I invite you to think about a recent interaction when you felt inspired by an individual or group. What resonated with or shifted inside of you? What emerged, as a result? That experience is the influ…
The problem with change is, in fact, not change at all. Despite all we are told about how difficult it is to manage change, the truth is that as human-beings, we are wired for change and get bored wit…
What does it mean to be a leader? In the words of John Buchan, former Governor-General of Canada, “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is th…
We are currently in the toughest phase of our pandemic experience. To explain what I mean, consider two different states of being: fatigue and depletion. Fatigue is when a muscle or the mind has been…
As business leaders we evaluate the past and forecast the future. We focus so much on the past and on the present, and we need to. But we take our eye off the present at our peril. How a leader shows…
Leadership is the art of influencing the thoughts, attitudes, behaviors, and choices of others. In that sense, anybody who is in sales is in a leadership role, trying to influence the thoughts, attitu…
Recently I mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1995 in South Africa. It was an exercise in restorative rather than retributive justice. Its purpose wasn’t to punish anyone…
When people act up, whether it’s a child throwing a tantrum or an entire generation of people protesting, the cause is almost always a deeply felt pain that has been triggered. In acting up, however,…
My sadness about what is happening in America at the moment is deep and complex, as I’m sure yours is. I’m sad about the looting, the chaos, and the suffering it has caused. I’m sad—very sad—about the…
To navigate the COVID-19 crisis and global lockdown and to help our people through it, we have had to draw on new and deeper resources within us and practice leadership skills we were never taught. No…
In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell shares the story of the Getty museum’s kouros statue, a sixth century BC sculpture purchased in the early 1980s for $10 million (which would be just shy of $26 mil…
Among the hardest decisions business leaders must make is how to balance the conflicting interests of their companies’ stakeholders. For example, it may be in shareholders’ interests to radically redu…
In their forthcoming book, It’s the Manager, Gallup recommends that organizations should change six beliefs. In earlier pieces I have addressed the first three. The fourth is: Belief #4: Millennials a…
In this piece, we expand on the third of six beliefs that organizations should change, according to Gallup’s forthcoming book, It’s the Manager. Belief #3: Millennials and Generation Z don’t want boss…
In this piece, we expand on the second of six beliefs that organizations should change, according to Gallup’s forthcoming book, It’s the Manager. Belief #2: Millennials and Generation Z are no longer…
Companies spend a fortune to overcome resistance to change, both externally in the form of marketing, and internally in the form of change management. But is this effort all founded on a serious misco…
Promoting successful subject matter experts into positions of leadership is a common and commonsense practice. However, once in place, these experts are often confronted with a dizzying series of scen…