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Stop pulling up your tulips!
Have you ever planted flowers? You dig a hole in the ground or a pot of dirt, put in the seed or the bulb, cover it over with more dirt, water it, and wait. And wait. And wait some more. You don’t dig in the dirt and pull up your tulips to see how they’re doing, or...
This little light of mine
“If a man carries his own lantern, he need not fear darkness.” ~Hasidic saying My daughter used to get upset by very many things – big and little, scary and maybe less so. She used to go off a cliff it seemed, into endless darkness of negative thoughts and scary...
Joy is necessary for effective leadership…and here’s why
Sometimes I feel a bit self-conscious when I mention “touchy-feely” concepts like love or joy in a leadership blog. I believe many of us have been conditioned to view love and joy as too sentimental or soft for the hard work of leading. Let’s talk about delegating and...
An unexpected but surefire way to help yourself
“It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Research has shown that when we volunteer, when we give of ourselves and our time to help others, we benefit too. Our...
Leap out of your comfort zone
This is one of my favorite infographics. It’s quite simple, yet so powerful. It tells you that you can choose to stay in your little circle of comfort or choose instead to venture out and hop into the big juicy circle where the magic happens. Many things keep can keep...
Ride the waves
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn Recently it seems as if many of my clients are surfing. Not the kind of surfing that first comes to mind – warm weather, big waves, Hawaiian shirts – but surfing nonetheless. They are facing huge...
How to mend a broken work relationship
Recently a client (we’ll call her Sue) shared her frustration following a conversation she had with a colleague. The discussion seemed pretty benign to me, so I asked Sue why she had such strong feelings about it. She then gave me the back story of an earlier...
Answering the question: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” ~Charles F. Kettering We write a lot about failure, because failure, or more specifically fear of failure, can so easily get in our way. We often share a question with clients – and strangers. In fact, this question...
Five ways to set your employees up to fail
We unfortunately set people up to fail all the time. We may have the best intentions, and we may think we’re setting our reports up to succeed, but we may be making things more difficult for them. We may not be giving them the resources and support they need, or we...
Walk in their moccasins
“Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked in his moccasins.” ~Sioux Indian Prayer “I would never do it that way,” we think when we see someone on our staff take a wrong stab at a problem. “What are they thinking?” we wonder, as we watch them...
The counterintuitive way to be more productive (and maybe less stressed)
You’re facing a deadline or feeling pressure to get a project done. You feel as if you’ve been staring at your computer screen mindlessly, unable to make a dent in the work in front of you. You’ve been at this for hours, but don’t seem to be moving ahead. As the time...
You don’t have to know it all
“Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn more than they teach.” ~Rosabeth Moss Kantor Somehow, we think that, as leaders, we need to know everything and then bestow this wisdom on those around us. We are afraid to show our foibles and concerned that...
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