How much time do you spend each week working through the important, deep, and future-building work? How much time could have been spent on the significant, strategic change work that often gets […]
Leadership
Self-Worth and the Floors and Ceilings Metaphor
I’d like to float the idea that self-worth is a fundamentally different thing from self-esteem or confidence. People talk about these ideas as if they were each one and the same. But […]
How to Focus on What’s Most Important
Recently I joined my friend Eric Zimmer on his podcast, The One You Feed, to discuss how to focus our lives on what’s most important to us, and what blocks us from […]
Using Focus Blocks To Boost Your Team’s Capacity
If you’ve been overwhelmed by trying to figure out how much capacity your team has, and whether they’re focused on what matters most, here’s my take: looking at project lists or time […]
Careful What You Wish For: Company Goals Create Company Culture
Business owners and managers know they’re supposed to set challenging goals to motivate themselves and their teams. Most often, business goals prioritize sales targets, profit margins, and productivity. And as a business […]
How Does Your Team Handle Commitment Tension?
Think of two standing commitments most of us have, or aspire to have: To honor the commitments we make to ourselves and others To honor the commitment to do what matters most […]
Improve Your Team Communication with Repetition: The Rule of 7
As the manuscript deadline for Team Habits approaches (just a few weeks left now!), Charlie is heads down on writing, along with everything else he has going on. For Angela, it’s been […]
Did Your Team Consciously Decide How to Work Together?
Probably not …and that’s why it’s interesting… Take a second to think about something your team regularly does well, and something your team regularly does that frustrates you. Here’s the question for […]
Don’t Confuse the Project with the Result
One of my executive coaching clients asked for some guidance recently to keep her company’s OKR (Objectives and Key Results) initiative from going stale. Our work together had started with an OKR […]
Is What You’re Doing Telling, Teaching, or Training?
Lots of folks say they love “teaching,” but, in reality, they love telling. That’s mostly because they love the attention and praise that comes from telling. Telling, teaching, and training are three […]
4 Ways to Lead in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous (VUCA) World
Considering the last two years of COVID, George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement, the capitol riots, and now the war in Ukraine — it’s clear that we live in […]
Become a Stronger Leader by Embracing Your Contradictions
A few years ago, I commissioned a painting from a member of our community, Cristina Kramp. In the painting, a woman is basking in the light of the sun, her face tipped back […]
Belonging Not Burnout
Belonging and meaning are at the core of heart-based leadership. But I never saw clearly how belonging could directly help fight burnout, until we offered a workshop on scaling back from burnout […]
Empower Your Team (and Yourself) by Asking for Help
Ever since I was a child, I’ve put the needs of others before my own. I’m a Type Two on the Enneagram — the Helper — and I’ve always been highly sensitive […]
Thinking Abundantly: Who and What Are Already Available?
“What if everything you need is already available?” This is a message we kept posted on a shared whiteboard in our kitchen downstairs for the last few months. It was meant to […]
Taking Off the Earmuffs of Comparisonitis
I consider myself an excellent listener, but there’s one area in my life where I have a hard time hearing what others say — and a few months ago, a friend put […]
We Are All Leaders
Our culture tends to define leadership narrowly. The word itself conjures a certain series of traits: bold, decisive, action-oriented, charismatic. It brings to mind a specific type of person. A person that […]
How to Improve Employee Experience by Using Your “i’s”
Gone are the days where you can treat your employees like replaceable cogs that don’t have other options. Let me rephrase: Gone are the days where there are no visible consequences for […]