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A note for leaders who are holding everything together — and starting to wonder if they can.   He came into our first coaching session carrying something heavy. Not a laptop. Not a notebook. The weight was invisible — but I could see it in the way he sat down. Slightly forward, like…

Much what much of what gets in the way of success is… us! Here a five emotional traps we should strive to avoid: The desire to be comfortable– as Paulo Coelho said, “only the mediocre are ever truly comfortable". If your primary goal is to be comfortable then you can expect to get run over…

Dee Hock is a visionary. He is most well known as the founder and head of VISA from 1970 to 1984. He is also an amazing thinker and writer. Over the last few months, I buckled down and read all his essays at http://www.deewhock.com/essays Heavy stuff! Here are points he made that most resonated for…

I am constantly trying to stay on top of my game as a public speaker. Since many of my speaking bookings were canceled due to the coronavirus, I have been using this time to catch up on some speaking books, further improve my offerings, and pivot to doing more online training. Here are seven tips I revisited…

“If you don’t listen to people, you will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.” - Anon The number one way to show anybody that you care about them is to listen to them!  Let me share with you an exercise that exhibits the power of great listening. An exercise you can put…

Watch this video to learn more about self-harming stories that we have all heard since we were kids.

One of my favorite authors and thinkers is Nassim Nicholas Taleb. My first exposure was his 2007 book, Black Swan. According to Taleb, COVID-19 is an example of a white swan event, as it wasn’t in the realm of unrecognized exposures. I then read Fooled by Randomness (2001) and my favorite of the three,…

I just finished a three-month odyssey of reading Ray Dalio’s book, The Principles. It is a 592-page distillation of all that he’s learned in his very successful career. For those of you not familiar with the man, he built the Bridgewater hedge fund into a multibillion-dollar operation and is…

Over the years I’ve been asked to help train leaders on improving company culture. Companies are interested in this training because they believe it will produce more engage and productive employees. Before I can help a leadership team, I try to reach an understanding of what they mean by “culture.“…

Today’s HR executive is being challenged to do more as a strategic partner. One of your best tools is the HR Scorecard. It can take many formats including graphs, tables, Powerpoints, timelines, etc. Let’s discuss how to measure what matters and what to do with the data and information obtained. …