Savoring and Rumination Part 3: Building a Conscious Savoring Practice
In Part 1 of this series, I introduced savoring and rumination as two sides of the same cognitive-emotional coin. In Part 2 we explored three strategies to reduce the damaging habit of rumination. Now in the third, and final, installment of this blog series I’ll share some ways to practice “conscious savoring”. While rumination comes […]
Keeping Your Executive Leadership Team Sharp
One of my greatest joys is working with highly motivated executive teams – particularly within organizations that have moved from small and scrappy to mid-sized and more formal. A question many of these teams ask is: How do we make sure our team stays sharp and effective as our organization grows? It’s a great question! […]
Five Questions to Answer Before Embarking on Strategic Planning
Each year organizations invest significant time and money in strategic planning efforts that, according to managers who participate, result in limited impact. Why do these efforts fail to produce the anticipated benefit? In my opinion it’s a lack of readiness or, more specifically, a failure to answer five questions: Are you driven by fear or […]
Are You an Over-functioning Leader? Part 3: Changing How You Lead
In part 1 of this blog series, we explored what over-functioning looks like and the price people and organizations may pay for this behavior. In part 2, we examined some of the underlying beliefs and behavior patterns that tend to cause over-functioning. In this third and final installment, we will take a look at how […]
Purpose: Finding Your Sweet Spot
About five years ago I got really serious about articulating my professional purpose. At the time I was moving through a lot of life changes. I was spread thin across too many projects. The work was interesting but I felt like I was not having much of an impact. I remember telling a colleague, “If […]
Discover Your Inner Saboteurs
For many years I’ve been asking my coaching clients to complete a free online self-assessment instrument developed by Shirzad Chamine, Stanford University lecturer and author of the New York Times bestselling book Positive Intelligence. His assessment helps identify “saboteurs,” the voices in your head that generate stress and undermine your potential for happiness and effectiveness. […]
Six Countercultural Declarations
An excerpt from Parker Palmer’s book, Hidden Wholeness, chronicles the ways in which blizzards – like life – can be overwhelming and disorienting. It’s a reflective piece about how swirling events and social forces can pull us farther and farther away from authenticity, integrity, and the things that nourish our souls. Consider these six unrelenting […]
IN MY TOOL BAG: Meet IRMA — The Impact x Resources Matrix
Have you ever been part of a meeting that produced a terrifyingly long list of new projects and initiatives? As a client of mine recently described such a meeting, “It was an energizing and inspiring conversation right up until the point we realized we were going to have to implement all of these ideas!” Without […]
IN MY TOOL BAG: The Priority-setting Matrix for Executive Teams
Recently at a senior executive team retreat, one member of the team questioned the necessity of the two-day off-site gathering. The executive rationalized that: “We are a group of department heads paid to run our own shows. If I’m honest I’m not sure why I need to be part of a senior team, other than […]
IN MY TOOL BAG: The Meeting Scorecard
More often than not, when I ask leaders, “How’d your meeting go?” they look at me sheepishly and answer with something like, “I’d like to think it went well. Nobody complained.” Despite the fact that meetings are an important business process in most organizations, “nobody complained” or “we made it through the agenda” are not […]