership What each one commissions, and which reader it is written for. Paid path Sponsored Leadership placement For work that is promotional by design, labeled honestly and reaching the same readers.

Pitch the Leadership desk

Tell us the topic, the angle, and the sources you plan to cite. If it fits leadership & management, we reply with scope, link treatment, and a rate.

Replies within 2 business days

Questions

Writing for the Leadership desk: common questions

Why do you decline so much leadership content?
Because most of it is encouragement rather than instruction. If a piece does not tell a manager what to do in a specific situation, it does not clear the bar here regardless of how well it is written.
Can coaches and consultants write for this desk?
Yes, if the piece teaches rather than advertises. Content built around your program or methodology is sponsored content and runs with a visible label.
Do you publish personality frameworks?
Not as assessment. A framework can be discussed critically, with its evidence base stated plainly, but we do not present typologies as measurement.
Can I write about firing or discipline?
Only with clear qualification that employment law varies by jurisdiction and that a reader should take advice on their own situation. We decline pieces that read as legal instruction.
What length works best here?
Between 1,200 and 1,800 words. Management topics get worse when padded, and a tight piece with real wording in it outperforms a long one.
What should my pitch include?
The situation the piece addresses, the reader it is for, and one line of the actual advice. That last part tells us more than an outline does.