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A few years ago, I went to a leadership retreat where everyone in the group did a trust fall. Have you ever done a trust fall? This is a time where you literally have to believe that someone truly has your back. It’s a leap of faith for yourself and for your team. In the…

Buzzwords can take on a life of their own. People throw them all over the place like they do with beads on Mardi Gras. And while workplace acronyms require a translator or a decoder ring, I’m talking about everyday words that are not workplace-specific. Words like vulnerability, transparency and trust are everywhere – in books,…

Am I on the right track? What are they doing?  It’s natural we compare ourselves to others. We do this for a variety of reasons: sometimes out of curiosity, perhaps for validation, or maybe to find similarities. When done in excess, comparisons don’t serve. Why? Because one mark of a brilliant leader is having the…

How do you create a sustainable movement? You stay the course, come “hell or high water.” The ending of my first draft of this blog had me flashback to the most memorable man I have known, his impact and the song list he created for his final days. I’ve thrown out the first draft because…

Simon Sinek wrote in The Infinite Game: “The rise of great societies, advancements in science and medicine and the exploration of space all happened because large groups of people, united in common cause, chose to collaborate with no clear end in sight.” This got me thinking about the importance and variety of communities in our…

You may have personally experienced this: Your team leader shares a vision and you are secretly uncomfortable with it or have different ideas. Yet despite your internal gut churning, you say nothing. And, your colleague says nothing. And, when no one speaks up, the silence is mistaken for alignment. Keeping your mouth shut might seem easier…

While reflecting back over my career, I realized that many of my most creative solutions were born out of chaos – when what had worked before no longer worked for the issue at hand. United around a common goal to find solutions, we brought together diverse teams to attack the issue from different angles. Do…

Over my corporate career, I inherited many different teams and had to get up to speed on whatever function I was then leading. My go-to way of creating strong team connection was to trust each person from the start. Trust? Another blog about trust? (See Jen’s great blog on trust and appreciation.) Well, it is…

I’ve never been “hip”. I’ve tried to be cool, but the truth is I was a bit of a “square” growing up…more conscientious than easy-going, always fretting about something versus letting it be. Sometimes, I can be so serious that I miss hidden meanings in sarcasm, a tactic employed frequently by my husband. As an…

Lessons often come to me when I’m playing, and that’s how this one came to me. Last week I found myself in my first virtual reality game. I was standing on the edge of a cliff, intent on rescuing my robot, when I realized that I was standing on the edge of a cliff. My…