Leadership
Leading Up
I am not sure if it’s courage or naivety, but I have never been afraid of “leading up.” In a hierarchical structure, leading up means managing those above you—influencing the direction of your organization despite a lack of positional authority. It’s giving your boss your honest opinion and asking for what you need. It isn’t…
Connection
Connection is a bit like money. If you have enough of it, you take it for granted. But when you’re missing it, endless challenges result, and you are reminded of its irreplaceable value. I was recently struggling to create a new performance management model for a client. I couldn’t figure out what the client’s team…
Two Types of Information
When drafting a piece for the Emergent blog, I tend to use the voice-to-text function on my iPhone and then later find the note and coax it into coherence, to then share with our in-house team of editors to make it fit for public consumption. These are the blogs I like best to write. The…
Embracing the Fierce Gravity of Leadership
In the dynamic world of leadership development, we do not operate in a vacuum. We are constantly being acted upon by formidable forces which influence our range of choices and, in so doing, shape our journey. Consider the axiom, “Gravity is fierce.” This seemingly unconventional notion seems to encapsulate the essence of leadership. The forces…
Emotional Accountability
For much of my adult life, there’s been a voice in my head. It’s a voice at once demanding and prideful, one that encourages me to follow its advice and rewards me handsomely for doing so. And what does it say? Be accountable to your emotions! I identify strongly with this voice, and consider it…
Free in this Moment
In my upcoming book, there’s a chapter called “Get Out of Your Own Way.” As I teach what I need to learn, I wrote that chapter to remind myself how often I hold onto things that prevent me from living as well as I could. The main roadblocks blocking my path to higher awareness are…
It Takes Courage
It’s the time of year to set resolutions, and I’ve got mine: Stop resisting what is and grasping at what I don’t have. I have been doing a lot of introspective work recently and once again am getting the opportunity to relearn a lesson. Simply stated, I am repeatedly tripped up by the illusion of…
Essential Elegance
A 1977 brochure introducing the Apple II computer said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” It takes a lot of hard work to create something simple, to truly understand the underlying problem and come up with an elegant solution. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity….
A December Reflection
All of a sudden it’s the holiday season! The ground is frozen and white. The skies are dark before the day is over; I feel like I must have taken a long autumn nap and missed the onramp to the holidays this year. In part, I have been far too busy with work. I usually…
Finding Peace at the Edge of Change
“There is something about the power of our consciousness, of our soul, that gives us the authority to influence the quality of our lives. We are indeed co-creators of the events of our life.” – Caroline Myss Recently, I’ve noticed myself spending too much time outside of the present moment. Instead of focusing on…