Jun 21, 2022Flying Monkeys: How Rituals Can Create Connection and Purpose(Originally posted to Evergreen Leadership) It’s funny what you remember about past work experiences. We’ll spend (on average) 124,000 minutes per year working, which can add up to 5 million minutes over a lifetime. Most of those minutes are extraordinarily forgettable. Some are thankfully forgotten. Some are so mundane that…Leadership6 min readLeadership6 min read
Jun 7, 2022Twenty Great Questions to Build TeamworkMy palms were sweaty before everyone arrived. I looked out of the windows of a swanky conference room and knew that soon it will be filled with the team I had been engaged to bring together. No, that is not accurate. It would be filled with fifteen professionals who had…Teamwork4 min readTeamwork4 min read
May 25, 2022How Rugged Individualism Tripped Me UpAnd How This Belief Gets in the Way of Effective Teams What good fortune! I had a client meeting very near one of my favorite state parks, one with amazing hiking trails. I rearranged my schedule to allow 2 hours of hiking time and set off. Alone. It was a beautiful spring day. It was warm, but not too hot. Trees…Rugged Individualism4 min readRugged Individualism4 min read
May 3, 2022Navigating the Leadership Paradox of When to Listen and When to Act….and how to avoid having others put their monkeys on your back! Perhaps no other job I’ve had taught me more than the two years I was responsible for “employee relations” within a large manufacturing plant. Learning that this was not the job for me was perhaps the best lesson. …Listening8 min readListening8 min read
Apr 21, 2022Leaders Beware: Your Actions are More Contagious Than You KnowThere is a day etched permanently in my memory. It started as a typical day, getting to work before 7 am to see how the night shift had gone and getting the first shift of the pressroom up and going. …Leadership5 min readLeadership5 min read
Apr 12, 2022Business “Sacred Cows” that May Not be so Sacred Anymore!I found myself surprised, startled, and then incensed by an offhand comment during a recent conversation. This was not the first time I’d heard comments that supported this rather prevalent business belief. In the past, I, too, might have agreed in a fashion. …Business Beliefs5 min readBusiness Beliefs5 min read
Mar 29, 2022Tee Ball or Teamwork?News flash! I’ve made it through the ecstasy and agony of another season of Tee Ball. If you’ve ever experienced the very first effort that 4, 5, and 6-year-olds expend at learning to play baseball, you know what I mean. You’ve witnessed the times when outfielders are playing in the…Teamwork4 min readTeamwork4 min read
Mar 17, 2022I “ate a frog” and learned a valuable lessonI’ve been dreading today. It’s my “eat the frog” day. This is the day I’ve committed to myself to do what needs to be done that I have resisted, delayed, and dillydallied. The funny thing is that it’s not that I CAN’T do it. It’s not that I WON’T do…Leadership5 min readLeadership5 min read
Mar 1, 2022Who Has Earned a Place in Your Boss Hall of Fame?We all have “boss” stories. How we love to tell stories about those people to whom we reported! There is a cast of characters, ranging from the horrible ones, the clueless ones, the bosses from hell, and ones that cause us to wonder how in the heck they got promoted. …Leadership3 min readLeadership3 min read
Feb 15, 2022Want a Great Retreat? The Magic is in the White SpacesMusic, we are told, is only music because of the small gaps of silence between the notes. The pauses that are not sound, but punctuation. That differentiate one note from the other. That set the pace and the flow. …Retreats4 min readRetreats4 min read
