FROM MY BOOKSHELF, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek Murthy
Everyday, I speak with leaders who are surrounded by people and yet admit that they feel lonely. Loneliness is defined in Vivek Murthy’s book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World as “the subjective feeling that you are lacking the social connections that you need.” When I began reading Murthy’s […]
ON MY MIND: Coming Back Together (Part 3)
If you have read part 1 and part 2 of this blog about coming back together, you have probably asked yourself the questions: What does coming together actually look like in the face of charged political differences? How do we build empathy and understanding across differences without avoiding our honest disagreements? A new short documentary […]
ON MY MIND: Coming Back Together (Part 1)
Nearly everywhere I look I see communities, families, and friends mired in division, derision, and despair. Increasingly, we talk about those who are working toward different outcomes not as our opponents but as our enemies. And when it comes to enemies, we feel self-justified in doing whatever we must in order to win. We live […]
IN MY EARBUDS: Where Workplace Dynamics Meet Therapy
Most of us carry the very same blind spots, limiting beliefs, and relational habits to work as those we demonstrate in our personal relationships. And, for better and worse, those patterns impact the people around us – our employees, our colleagues, and our business partners. Or as the host of the podcast How’s Work? likes […]
ON MY MIND: Distributed Teams (Part 2) – What About Culture?
Even before so many of us started working from home, companies were already mastering the art of distributed teams. Distributed teams are made up of team members working from different locations. Most commonly, distributed team members work in different cities and countries around the world. Still, with the abrupt pivot to remote work, many leaders […]
ON MY MIND: Six Shifts for High-Stakes Conversations Shift 6, From Being Right to Being Kind
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” -Abraham Joshua Heschel In this series I’m sharing the Six Shifts leaders can make in order to be more successful in having a high-stakes conversation. Shift 6 involves shifting from being right to being kind. Here’s what I […]
Six Shifts for High-Stakes Conversations, Shift 5: From Blame to Shared Contribution
In this series I’m sharing the Six Shifts leaders can make in order to be more effective in having a high-stakes conversation. Shift 5 involves less focus on looking for someone to blame, and more effort trying to understand what happened. Consultant Marylin Paul wrote in The Systems Thinker: “Blame provides an early and artificial […]
ON MY MIND: Six Shifts for High-Stakes Conversations Shift 3, From Intent-focused to Impact-focused
In this series I’m sharing the Six Shifts leaders can make in order to be more successful in having a high-stakes conversation. Shift 3 involves checking our assumptions about another person’s motives, character, and competence. Our human brains are wired for short-cuts. We see something and then quickly, and unconsciously, make up a story. That […]
ON MY MIND: Six Shifts for High Stakes Conversations, Shift 1, From Preoccupied to Purposeful
In this series of posts I’m sharing Six Shifts in mindset and behavior that leaders can make in order to be more effective in having high-stakes conversations. For most of us, when we think about having an uncomfortable conversation we worry a lot about what could go wrong, including defensiveness (theirs and ours), conflict escalation, […]
ON MY MIND: Six Shifts for High-Stakes Conversations
It’s the moment of truth. You can’t put it off any longer. The time has come for a difficult conversation with your colleague. You must express serious concerns about their actions or disagreement with them. You worry it will spark defensiveness or do damage to the relationship — and with good reason! It’s become uncomfortably […]