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 […]
“It’s Nothing Personal” by Lisa Husseini
“Taking life personally, whether you’re aware you’re doing it or not, is a lose-lose situation. Either you’re blithely unaware that you’re deep in victim mode and taking it out on the world around you, or you’re highly aware that you are trapped in an emotionally torturous box of your own making.” -Lisa Husseini Let’s say […]
Dancing With Surprises
Several years back I had the opportunity to work with a co-op founded by a group of artists who had all formerly experienced homelessness. I was invited to facilitate a strategic planning meeting involving the entire co-op membership. We met in their rented warehouse on Skid Row in Los Angeles. One key question facing these […]
Making the Case for Change
When it comes to organizational change, sometimes it’s hard to know how to begin. How do you assess if people are ready? How do you identify potential resistance? How can you motivate people to commit to a new direction? How might you engage them in shaping the future? People resist change for many reasons, including: […]
Seven Principles for Fostering Resilience in the Face of Challenge
You may be impressed to know that in my senior year I was my high school’s #1 tennis player. You will be decidedly less impressed to learn that our team was the bottom ranked in the league – every year I played. It’s safe to say we were the “underdogs”. My school, which was located […]
Anxiety and Our Three Brains
I received a number of appreciative emails about my recent blog (on the ways we can calm unproductive anxiety about the future) and was inspired to share a tool that might prove useful when you find yourself in a downward spiral of unproductive worry. The tool was developed by Due Quach (pronounced Zway Kwok), social […]
Four Ways to Calm Your Worries about the Future
The future has never felt more uncertain. How much time do you waste on excessive and unproductive worrying? I define “unproductive worry” as the downward spiral in which we take stock of the unknowns and convert them into worse case scenarios. We then fixate on those worse case scenarios and let them fuel anxiety and […]
ON MY MIND: Good Design Has No Victims. Same Goes for Good Leadership.
I recently spent the afternoon at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. One of the exhibitions featured a 10-foot high poster created by Rick Griffith of @MATTERdesign entitled: “An Introductory Ethic for Designers.” As I looked up at the massive manifesto and reviewed its 17 principles, it struck me that the word “leader” could easily replace […]
ON MY MIND: Healthy Teams, Building Trust One “Bid” at a Time
Think for a moment about a relationship at work that you really value. How would you describe this relationship? Now, think of a relationship where you feel less trust and connection. What makes these two relationships so different? According to relationship researcher John Gottman, we are constantly making “bids” for connection, support, and affirmation — […]