Two Energies for Personal Change

As I’ve worked with lead­ers over the years I’ve noticed two pat­terns of per­son­al growth. The first is based on the desire for per­son­al agency — a top­ic I’ve addressed recent­ly (and at many times) on this blog; the sec­ond is growth based on tran­scen­dence. Exam­ples of per­son­al agency include: These are all instances of… Con­tin­ue read­ing Two Ener­gies for Per­son­al Change

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

The Psychic Space of Relationships

What’s clear is that when peo­ple come into one another’s pres­ence, they essen­tial­ly rub up against one anoth­er, trans­mit­ting sig­nals to one anoth­er that are per­ceived as a com­bi­na­tion of threats and wel­comes.  This is what it means to be in con­tact.  Some­times the threats out­weigh the wel­comes; some­times the reverse.  The threats and wel­comes are at var­i­ous… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Psy­chic Space of Relationships