If you were a professional musician, you’d spend the vast majority of your time practicing and only a fraction performing. The same is true for athletes, actors, and surgeons. In most high-performance professions, the ratio is heavily weighted toward rehearsal. Leadership often works in reverse. Many leaders spend very little time practicing the interactions that matter most, opting instead to wing it […]
Why Don’t We Practice? Read More »
It sounds like a rom-com opening. Unfortunately, it’s a pattern we’ve all experienced at work. The person you’re asked to spearhead a project with becomes a real stick in the mud. Maybe their input is delaying progress, or they’re lacking the creativity the work requires. Maybe you feel like they’re doing the bare minimum or
Two Good People, Stuck. Read More »
A few weeks before Christmas in the US, HBO bought the rights to a Canadian adaptation of the romance novel Heated Rivalry. They did almost no promotion — there was no time — and yet this show was quickly everywhere. It spread because people talked about it. Viewers were posting clips, imploring their friends to
What the Heated Rivalry Buzz Can Teach Us about Company Culture Read More »
For years, leadership potential revealed itself in the work; not just in the outcomes but in how someone got there. You could see it in how they framed a messy problem, how they worked through imperfect data, how they stayed steady when things got murky. You could watch their reasoning unfold in real time. You
Are We Losing the Signals That Help Us Spot High-Potential Leaders? Read More »
Coaching is an investment in individual leaders. That investment may also come into direct conflict with your organizational system. Coaching works best when the organization can support the work it generates – when insight, experimentation, and behavior change are supported rather than quietly absorbed by the individual. Organizational support is what makes coaching usable, visible,
Coaching in Organizations: Why the Environment Matters Read More »
