Leaders Have a Plan to Fill Their Role

No team stays the same forever. In recent years Bob Iger, the Disney CEO, had a successor named only to decide that wasn’t the right direction. He stayed on longer until he recently named Bob Chapek as his successor. Disney watchers had been nervous about these false starts at the top, prompting unease at all … Read more

Blog Posts Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

You may have noticed a lack of weekly emails letting you know about a new blog post. Don’t worry; we’re still doing blogs. However, in light of recent events, instead of our normal posts, we thought it would beneficial to go through our Psychology of Change series. This series walks through the Change Curve and … Read more

Group Dynamic: Navigating COVID-19 by Taking Care of Our Business

My mission: To make the world a better place, and choose a line of work that makes that happen. I do what I do for a living because when people have a better day at work, there is a positive ripple effect on the lives around them. And, when business is more productive, that’s good … Read more

To Whom are Leaders Allowed to Vent?

Curtis H. sent me a question via Linked-In: “As a previous leader in my fraternal organization at University, I found staying positive and bottling complaints overwhelming at times. If leaders shouldn’t show insecurity or vent around their followers, then is there an appropriate way to relieve those feelings?” Excellent question, Curtis. There are definitely inappropriate … Read more

A Practical Tip for Leaders Building Relationships

I recently read an article by Scott Warrick containing a practical model for looking at trust development. It’s helpful, and I’m highlighting the coolest point. “Seek out points of disagreement with people, then make the disagreement safe.” I’ve written about the importance of making discussions safe, but Warrick’s point is to find small things to … Read more

Leaders Are Mindful of Their Extraversion Bias

In Westernized societies, we have quite the bias toward extraversion, and this can hurt organizations. My assistant (an introvert) and I (an extravert) recently had a conversation about extraversion bias we thought we’d share with you. Extraversion and Leadership DeAnne: It’s interesting to me how, during a session when you ask people about the qualities … Read more

Practice Leadership While in Traffic

When presenting the Four Levels of Maturity as a way to adopt an others-focused mindset, I often joke that traffic is a great place to observe these levels in self and others. Maybe, though, it’s time to take it from a joke to a tool. For example… Level One is the person recklessly weaving in … Read more

Leaders Provide Real Trust-Building

In a recent team-development session, we made some important growth happen. Growing as a team isn’t arbitrary, and it doesn’t happen without real, hard work. And it especially doesn’t happen when the team lacks vulnerability-based trust. As with building trust in any type of relationship, trust doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, building trust is a … Read more

Three Disruptive Questions for Leaders

A couple of weeks ago, I was challenged to provide five minutes of content that would make a difference for leaders. Because of the power of questions, I decided to come up with three questions that are easy to explain but would have a lot of power. Here’s what I presented: Leaders move fast and … Read more

The Importance of Being Known

Chris McQueen, former Google employee, delivered a keynote address on some of the best practices his unit has learned, and I’ll share two of them with you. This week, I’ll offer some thoughts on generating solid team relationships. Next week, we’ll touch on the magic of three particular words. As most of you know, I’m … Read more