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Welcome to My Blog
Leadership check-ins @ 400 words or less—so you can keep moving forward
Take a Leadership Cue From Nature: Series Intro
For the next eight weeks I’ll be doing a blog series called Take a Leadership Cue From Nature, using eight naturally occurring phenomena from the world around to illustrate how—if we’re not careful—we can let circumstances undermine our effectiveness. Maybe that thing we’re sensing may not be so strange after all…
Turn Your Leadership Upside-Down
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs illustrates how we tend to meet our own basic needs first. While this may be generally true, it also illustrates an opportunity for leaders to be more effective—by turning the hierarchy upside down.
Always Forward
Many parts of the human experience compel us to move backward. Fear, guilt, grudges, regret, lack of reconciliation with others (or ourselves) … there are so many reasons to look for ways to circle the wagons or retreat altogether.
Passionate vs. Emotional Leadership
Passion in leadership usually instills urgency, value and meaning into a team’s work effort. But it’s easy to equate passion and its distant cousin, emotion, to disastrous effect.
Movie Snapshot: Burnt
I’m a sucker for movies with a personal transformation story—especially in a leadership context. Not long ago I saw one that fits the bill: Burnt, starring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller.
The Last Word
There’s a natural tendency to believe that if I’m talking, I’m in control—or, more accurately, if I’m not talking I’ve lost control. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You’re Always On
One aspect of leadership that is often overlooked and under-appreciated is that leadership ultimately expresses itself in outward, visible behavior. This is so foundational that, if you overlook it, you won’t be able to move the needle on improving your effectiveness as a leader.
Observations From the Eclipse (without actually looking at the sun, of course)
Events like the recent solar eclipse (and how we respond to them) give us the opportunity to look at ourselves (because, after all, you shouldn’t look at the sun). Here are some things I saw…
Leadership in Parenting: Trust
Being competent in the area of trust just might be the single-most important life skill we can teach our kids. If we want them to grow up to be successful adults, this is one area we should invest our time and energies.
Leadership in Parenting: Compassion
If our kids are ever going to be in a position to truly influence their world as adults, they will need to work with and through people. They can only do that if they authentically display compassion. So what’s the best way for them to learn compassion?
Leadership in Parenting: Stability
Remember the last unstable/unhealthy job you were in? It felt terrible, didn’t it? When kids experience instability in the home its impact can be long-lasting. So what can we do as parents to lead our kids by providing greater stability?
Leadership in Parenting: Hope
Sometimes the grind of parenting erodes the hope that your kids will become capable adults. But if we don’t have hope for our kids, what happens to them when they don’t have any hope for themselves?
Leadership in Parenting: Responding to Setback & Failure
Our brains learn more from failure than from success. But the learning is usually offset by the negative emotions and shame we attach to failure. How can we, as parents, avoid the trap of shame and disappointment when our kids don’t succeed?
Leadership in Parenting: Authority
Power and authority purposed and directed can do amazing things. Power unchecked and self-serving is controlling and greedy. Do you know which kind of authority will you model for your children?
Leadership in Parenting: Relationships
The really good leaders understand relational capital and create an atmosphere that’s connective, inclusive and collaborative. So what’s one of the best ways to develop this important skill set in future leaders?