The hardest part about leadership is the fact that you’re leading a group of people. Different people, not clones of each other. Each person has different personalities, dreams, hopes, fears, and different lives. While this diversity of human experience leads to innovation and creativity, it also means that you have […]
Month: April 2021
Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth was known as a home-run slugger, swinging super hard and, when connecting, knocking the baseball literally out of the park. He was just an overall amazing batter, with legendary career averages, and was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But he […]
Values Test
Are you clear on the things that you value? Do your actions match up with what you say your values are? A solid test is to look at your bank statements – does what you say you value match up with what you spend your money on?
Good and Bad Ambiguity
Good ambiguity is ambiguity by design. It’s potentially withholding information in order to propel someone forward by pushing them to discover their own agency in solving problems and making decisions. It’s reflecting questions back when you’ve got the space to use it as a growing opportunity, and to build up […]
Process
Improvement always has a process behind it, and if you’re looking too far out into the future, you’ll miss the enjoyable part of learning, staying present, and seeing those incremental wins. And these incremental wins are really important, as the path you might have chosen might be incredibly long. It’s […]
Juggling Mishaps and Leadership
I would often watch jugglers almost effortlessly drop a club, continue juggling, pick it back up, and then continue with their set, graduating to flaming clubs and knives. I later learned that this “mishap” was always staged. When considered logically, what juggler would attempt juggling swords if they weren’t 100% […]
Food In Your Teeth
We often don’t know when we’ve got food stuck in our teeth as we’re too close to it. Our nerves rapidly acclimate to a piece of spinach stuck next to your gums and you might not notice it. Just as we often miss this, often the answer to our problems […]
Accountability
It’s easy to change your mind about the need for accountability by focusing on if you’re the one holding others accountable, or if you’re the one being held accountable. And if you’re holding others accountable, when you mess up, it’s easy to let power go to your head and try […]
Stale Crackers
When you find a box of stale crackers, you might be tempted to either a) be like me and just eat the stale crackers, or b) throw them out. Often we look at a lot of our decisions as binary, in terms of the two most obvious solutions or actions. […]
Guilty Verdict
Yesterday, I watched the verdict of the Derek Chauvin trial being read. More accurately, I listened as I had my eyes closed in anticipation. Because America has long found law enforcement officers responsible, but not accountable for the killing of people of color, I braced myself for yet another police […]