Find out who you are, and do it on purpose. — Dolly Parton In my ongoing series on alignment, I’ve described how I think alignment can be more powerful than hierarchical power, and why it can be challenging to find alignment within oneself. In this post, I want to expand on finding a purpose for […]
Author: Eric
Alignment to Self
Following up on my last post introducing the alignment model, I want to share how this model applies to personal development. When I first met Jerry Weinberg in person in 2009 at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, he talked a lot about congruence, and I had no idea what he was talking about. Admittedly, that’s […]
Alignment
I’ve been developing a leadership and development model, and plan to share it for discussion and feedback over the next couple posts. I’ll start today by sharing my thoughts on alignment. One model I have for alignment is a laser. Normal light is “incoherent” in that the photons are not aligned in phase or direction. […]
Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, by Jacqueline Novogratz
Amazon link Book site and associated online course, which is free if you buy the book. “Whoever you are, and whatever you do, the world needs you to lead. There will be times when happiness may feel elusive and the horizon impossible to reach. But remember that each day, we wake up to another chance […]
Thinking in Systems, by Donella Meadows
Amazon link This is a remarkably readable introduction to systems thinking, a method to understand the inherent behavior of a system, and design appropriate interventions to change what the system is doing. Meadows starts by defining a system as “an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. … […]
2020 Year in Review
My priorities for 2020, as they have been for the last couple years, were to focus on my family, and to grow my coaching business. Having those priorities clear for myself made it easier to navigate the volatile year of 2020. Family came first, then my clients and coaching business, and everything else got dropped […]
Clarity and Focus
People occasionally ask me what I’ve learned in my first couple years as a leadership coach. The unspoken question is “What is the secret to being a better leader?” And while there is no secret per se, there is a formula I see consistently among people who have more impact: Clarity plus Focus. As context, […]
What will you do?
Government of the people, by the people, for the people Those ringing words from Abraham Lincoln are inspiring me today. Things seems especially hopeless to me right now, with contributing factors including: The lack of justice in the Breonna Taylor case, where damaging the neighbor’s walls was considered to be a more serious crime than […]
What You Do is Who You Are, by Ben Horowitz
Amazon link Ben Horowitz is best known at this point for being half of Andreessen Horowitz, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm. He wrote this book to answer the question: How do you as an organizational leader create and sustain the culture you want? As his book site summarizes, “To Horowitz, culture is how […]
The Art of Leadership, by Michael Lopp
Amazon link I have been reading Michael Lopp’s blog, Rands in Repose, for fourteen years, and liked his previous books, so I bought and read this newest book immediately upon release as it’s especially relevant to my work as an executive coach. Lopp shares what he has learned as a manager at Netscape, a director […]
