Building a Leadership Culture

In a leadership culture the practices of innovation, visioning, execution, and reflection arise everywhere in the organization, and everyone’s behavior is characterized by high degrees of honesty, trust and accountability. The Four Fields of Leadership and the Cycle of Leadership provide a framework for intentionally building and maintaining a leadership culture. Watching organizations wrestle with…

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Your GPS For Relationships

In 2011 three women driving a rented SUV were heading back to their hotel from a conference not far from Seattle. It was around midnight, and they were using the car’s GPS to navigate. It guided them down a dark road into what appeared to be a puddle but turned out to be a swamp. Trusting their GPS, they kept going, losing control of the vehicle before abandoning it and wading to shore. They escaped, safe but wet. By the time the vehicle stopped, it was completely submerged.

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The Power of Assessments and Assertions

The Outer World and the Inner World An important distinction that is often overlooked when people communicate with one another is that of assessments and assertions. Assertions are statements of fact; they can be proven true or false with solid evidence, so that there is no question about their veracity. For example, if we said…

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Build Relationships to Build Teams

A client asked us to work with a set of four teams that were performing poorly … trust between the teams was low and animosity was high. Each team had developed its own beliefs about why the other teams were dysfunctional and were the cause of all the problems. Handoffs between the teams were awkward and often late … their work often resembled a race to the bottom, with everyone undermining everyone else, and everyone’s work looking bad.

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Turning Conflict Into Collaboration

Leaders sometimes say that conflict and disagreement are healthy. What’s important are differences, not disagreement. Aware leaders cultivate collaboration around differences, not conflict about disagreements. Collaboration generates creativity and innovation, produces less stress, and strengthens relationships.

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The Mind of the Leader: Awareness and Attention

There is a saying in the martial arts: “Choice follows awareness, energy follows attention.” Awareness and attention work together to produce effective leadership. Sometimes one dominates, sometimes the other, but both are necessary. For many people, awareness and attention do not come naturally, but they can be cultivated. Each serves to develop and enhance the other, and each has its own place in the mind of the leader.

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Paying Attention: The Power of Mindfulness Meditation

Many of my clients ask about mindfulness meditation, a powerful method for enhancing the performance of individuals, teams, and leaders that is being adopted in corporations large and small, around the world. In response to those questions, I decided to provide a short introduction here.

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Three Dynamics Every Business Must Master: Efficiency, Effectiveness and Resilience

The Evolution of High Performance Organizations. Businesses that thrive in the coming decades will excel in three essential capabilities: efficiency, effectiveness and resilience. Efficiency is a measure of the cost of executing a logical process. Effectiveness is a measure of the degree to which you are producing the results you want. Resilience is a measure of your ability to meet any and all challenges successfully, to thrive whenever possible and to survive all challenges.

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Wherever You Go, There You Are

A lot of people don’t like their jobs. In a 2013 Gallup study,[1] fully 70% of workers in America were found to be “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.” Engagement is a direct measure of job satisfaction. Why are people so disengaged? And if you are less than happy at work, or would like to find work more satisfying, what can you do about that?

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Your GPS For Relationships—Brief Version

Like GPS systems, we hold “maps” or “pictures” of how the world is in our minds. These maps serve as GPS systems for our lives. Sometimes they get us right where we want to be, and sometimes they get us hopelessly lost. More than once I have found that my own attitudes and beliefs made a relationship difficult, as much as I wanted to blame the other person for a conflict or argument we were having.

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