How Leaders Lose Trust Without Realizing It
Most leaders I work with care deeply about the people around them. They just get busy. And somewhere in the busyness, the people who matter most start to feel like they can wait. Think about the people who make your work possible. Not just your clients or customers, but the colleagues who cover for you, […]
The Power of Your Network
Two conversations earlier this week were genuine gamechangers for me. Most of us spend more time than we care to admit wandering roughly in the direction we are headed. Then someone hands you a map and you realize how much ground you were about to cover the hard way. That is exactly what happened. Let […]
Feedback is a Gift: Some Assembly Required
Nobody warns you that receiving feedback is its own skill. We spend years learning how to ask for it, create space for it, and respond to it graciously. But the moment it actually arrives in volume, from all directions, and not always in agreement, we’re largely on our own. Right now, I’m living that reality […]
Stop Calling Them Soft Skills: Why Human Capabilities Drive Zero-Distance Organizations
For more than a decade, I had the privilege of directing the Center for Collaborative Leadership. Our work was based on a simple yet powerful idea: when people feel trusted, included, and invited to lead from wherever they sit, the entire system performs at a higher level. Decades of research on shared leadership back this up. […]
Do You Know What’s Getting in Your Employee’s Way?
I was joking with a friend the other day that the world isn’t made for a five-foot-tall, curly-haired, left-handed woman. I had just come back from speaking at a conference where I had to ask the staff to bring a cocktail table to the stage — because if I stood behind the podium, no one […]
When Technology Crosses the Line
I recently received the following email message, “We can create an AI clone of yourself that looks and sounds just like you, so you don’t have to record yourself anymore and can still grow your Instagram and TikTok audience with Career Professionals. Should I send a few AI-made videos? Let’s see if you can tell […]
Why Your Strongest Emotions Reveal What You Truly Value
We often think of values as aspirational statements—words we choose to define who we want to be. But in practice, our deepest values often reveal themselves in subtler ways. One of the clearest signals? Our emotional reactions. Recently, I joined a small-group Q&A call on Zoom. The moderator began by setting a clear expectation: everyone […]
Be More Strategic
We’re headed into mid-year (or year-end) review season. And I’m writing this blog to encourage employees — and as a plea to managers — to engage in a more productive development conversation. Too many times, while in Human Resources and now as a coach, I’ve had folks come to me with some piece of feedback […]
Leadership Lessons from a 27-year-old
How could a 27-year-old launch a campaign that became a movement, creating an avalanche of 17 million videos viewed by 440 million people more than 10 billion times in a mere 3 months? Now, in the world of influencers, you may be nonplussed by this accomplishment but, in 2014, the Ice Bucket challenge viral video […]
Daily Huddles — Monotonous or Momentum-Building?
A trend I’ve been hearing more about is the daily huddle. It became prevalent during the pandemic when everyone was remote. Managers found this to be a good way to help their employees stay connected with one another and the company, and for the manager to gain a sense of what each employee was working […]
