A Personal Growth Model: Invite Feedback. Adjust. Repeat.
We all like an ‘at-a-boy or ‘at-a-girl. I can distinctly remember a handful of times when our organization’s president called me out by name in front of my peers for an above-and-beyond type effort. That felt great. But I can also remember taking a tough phone call...
The Sweet Spot
Happy Thanksgiving fellow leaders! This week’s post is going to take a new angle on the sweet-spot exercise. During our year of LEAD, we looked at the diagram below several times asking the same extremely important question: How close are you right now to being in...
Leaning Into Healthy Conflict: A Second Short Story
After writing back-to-back posts on what I believe is our most important topic for West Michigan leaders (Leaning Into Healthy Conflict), I shared a fictional story about the use of this conflict model last week . This week I’m going to share one more short story...
Leaning Into Healthy Conflict: A Short Story
I recently wrote two back-to-back posts on what I believe is our most important topic for West Michigan leaders: Leaning Into Healthy Conflict. That topic is still on my mind, so I’m writing another piece on it today. However, this one’s a little different. This one...
Personal Balcony Time
(This post was first published here on March 20, 2017.) Great leaders make sure that they schedule what we call “balcony time.” So many things call for our attention at work every day that we can get completely caught up in the day-to-day business of business—what's...
The Twilight Zone
I’m not sure if you know this, but next to Christmas, Halloween is the most expensive holiday in the calendar year. The average American spends more on Halloween than on any other holiday, save Christmas. This is my Halloween blog. You are traveling through another...
Growth Over Time
Many of you have heard me say that concepts often work on me, whether I want them to or not. My ego would like to claim that I’m working on them, but I have to admit that I often feel like I have no choice—some concepts just seem to wrestle with me until I feel like...
Leaning Into Healthy Conflict, Part Two
Last week’s post was meant to remind you why leaning into healthy conflict is so important. Today’s post is meant to remind you of the model itself. The First Step: Begin the Conversation In the Leaning into Healthy Conflict model, there are two ways to begin a...
Leaning Into Healthy Conflict, Part One
LEAD 24/7 alums, do you recall the number one thing we wish leaders in West Michigan would do better? Yes, it’s being willing and able to lean into potential disagreements, or what we call leaning into healthy conflict. Today’s post is the first of two on the subject....
Trust and Verify
Many of us were introduced to the five fingers (or five elements) of trust on the LEAD 24/7 retreat. We talked a lot about trust during that time together. What we discovered is that trust encompasses many critical pieces. I can trust (or not trust) your talent, your...