You know that feeling when you walk into a room and immediately sense that something is wrong? No one has said anything, but you can feel it. People are quieter, conversations are shorter, and everyone seems to be moving a little faster. No small talk or laughter. Just incredibly intense focus. Stress has a way of spreading. And when you're the leader, yours can spread particularly quickly. It’s not because your team is fragile or incapable of handling pressure; it’s b

Somewhere in our leadership journeys, many of us picked up the idea that good leaders are confident, have answers, make decisions, and stand by those decisions. And while doing those things can be great, there’s a leadership skill that runs alongside them and is often overlooked: The ability to change your mind. I’m not talking about flip-flopping or caving under pressure. I’m talking about changing your mind because you learned something new. I’ll say this first: If y

I was recently on vacation, away from my regular schedule and gym. And nobody will find it surprising that it was much harder to motivate myself to work out when it wasn’t automatic or part of my routine. I kept telling myself I’d get on the treadmill when I felt motivated. But here's the problem: my motivation was deeply unreliable. It came and went. I was motivated when I was watching a great show and then it would disappear when the workout got repetitive, difficult,

I asked a client recently what got in the way of delivering difficult feedback to her direct report. "I didn't want to say anything until I was sure," Cheryl [name changed] responded. And it’s something I hear all the time. Cheryl’s employee was a new manager struggling to delegate tasks effectively (or at all). She told herself she’d bring it up after one more incident. After the next project. After she had one more example, but weeks turned into months, and Cheryl’s del

Raise your hand if you’ve ever said, before making a decision, "I just need one more piece of data." Now raise your hand if, after getting one more piece, you just felt you needed one more. Maybe you're deciding whether to restructure your team. Have a difficult conversation with your kid. Launch a new initiative. Buy a new laptop. Change a process that everyone knows isn't working. You keep gathering information because it feels responsible, thorough, thoughtful. But we

In my training sessions, I often ask leaders to define delegation. Many say that it’s giving work away to someone else, or it’s freeing up your own time, or it’s distributing workload across the team. Only a few of them talk about delegation as an opportunity to grow their team. And while delegation certainly does create time, the psychology behind delegation suggests something much more important: great delegation develops people. When you hold onto work because it's f

You ask an employee to make a change. The employee becomes defensive. You announce a coming reorganization. Rumors spread before the meeting even ends. You introduce a new process. The team pushes back immediately. We often interpret these moments as resistance, lack of commitment, or negativity. But, really, it’s just a natural threat response. A threat? A lot of us think of threats as physical dangers (oncoming traffic, creepy shadow in the corner, a bear approachin

When I left acting a hundred years ago, I went to coaching school. And the skills I learned there turned out to be incredibly valuable, not just for my coaching practice, but for leading others in general. Getting my International Coaching Federation (ICF) certification was incredibly powerful for me because it took so many tools I was already using - both as a leader and as a trainer - and put names to them, making it easier for me to teach them to others. Now you, in one

Summer is a beak, right? The calendar says so. The weather suggests it. School schedules, long weekends, half-day Fridays, and “out of office” auto-replies feel like permission slips for joy and deep recovery. And yet, for a lot of people, burnout doesn’t take the summer off. It just puts on a bathing suit. Instead of the deep, heavy exhaustion of winter burnout, summer burnout often looks deceptively functional. You’re still responding to emails, just from a patio. You’re

I was building a training program many years ago, and the CEO and I had very different visions of what the training should look like. I thought we should blend the learning, making it easier for junior account people to learn on their own time, and he thought all sessions should be in person (because that's how they were when he did them three decades earlier). In the end, we went his route (because he wasn't just the CEO, he was also a bully), and I had to inform my team th

It's the quiet commitments and follow-through that build a foundation of trust.

Mid-year is a great time to evaluate the goals you've been working on since January. Are they still right?

Most boundary conversations focus on protecting time, identifying what you don't want to do, or learning how to say no. While those are important, they miss a more fundamental truth: every time we say yes, we are simultaneously saying no to something else. This is the principle of opportunity cost, what the alternative we give up is worth when making a choice. For example, if you spend $100 on a new bag, you can't spend that same $100 elsewhere. If you spend three hours help

How many leaders do you know who were promoted because they had all the answers? They've solved problems, delivered results, and demonstrated expertise. They became the expert widget-maker. And so they were promoted to lead the widget-makers. But what happens next to those expert widget-makers? Over time, their collection of experience and information quietly encouraged them to assume they already understood what was happening and how things would turn out. And those ass

Most people don't have a motivation problem; they have a remembering problem. At the beginning of the year, we decide we'll exercise, have difficult conversations, work on strategic priorities, or stop checking email every three minutes. The intention is real. The commitment is sincere. Yet somehow, when the moment arrives, the plan disappears. Not because we forgot our goals. But because we didn't connect those goals to the cues that actually drive behavior. Traditional goa

Many managers and leaders I've met think that the people who report to them are bad communicators - they aren’t sharing good enough information, or they aren't sharing often enough. In my experience, however, those leaders often have a questioning problem - they're not asking the right questions with the right frequency. What you ask (and the way you ask it) determines the quality of what you hear. Compare these two questions: “Did the project go well?” “What parts of the

People resist change for many understandable reasons, all of which create stress. Even positive change can create stress and anxiety. (Think about graduating from school, getting married, or starting a new opportunity.) Here are eight common reasons people resist change and what you can do about the stress they cause you when you face them. 1) Lack of Control Feeling in control gives us a sense of safety and stability. It helps us believe we can manage outcomes, avoid harm,

We all know that AI can improve your performance. It helps you do tasks faster and more accurately, but there's a cost: your ability to recall the information you used AI for decreases. In a similar vein, recording a lecture makes it easier for you to quote the lecture later, but it doesn't help you retain the information shared in the lecture. Only taking notes will really help with that. Using a calculator gets your math done quickly and correctly, but erodes your numbe

When people talk about power at work, they usually mean one thing: Authority. It ends up being about your title or whether you get the final say. But that’s just one type of power. And honestly? It’s not the best one (in my opinion). Power isn’t a single thing you either have or don’t. It's not something you can even control, really. It’s a set of tools, and too many leaders are only relying on one. The Six Types of Power (Whether You Realize It or Not) Back in 1959, socia

Good leaders lead each team member differently, meeting them where they need to be met. Maybe George needs more coaching and Amelia needs more training. A good leader will see that and not try to treat them the same. But great leaders are able to meet their people differently on a task-by-task basis, giving them support where they excel, and training where they're learning. The trick is knowing your people well enough to know where they're excelling and where they're stuc