Vulnerability and Courage

(A version of this post was originally published here on January 29, 2018.) I’m no psychiatrist but I’ve always been intrigued by the things people do and why they do them. Out of this curiosity, and over many years of observations, I’ve come to my own theories, and even beliefs, about people’s make-up. It is…

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Beliefs, Culture, and Grit

(This post was first published here on November 7, 2016.)  I am reading a good book right now called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. In a nutshell, this book is about the various psychological studies done over many years around what makes people successful. Of course in these studies they are…

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The Great Eight: Trust

(This post was first published here on August 30, 2016.) As I write this post, there are 6,289 books on trust available under the Business and Money category on Amazon. What can we possibly add to all that wisdom? Maybe nothing. But please keep reading anyway. Trust is foundational to great teams, and so far—even in those…

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The Great Eight: An Introduction

(This post was first published here on August 1, 2016.) Throughout our year together in LEAD 365, we focused on three “buckets” of leadership—three areas that great leaders need to focus on: Being a person worth following Creating clarity around purpose/mission, vision, and values Building a great team In our building a great team sessions,…

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Trust (Again?)

You may be wondering, “Why are we talking about trust again?” The simple answer is that everything we do with others is built upon this one word. Think of the pain created when we absolutely don’t trust someone. Something has created question marks in our mind around their competence, reliability, what is true, etc. When…

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Vulnerability and Courage

I’m no psychiatrist but I’ve always been intrigued by the things people do and why they do them. Out of this curiosity, and over many years of observations, I’ve come to my own theories, or even beliefs, about people’s make-up. It is from these observations and desire to understand people that the DoKnowBe Tree came…

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Trust

Trust is at the heart of building great teams. Without it, a cascade of negative things that hurt the team takes place: reluctance to have healthy conflict, unwillingness to make commitments, avoidance of accountability, and a failure to look at real results (Lencioni—The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team).  In LEAD 365 we also learned another set…

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The Five Fingers of Trust

Back when we taught at your team-building retreat we talked about the Eight Characteristics of a Great Team. Can you remember any of the characteristics? (I’ve listed them all for you at the bottom of this post if you want a reminder.)

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Trust: The Foundation of Any Healthy Team

(This post is written for alumni of LEAD365, although all are welcome to read it. It was originally published on November 30, 2015.) A few weeks back we had a man come to do some work on our living room carpet, and he and I started to slide our very heavy couch out of the…

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Why Can’t We Be Friends

You may be aware that there was an election last week, a rather contentious one. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about politics today. But I am going to talk about beliefs. The division we’ve all seen in our nation around who and what our country needs is a perfect opportunity to explore how…

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