Celebration is really hard for me. I used to feel that celebration is only for achieving something you didn’t expect to achieve, but after I’ve done something, I was clearly expected to have done it, so what is there to celebrate? Instead, I historically have pushed on to the next challenge. Yet researchers like BJ […]
Category: coaching
Generous Selling
I regularly talk to new coaches to share my experience, because I believe that the world benefits from more people with a coaching mindset, and as a way to pay it forward for the coaches that advised me when I transitioned into coaching. These new coaches often ask me about my sales process, and since […]
Getting unstuck in your life and career
[11/20/22: Thanks for the feedback! The current version is in this Google doc, so please comment there moving forward] [11/9/22: This is a rough draft of what I hope will be the first chapter of the book I am writing. A lot of this material will be familiar to long-time blog readers, and I’ve linked […]
The New Psychology of Leadership, by Haslam, Reicher and Platow
Amazon link Reading this book articulated concepts that changed how I view and talk about leadership. The authors start the book by debunking several conventional theories of leadership (e.g. the “Great Man” theory where it’s about the leader’s innate qualities, or a transactional or power approach where people follow leaders in exchange for something) and […]
Leading Systems, by Barry Oshry
Amazon link In 1969, Barry Oshry decided to run a simulation on institutional racism called “the Society of New Hope” so that people could take on different roles in society and see how that unfolded. To his surprise, it quickly spun out of his control, as the “Have Not”s disabled the cars in the parking […]
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
Amazon link This book is an excellent primer on its full title: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference, and Why It Matters. As somebody who generally had an intuitive feel for strategy throughout my career, and has had difficulty trying to explain how to see what I see, I appreciated Rumelt’s systematic explanation, and will […]
You don’t have the answer
One of my pet peeves is when people tell me what I should do. Normally, this is because they did something that worked for them, and they want to tell me I should also do it. I generally don’t want such advice for a variety of reasons: I don’t want the same thing that they […]
Building a Community of Alignment
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead In my first post on alignment, I wrote “Alignment is the art and craft of creating or identifying a unifying purpose and a set of elements or parts, and then […]
100 Hours
Show me your calendar, and I’ll show you what you value. Our most precious and irreplaceable resource is time. We have approximately 100 hours each week to spend after sleep and basic self-care. How we spend those 100 hours is an observable expression of our values and priorities that can often be at odds with […]
2021 Year in Review
2021 was quite a year. Let’s start this review post by listing off a few significant events in my priority areas of family and coaching: Our second child was born in the spring. She exhibits intense curiosity, with a desire to be where the action is – she has serious FOMO! Meanwhile, our first child […]
