Leadership Coaching
A Great Purpose for Business
This post is targeted to anyone who, deep down, wants to make a significant positive difference for the good of others. Not just those who want to make other people’s lives better each day, but those of you who desire to make BIG changes in someone’s life, such that they would one day say you…
Read MoreThe Key to Controlling the Elephant
Do you remember the analogy of the rider and the elephant in the book Switch? Each of us has a rider—our rational, logical self—and each of us has an elephant—our emotional, reactionary self. When things are going just fine in our lives, our rider is usually in control; we make decisions based on healthy beliefs and…
Read MoreFind the Bright Spots
My son Marc was expelled from school a number of years ago because of a senior prank that went way too far. He and his friends got up in the middle of the night, broke into their school, and vandalized it. They stole the keys to school vehicles and drove them. You didn’t even have…
Read MoreI’m Listening
Dr. Frasier Crane was the main character on the show Frasier. He played a psychiatrist who had his own radio show in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle, Washington. His radio show had a call-in format. People called in with their problems, and he dispensed advice. The show was a big hit. Frasier was a spin-off of…
Read MoreThe 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 your sweet spot—that great place where you are living…
Read MoreLeaning 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 about conflict. This time it’s a real one, though…
Read MoreLeaning 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 is a short story in a conversation format. I…
Read MorePersonal 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 happening on the “dance floor.” Getting up in the balcony…
Read MoreGrowth 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…
Read MoreLeaning 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 healthy conflict conversation. The first is when someone…
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