Manage to Engage

This episode is part three in the being bigger than your shadow series. We don’t like struggling and being frustrated, so why is there so much of it? What if your shadow is not only okay with struggle, but actually seeks to maintain it? Why would that be and what can you do about it? Not only your problems, but the quality of your entire life may hang in the balance.   This episode is from a recen...

This episode is part two in our series on how to be bigger than your shadow. Many people hear the unproductive beliefs in their head throughout the day and think they’re taking the high road by just looking the other way. But you notice the thoughts and sometimes behaviors don’t go away just by you ignoring them. How do you show your shadow who’s boss in a way that creates real change?   This epis...

Shadow is a term used to encapsulate our unconscious motives and hidden agendas. Everyone has a shadow, and it’s usually the root of all your problems, because it maintains, even creates your problems in ways that are completely off your radar.   This episode begins a four part series on how to be bigger than your shadow, the basis of creating any kind of change. All of western philosophy is found...

This episode is short, sweet and gives you some very simple ways to help anyone more effectively. Have you ever had the experience that someone asks you for help and then they don’t use what you give them? Get ready to never have that experience again, because you’re going to discover what you’re doing to support that behavior, and what to do instead.   For more information about the many benefits...

People have hated managers for as long as work has existed. But what if the issue is not inherent in the manager role, but rather the way billions of people for thousands of years have related to it? In this episode, you’re going to learn the single most important thing for any manager to learn: the difference between management and supervision. And the result, determines whether your people hate...

This episode is part four of the series of excerpts from the conclusion of the live course I taught in the summer of 2017 called, Open to Excellence. Emotions are some of the most powerful influences of our lives. Love, joy, passion. But what about the ones we don’t like feeling? Depression, anxiety, fear, etc.? What if all your conditioning has been about pushing those feelings away and the resul...

This episode is part three of the series of excerpts from the conclusion of the live course I taught in the summer of 2017 called, Open to Excellence. If you look at any persistent problem carefully enough, you will find a lack of responsibility, yet honest, curious conversations about responsibility and the lack thereof are few and far between. We live in a world of excuses and deflections. If yo...

This episode is part two of the series of excerpts from the conclusion of the live course I taught in the summer of 2017 called, Open to Excellence. What if the majority of your suffering came from where you don’t realize you have choices? Responsibility means owning your choices, but it also means looking for where you are pretending you don’t have choices. You’ll discover some choices you didn’t...

People talk a lot about shifting mindsets, but is it possible to change your mindset too often, or in ways that get in your way? In our technologically enabled busy world, most people find themselves not only doing a lot of different things, but doing things that require different mindsets. In this episode, you’ll learn about one of the common and invisible causes of chronic overwhelm and what you...

Whatever your challenges, awareness is usually what you need to surmount them. And meditation is one of the primary tools to develop that awareness. However, meditation is widely misunderstood, sometimes even tragically misused. This episode concludes our series on meditation with part four, giving you some concrete tools to make meditation work for you. As you’ve learned so far, real meditation i...

Whatever your challenges, awareness is usually what you need to surmount them. And meditation is one of the primary tools to develop awareness. However, meditation is widely misunderstood and often tragically misused. This episode continues our series on meditation with part three. We return to the question of “What is meditation?” from the perspective of awareness as subtractive in nature. This f...

Whatever your challenges, awareness is usually what you need to surmount them. And meditation is one of the primary tools to develop awareness. However, meditation is widely misunderstood and sometimes tragically misused. This episode is part two of the series on meditation. In the last episode we showed how subtraction is the governing dynamic of awareness. What are the implications of this? What...

Meditation becomes increasingly popular in the western world, but it’s largely completely misunderstood. The tragedy is that the widespread misconception of meditation creates stagnation and missed opportunities in people that can span an entire lifetime. It’s not about relaxing, it’s not about clearing your mind, and it’s not about controlling your thoughts. Even if you’ve been meditating your en...

Managers often complain they want their people to step up, or be more engaged, or take more risks. In this episode, you’ll learn one simple question you can use to make that happen. You’ll be surprised to find out it’s more about undoing something than doing something. What if your people know more than they let on, and are just afraid to share what they really think? How do you change that?   Thi...

One of the most common and unseen excuses in our world is caretaking. Caretaking comes from a caring place, but lets someone off the hook or otherwise serves an other in a way that hurts everyone involved. Caretaking is fundamentally about the caretaker, who is avoiding confrontation, wanting to be liked, or has some other understandable self-interest that they hide by making it about the other pe...

We live in a world where the existence of “alternative facts” is now accepted by many. How do you manage someone when they’re seeing a situation so differently, that you just can’t see eye to eye? It’s related to a philosophical question humans have struggled with since our civilization began, but fortunately there’s a simple way through it.   This series is from a recent webcast that happens each...

How does a manager insist on accountability and results, and still give someone the emotional support and room to process a change for themselves? In other words, how do you balance supporting someone to explore their own limitations while making sure the customer gets what they bought? It’s a tricky balance, but it can be done. Most managers err on the side of either caretaking, allowing for empl...

Do your government given rights related to freedom apply in the workplace? Tricky one, right? How far can an employer go in pushing someone into discomfort? What responsibility does a manager have to make an employee’s work experience comfortable? How should one think about this?   This series is from a recent webcast that happens each week for members. For more information about the many benefits...

What place is there for compassion in the workplace? How do you balance your sense of humanity and care, and the need for results when money is on the line? We’ve come a long way since the 1950s bringing emotional intelligence into the work environment, but in what ways has it gone too far, and what’s a manager to do about it?   This series is from a recent webcast that happens each week for membe...

What’s your communication turnaround standard? Do you have one? Does your department or company have one? Part of integrity and thrival is getting back to people in a timely fashion, and organizing your life so you can do so easily. How do you make sure integrity expresses in all of your communication?   This series is from a recent webcast that happens each week for members. For more information...

We all know that integrity is important, but what is it, exactly? You may be surprised to discover that you don’t have the integrity you tell yourself you do, and therein lies the opportunity. The most basic expression of integrity is keeping your word, and most people don’t do it nearly as often as they think. The result? Broken agreements are bad business. They hurt you and those around you in w...

What is the essence of business? Understanding that business is fundamentally made up of agreements is critical to success in anything. Most business problems can be reduced to where agreements were unclear and/or broken; therefore, the clarification of agreements and the rigorous pursuit of keeping them is the simplest way to greatness. Simple is not, however, necessarily easy. But when you under...

How well do you know yourself? Is it possible to know yourself too well? And do you identify yourself as being a responsible person? What if the idea that you’re a responsible person is actually in your way? Most people problems inevitably come down to responsibility, and most responsibility problems come down to the illusions we tell ourselves. For more information about the many benefits of Clea...

This is the finale of our Illusion of Frustration series, excerpts from a particularly powerful Clear and Open Leader’s webcast. We’re all over-identified with one thing or another, and in this segment we look at how one can be over-identified with frustration. What if frustration was filling a hole inside you? What if you would become someone quite different if you let go of frustration? Are you...

This episode is part three of our Illusion of Frustration series. In this episode, we reveal the meta-false-assumption that underlies frustration–a lens you look through all the time without realizing it. The bad news it’s causing a huge portion of your suffering. The good news is that it’s a simple shift. This series is from a recent leaders webcast that happens each week for members. For more in...