Blog
Leading with Compassion
C-Suite — “C” is for compassion
Practicing Mindfulness
A prelude to training emotional intelligence
Doing More, Better, With Less
Creative Problem solving in the face of extreme limits
Lost Cause or Better Decisions?
The Character of Smart Teams
Thank you. Gracias.
On the eve of the start of the New Year 2015, we want to celebrate by giving thanks to all our clients with whom we’ve worked this last year. Why are we grateful to you all? Because you’re choosing to […]
Leading Change
Why is organizational change so challenging and how can we do it better?
“People don’t resist change. They resist being controlled.”
Susan Fowler Shows Us How to “Get Motivation” Right
“You can’t motivate people”
Companies spend a lot of time and money trying to engage and motivate their employees—in all the wrong ways.
It Takes a Mentor: Bringing up the next generation of excellence
Who remembers this image of eighteen-year-old Bill Clinton as a “senator” at a Boys Nation assembly in 1963 eagerly shaking the hand of President John F. Kennedy?
If you want others to follow: The hidden power of “active aloneness”
This time of year many of us have been on a summer holiday, and are about to return to a world that constantly pulls us outside ourselves and in countless different demanding directions all at once.
The Character of Genius: In Search of Nobel Laureates
Their advice to young scientists at the annual summer Lindau meetings
How it all started: Alfred Nobel’s philanthropic legacy
How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?
Julian Treasure shows us how
Julian Treasure teaches us the art of speaking powerfully in his inspiring and very entertaining 10-minute TED talk, which helps us positively and effectively change what we say and how we say it. Here are some excerpts.
V is for Vulnerable
Debbie Millman and Seth Godin
This is an alphabet book for adults with an urgent message about what it takes to dream, to live with joy, to find our purpose and do fulfilling work…
How to Survive Success
Elizabeth Gilbert on success, failure, and the drive to keep creating
We enjoyed Gilbert’s Ted talk a lot, because our experience proves it’s true. Success can be as disorienting as failure, and can derail you just as easily too. And not uncommonly, the challenges of success can be more confusing, lonelier, and riskier ones to work through.
Simple Exercises to Increase Happiness From Martin Seligman
“We think too much about what goes wrong in our lives and not enough about what goes right.”
This goes for all of us. Nothing is more within our control and yet gets in our way more than this way of thinking.
Fail Safe by Debbie Millman
“Imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time”
We find now an inspiring time time to listen to Debbie Millman’s heartening commencement speech, which was delivered to the graduating class at San Jose State University.
“There’s No Failure, Only Feedback”
The annual performance review
Performance reviews are on many manager and employee agendas these days as we start the New Year. And on both sides, we usually hear some form of resistance to the process.
Who isn’t drawn to someone who thanks us and acknowledges our contribution?
Leading with gratitude
Many people, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, are celebrating the annual holiday of Thanksgiving this week, which in the U.S. began as a feast of thanksgiving in the early days of the American colonies almost four hundred years ago.
Listen to your music: Elizabeth Landau explores the potent effects music has on our brain
Music is a powerful tool for helping us manage our mental and physical states. It helps pump us up, relax us, get us centered, prepare us for a great presentation, get our creative juices flowing, and propels us through a grueling workout, to say the least.
In her article, This is Your Brain on Music, Elizabeth Landau explores three recently published studies that look at how the brain responds to music and its potent effects.
What do regret, monkeys, and kindness have to do with great leadership?
George Saunders’s Advice to Graduates
Another academic calendar and the start of classes are around the corner, and graduation season is long past, but I just discovered that George Saunders gave the convocation speech for the Class of 2013 at Syracuse University. It centers on the need for kindness, what gets in our way of being better at it, and why it’s so important.
Olivia Fox Cabane makes leadership charisma accessible to everyone
It’s not a gene
Charisma is always on the list of “Top 5 Most Wanted” leadership skills that clients give us, particularly the more introvert among us. Their corollary belief is usually that they don’t have the gene, that “magic” something that belongs to the lucky few since birth.
