When we talk about corporate values, I’ve seen a bunch. They’ve spanned the gamut from “Don’t Suck” to “We believe philanthropy can help create a better world” and “Be Creative, Be Respectful, Be Jones” to “Enjoy the Ride.” I can't honestly tell you what any of them are supposed to mean. Most organizations have a list of values. And they’re full of big ideas – great ideas – like respect, integrity, teamwork, and excellence, but the definitions and implications are differe

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

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

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

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

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

Several years ago, I had a new leader join the HR team. In our first meeting, he sat us down for a super-casual, get-to-know-him talk. He gave us his background and bio, and when he got to why he was hired to lead our team, he said, "I was brought in to blow shit up." He then proceeded to tell us how he would blow said shit up and what his vision for the future was. I pulled him aside a few days after the meeting and told him, gently, that we had built all the shit he was

A colleague of mine was trying to decide whether or not to take a new job. There were lots of pros and a couple of major cons, and she was really struggling with her decision. She came to me because her boyfriend had told her to "trust her gut" and, while she knew what that meant (sort of), she didn't believe that her gut would ultimately lead her in the right direction -- it was weak, she argued, and would go for what was comfortable. I encouraged her to break the whole d

If you do any research into decision-making mistakes (and I have), you'll discover that there are boatloads of ways you can get in your...

In yesterday's HR Swap, we focused on how to deal with the high volume and wide variety of problems people bring to HR without taking on each problem as your own. Problems people were facing ranged widely, from hiring managers who wanted to hire in states where the company doesn't operate to managers wanting to fire people they hadn't documented as underperforming. The complexity and uniqueness of the kinds of issues HR professionals face would be funny if they didn't actual

I was trying to make a fairly small decision recently about whether I should volunteer at my daughter's school or not and found myself really struggling. If I chose not to do it, I would miss out on some really valuable time with my daughter, and the chance wouldn't come again. But if I chose to do it, I would have to take lots of time away from my work and stop taking on new clients, which is something I don't want to do right now. It wasn't a life-changing decision, but I

One thing I've always struggled with is borrowing trouble. Making mountains out of molehills. Playing the end of the act before the curtain even rises. I look for every way something could go wrong, every way I could mess something up, and then obsess about it... until it actually happens. Not because it was inevitable, but because I made it inevitable. I'm a bit of a Girl Scout; I like to be prepared for every possible outcome. In my purse at (almost) all times there a