Category: Truth

On the Balcony of One’s Own Life: The Personal Side of Adaptive Leadership

One of my favorite Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cles is “The Work of Lead­er­ship” by Ronald Heifetz and Don­ald L. Lau­rie. Writ­ten over twen­ty years ago, it crys­tal­ized the dif­fer­ence between adap­tive prob­lems fac­ing orga­ni­za­tions and more rou­tine, tech­ni­cal ones, a dis­tinc­tion that remains emi­nent­ly use­ful. Adap­tive chal­lenges are the ones that don’t have easy or… Con­tin­ue read­ing On the Bal­cony of One’s Own Life: The Per­son­al Side of Adap­tive Leadership

On Personal Agency

There might not be many top­ics relat­ed to lead­er­ship more impor­tant than per­son­al agency. I think of per­son­al agency as espe­cial­ly, but not exclu­sive­ly tied to the more dif­fi­cult exis­ten­tial deci­sions we learn to make, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ones that stand out­side our usu­al deci­­sion-mak­ing pat­terns, choic­es that cause us to step back, exam­ine and inten­tion­al­ly… Con­tin­ue read­ing On Per­son­al Agency

Three Voices: Truth, Kindness and Destiny

Self-Truth: This voice pro­vides ongo­ing assess­ment of the real­i­ties we must face — both the exter­nal and the inter­nal ones. When impaired or not present, this voice can lead to self-decep­­tion and dis­tor­tion. If there is “too much” self-truth we may be immo­bi­lized by its crit­i­cal judg­ments that we mis­in­ter­pret as truth. If “too lit­tle”… Con­tin­ue read­ing Three Voic­es: Truth, Kind­ness and Destiny

The Power of Mea Culpa

As a coach who works with all kinds of lead­ers, it’s inevitable that a cer­tain per­cent­age don’t come vol­un­tar­i­ly. That does­n’t mean they aren’t excit­ed to work with me; it means some­body else has said they need to find some­one to work with — in some cas­es with an implied “or else.” What I find… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Pow­er of Mea Culpa