The fall semester of a college-bound, high school student’s senior year is filled with many decisions about his/her next chapter. One of these is whether or not to select “early decision” for a given college. “Early decision” means that you have decided, in advance, to commit to that university if they choose you and thereby…
In Healthy Leadership, the chapter on Positivity addresses talking yourself up. That section starts with: “You talk more to yourself than to anyone else in the world. You are the only one who is with you 100 percent of the time. The conversations you have with yourself have an overwhelmingly high impact on your mindset compared to…
Just as winning in sports starts with practice, winning in business starts with understanding the performance process and expectations. If you wait until after the work is done, you are simply imposing consequences rather than inspiring performance. That’s why aligning with your teams on expectations is a good predictor of winning results. The large majority…
When was the last time that you did something for the first time? Last year, I mentioned to my husband that I wanted to learn stand-up comedy. It made me nauseous to think about it, but I knew I needed to lean into it so I could grow. So, a few months later, Lee bought…
One of our clients, Cindy Lewis, is Executive Chairperson of AirBorn, a manufacturer of high-quality, custom electronics. She uses the “Rule of Six” when clarifying important information, such as the company’s vision. The idea is that you should not expect team members to fully understand or internalize any message until they hear it repeated at…
If you really want team values to take root, involve your team in the process of clarifying them. People are committed to what they help create, so let them interpret the values and define behaviors (within your acceptable boundaries). You can facilitate this process by asking questions like: What do our team values mean to…
Values like teamwork, service, integrity, and excellence are just concepts. You cannot measure and manage a concept. However, once you convert your values into actions and behaviors, then you can observe, measure, and manage them. That’s how you bring your values to life, by describing, communicating, and modeling behaviors that demonstrate each value. This clarity…
After hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of flights around the world were forced to land at airports that weren’t their intended destinations. A whopping thirty-eight of these rerouted planes touched down in the small…
Most growth occurs when you are uncomfortable. That’s why adversity can be our friend in growth. Since adversity has an uncanny knack for paralyzing us, it becomes critical to keep moving through it. Otherwise, we will be stalled in its grip. At 19, Amy Purdy was living the life she had always dreamed of as…
Benjamin Franklin addressed values-based decisions more than two centuries ago when he said, “We stand at a crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. "Each choice is made in…
