Great leaders don’t fear tension or conflict. They understand the difference between healthy tension and destructive conflict, and they harness its energy in positive ways. Healthy tension exists in that place where you’re pushing the envelope while keeping control. It can exist when one or more positive things may conflict Read more
There’s apparently been a spike in employees taking mental health leave. I can believe it. Work culture has gotten more and more toxic and dehumanizing over the past decade. I’ve experienced it myself, and I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal evidence from the hundreds of clients I’ve coached over the past Read more
It’s book launch week! Tuesday, July 15th is the official publication date of Take Your Time Before Time Takes You (How to Make the Most of Every Day). It’s my eighth book as author or editor, not counting the multiple anthologies and periodicals that have published my stories, articles, and Read more
Knowing when it’s time to stop can be hard. When are you throwing good effort into something that should have ended already? Examples: I’ve written before about action planning and quit criteria, but today I’m thinking about the feeling of being done. Not about achieving goals or meeting deliverables. Not Read more
An interesting life is a character-based story, not a plot-based story. You’re the main character, so act like it. Yesterday I was coaching a new writing client, a young writer who had gotten feedback that her idea for a new book was boring because it wasn’t “unique and different” enough. Read more
Someone else’s greater capability does not invalidate your own. Just because someone else is better at a thing, or knows more about a thing, or has an advanced degree in a thing, doesn’t mean you suck at that thing. Yet that’s how many of us feel all the time. An Read more
Personal resilience is, I believe, one of the three top skills every person will need over the next decade. (My other top two are adaptability and the ability to discern truth.) Personal resilience, generally speaking, is the ability to persevere through adversity or to bounce back after a setback. Last Read more
I’m writing for social impact professionals today, but this is relevant for everyone who cares about something, or who wants to improve the world even just a little bit. I spent 20 years as a social impact program manager and executive, on both the funding and the impact side. I Read more
Nearly every high achiever thinks they’re not getting enough done. That’s because every time they accomplish something worthwhile, that success comes at the expense of some other worthwhile thing. When you have 15 important things to do and enough time to do just 13 of them, the two that get Read more
On Saturday, I accompanied my parents as they planted fresh geraniums at the graves of relatives. As I walked among the headstones, some of which were over 200 years old, I contemplated Americans’ complicated relationship with death. Living people spend a lot of time, money, energy, and emotion doing things Read more