Let's Fix Leadership

Whether we're talking about our customers or teams, loyalty is the currency of successful relationships. In the business world of yore, loyalty was one-sided, it was buy something or do something to get something. Today that quid-pro-quo style falls flat.   Just like Taylor Swift…brands who do well understand that having customers and employees is a privilege, and they aim for relational loyalty,...

You know that job that makes you miserable, that boss who makes your life hell and that co-worker who's difficult to work with? They are specially wrapped gifts that can work in your favor.   Hear me out…   Do these situations suck? Do they test our patience? Yes and yes. But, what you might not see in that moment are the skills, competencies, and empowering opportunities these difficulties give y...

Decisions, decisions…the hallmark of good leadership is swift and impactful decision-making. But let's be real, amidst the whirlwind of emails, meetings, projects, and strategic pivots, the decisions we have to make can be so overwhelming, that we can decide not to decide at all.    Here's the problem though, not making a decision can be just as detrimental as making the wrong one. It causes proje...

Influence is a powerful currency for motivation and success…it's no wonder why influencer marketing has become a literal billion-dollar industry! Being influential doesn't just work on social media. In a workplace, it's the lifeblood of leaders who can propel the collective without demanding, manipulating, or dictating.   A combination of trust, inspiration, and communication - influence is the si...

"My people don't do what I ask them to, they don't listen and they don't come up with innovative ideas." Leaders say it all the time, and if I had a penny for everytime I heard this, I could buy my own private island! But before you point a finger at your team, what if this is all because you're addicted to being right. Yes, like sugar and shopping, being right can be the drug of choice for leader...

When conflict arises at work, there are two ways people deal with it. Go directly to the person in question or tell other people about it first. Many times, we take the latter route, and it never goes well.   If you ever played telephone as a kid, you'll know that the original message always gets twisted somewhere along the way. At work, the stakes are much higher though.   The result: gossip, mis...

Ever tried to have an insightful conversation in a room with loud music? It's noisy…and that's what leading feels like today. From the oceans of emails flooding our mailboxes, back-to-back meetings filling our calendars, to the urgent but not important tasks that demand our attention. There's a lot to wade through in today's world.   When we're distracted and living in the noise, we get stuck ther...

Now that we know a lot more about how the brain works, a lot of what we've been taught about leadership is just plain wrong. We have to throw it out the window and never look back. From a neuroscience perspective, there are 2 categories of chemicals constantly firing off in our brains - happy hormones and fear hormones. The old school model of leadership did nothing but trigger a good old cortisol...

Like an illness on a playground, emotions are contagious, and in a business setting, they can spread fast! It's how the annoyance of one colleague can catch on and bring the whole office down, and how a good vibe can have a huge ripple effect.   Being a great leader is understanding that humans are going to human, that our people have emotions, and that they will affect the climate of our organiza...

Unlike the next meeting, deliverable, or deadline, working on our culture isn't as simple as penciling it into our calendars. It's a living, breathing process that never ends, it's the long game that has to be front-of-mind for leaders.   We know the world is busy and how easy it is to get bogged down in the to-do list, but the more we can step out of the routine of our roles, the better our organ...

Not sure who said that, but the statement has inspired a lot of thought, reflection, and furious rabbit-hole research. So I thought to myself, why not share all my findings and musings with you?   Leading in today's world requires approaches that transcend traditional management practices. It's about fully understanding the intersection between ourselves, our teams, and our organizations. Self-awa...

Many leaders have the epiphany that it's not culture if you have to micromanage to achieve it. It becomes culture when people perform when no one's looking.   That begs the question: how do you turn culture from something you have on paper into something weaved into everything your organization does?   In order for an organization to drive forward, we need a strong culture and values, but performa...

Here's a mind-blowing fact for you…a lot of the technology we use and rely on today, didn't exist a few years ago. Which means, tomorrow's technology might still just be a big idea in someone's brain.   ….I'll let that sink in.   Technology is moving faster than it ever has, and it's going to continue to speed up.   What we know how to use today is going to be outdated in a blink. As leaders, we h...

If there's one word I want to gently pluck out of the vocabulary of leaders, it would be…. "opportunities".   Why, you ask? I mean it seems like a totally innocent and well-meaning word, right? Well… sometimes, when we tell people on our team what their opportunities are, we actually end up messing with their superpowers.   Instead, we can manage their strengths so they show up with their best foo...

Before you became a leader, you thought every executive had it all together. They are confident, always know what decision to make, and turning ideas into execution happens at the snap of a finger. You just walk around telling everyone how to execute the plan, how hard could that be? Insert the laugh track here… Leading is messy…we have to communicate effectively, approach problems from multiple p...

You can't make a delicious omelette without breaking a couple of eggs. You can't break through without shattering something. As we set intentions for this year, what if we could commit to breaking things? So many of us are on autopilot in different areas of our lives. Deciding to break things shakes us out of complacency, allows for massive growth and yes, it fixes leadership!   Old systems, minds...

Here's a real head-scratcher for you. You leave a meeting thinking, "the team has got this''. Then you go to execute, and you find out that you weren't, in fact, on the same page. You asked "any questions," and no one responded, so surely there was clarity and alignment…so what gives?    Well, I hate to break it to you, but that very question could be the thing blocking them from getting clarity....

Do you ever feel like you can't make one more decision even if your life depended on it? Does decision-making get more difficult as the day or week goes on?   What to wear, what to eat, whether to overtake or not. Who to hire, what tasks to work on, the strategic direction of the organization. The average adult makes an exhausting and astounding 35,000 decisions a day. It's no wonder we get so tir...

Following a rigid hiring rule over filling a position with a great candidate. Or proving your co-worker is hard to work with over your own performance. How about, focusing on that pet project to the detriment of the company's financial stability?    False priorities show up all over the place at work, and we've all been guilty of them, because guess what? They often make things easier - but only i...

Leading the whole person is a non-negotiable requirement for every leader. To make everyone on our teams feel seen and supported, we have to get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations. This is especially true for disability, something a large percentage of the workforce lives with.  Disability isn't easy to talk about because we're afraid we'll say the wrong thing, but that doesn't mean we s...

When we're starting out in our professional lives, we never know where this adventure known as a career is going to take us. What may seem like stray conversations, nuggets or threads can ultimately weave together and form something amazing in the future.   …Like working as an inventory manager, seeing how much of that inventory gets wasted and thinking, "wait a minute, I can build something and m...

If you've hung out with me for some time, you've heard me use the word self-authoring, but what does it actually mean, and why am I so passionate about it?   In a world where we're constantly making complex decisions, and challenges come by the minute, we can't let things just happen to us. We can't be reactive - we have to stand firm in our vision and proactively decide how we're going to show up...

If people were just their job titles, how boring a place the world would be! We are whole people - with hobbies, humor, and creativity. Instead of reserving those pieces of ourselves for when we get home, showing them at work is highly valuable. Powerful things happen when we up our creativity - it sparks innovation and ideas that supercharge our workplaces. How do we bring more of our wholeness t...

Have you ever wondered why the room goes dead silent when a leader asks the team to share their big ideas? It's brain science. The fear that kicks in makes it impossible to get those creative, innovative, creative ideas flowing. To make our teams more innovative, we have to reduce fear and create an environment where it feels safe to share ideas. So, next time you want to trigger creativity and in...

No one's going to do our career push-ups for us. If we want to reach and even exceed our goals, we have to take full control and ownership of our professional development. That means self-authoring everything we do, and investing in the necessary skills that will take us to the next level.    Taking charge of our careers comes with its challenges, but ultimately it's a rewarding exercise that will...