My dear friend, Pat Newmann shared this with me. It is an excerpt from Meg Wheatley’s 2010 book, “Perseverance.” I love it and hope you do too. “People who persevere walk the undulating edge between hope and fear, success and failure, praise and blame, love and anger. This difficult path often feels razor sharp and dangerous, and it is. Scientists call it the edge of chaos. It’s the border created by the meeting of two opposing states. Neither state is desirable. In fact, each must be avoided, no matter how enticing or familiar it appears. Possibility only lives on the

Welcome to your first monthly #UltraLeadership Workout! To get better at anything we need to put in practice time and work out. This monthly message is meant to be a regular reminder and resource that helps you work out at getting better at leading others for your organization. Each month you’ll have access to tested and proven tools and activities to help you get better at leadership. Your job as a leader is to create the conditions that enable others to willingly, enthusiastically, and repeatedly engage and contribute to shared important work. Our job is to help you get better

Your job as a leader is to create the conditions that enable others to willingly, enthusiastically, and repeatedly engage and contribute to shared important work. It is the job of a coach to help you get better at doing that. To get better at anything we need to practice; we need to work out. Every day, people observe your behavior and decide, “What do I think about this person as a leader?” and “Do I trust this person? People talk. And sometimes they talk about what they observe about you and your leadership. When they do, what are they saying?

In the past week, I’ve had conversations with three amazing leaders I coach. They all used the same word to describe their current reality – “overwhelmed.” I totally get it. We all feel that from time to time. The question is, “What are you going to do about it?” “What are you going to do about it?” sets up an existential choice for all of us – leaders especially. In every situation, whether we are trying to solve a problem or overcome a challenge, when things get hard, we always have three options: we can turn back. We can stop

My friends and I recently read an article in Fast Company by Brandon Klein on facilitation as a vital competency for leaders. Klein writes, “Being a good facilitator isn’t the same as knowing how to manage people or run a meeting. It all comes down to understanding the tools–and structure–that help people collaborate.” Indeed, David Isaacs, a co-originator of The World Café process says, “A primary role of leadership is to design, convene, and host conversations that matter.”* (See endnote) We agree that to facilitate well one needs to know what different tools and structures exist to help create the best conversation

We all have a default setting for how we think, feel, and communicate. Our default settings start out as coping mechanisms for challenges that come our way in life. Our default settings work – until they don’t. In most cases, coping behaviors that once did the trick become counter-productive and hinder our efforts to manage our own lives and interact with others successfully. Our default settings make up our personal “operating system.” The question is, “Which version are you running?” If you and your leadership are still running on the equivalent of Windows XP or Mac OS X Yosemite, that might

In a post today on Fast Company, Daniel Goleman reminds us how to turn compassion into action. He’s calling us to practice “metta.” Here’s my post on the topic from the archives (July 2017). If you’re a leader, people watch how you treat those with less power than you. How do you treat direct reports, waiters, cab drivers, front desk clerks, receptionists? Our behaviors with others tell the true story of how fully we have developed a capacity for caring. Just because we are leaders or people managers with deliverables to an organization doesn’t mean we are excused from being

All the people you work with have an opinion of you. Some of them may be talking about you right now. What do you think they’re saying? What’s it like to work with you? Are you reliable? Are you easy to work with? Are you a competent leader? Do they wish they were on your team? Do they seek you out to work on stuff together? I recently read a great post by a guy named Adam Karpiak on LinkedIn. One of his readers commented on how direct he was in his writing (they were appropriately complementing him). His response