On Personal Change

As a coach and con­sul­tant, I often find myself help­ing clients with changes they would like to see them­selves make. It is quite nat­ur­al for the client, after quick­ly iden­ti­fy­ing what the change is about, to rush imme­di­ate­ly to the next ques­tion: “How do I do this?” Yet, truth be told, the empha­sis can be… Con­tin­ue read­ing On Per­son­al Change

The Side Effects of Hierarchy and Other Perils

A few days ago, in a con­ver­sa­tion with Amy Edmond­son of the Har­vard Busi­ness School, she sage­ly shared with me how hier­ar­chy “does not intend” its neg­a­tive side effects. She was speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly of ingrained dynam­ics that cause peo­ple to seek approval and avoid rock­ing the boat rather than ask­ing for help and speak­ing up… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Side Effects of Hier­ar­chy and Oth­er Perils

Dark Energy

The unex­pect­ed gripe ses­sion. The group com­plaint sud­den­ly at your door. The meet­ing that weird­ly goes wrong, with peo­ple becom­ing neg­a­tive, angry, mis­trust­ing, accusato­ry.  And then there’s the pan­icky fol­low-up and the recrim­i­na­tions and search for the guilty. Who was to blame for this? How did we get here? What do we do now? All like­ly… Con­tin­ue read­ing Dark Ener­gy

Do You Know What Your Leadership Journey Is?

Phras­es like “lead­er­ship jour­ney” and “lead­er­ship path” fre­quent­ly are thrown around. We may have an intu­itive sense of what they mean as code for the sto­ry of our own per­son­al growth. But if some­one asked you direct­ly, what is that sto­ry for you, could you be artic­u­late? There is so much jar­gon, so many “round… Con­tin­ue read­ing Do You Know What Your Lead­er­ship Jour­ney Is?