(This is not an article about politics) When someone dies and their family and friends are feeling grief-stricken and sad, we say, “I’m so sorry for your loss.” When someone loses a job and they’re feeling angry and scared, we say, “I’m so sorry – how can I help?” When some injures themselves and they’re feeling frightened and vulnerable, we …
Are you willing to be surprised?
We go into every situation with expectations. That’s unavoidable. Our brains are meaning-making machines, and when we don’t know what’s going to happen (which, of course, we don’t – ever), we make up stories about …what’s going to happen. And that means we have expectations. I’d hazard a guess that even the most advanced Zen masters have expectations. This is …
Listen up!
Communication. We tend to think of communication as what we say – the concepts, ideas, requests that we speak to individuals or groups. This is especially true of leaders, who, with some justification, consider a big part of their role to be about explaining projects, assigning tasks, giving feedback, and so on. Bluntly, though, this is a problem. Yes, of …
Can you take it?
Leaders give feedback to their people all the time. It’s a key skill for any leader: how to give feedback, whether positive or negative, in ways their people can hear, learn from, and grow. But taking feedback from their people? Not always easy for leaders, for a whole host of reasons. The formal process for leader-to-employee feedback is clearly defined …
Can you be “confidently ignorant”?
I came across this concept of “confident ignorance” long enough ago that I don’t remember where I saw it, but it stuck with me. What does it even mean? And is it a bad thing, or a good thing, or what? I’ve concluded that, like so many things, it depends. Let’s look at both sides. The “bad thing” side I’ve known …
Understanding ≠ Agreement
Throughout your career and your life, you’ll experience different levels of agreement, disagreement, and conflict. These days, some of it (maybe most of it) will be about the current state of politics and, well, All The Things going on. Some of it will be about what’s happening in your workplace. And some of it will be about Life Stuff. All …
Hey! Are you listening?
As leaders – as people – we are often exhorted to be better listeners, whether by our employees, our managers, or our families. There are books, articles, and online courses aplenty attempting to teach listening skills. But intellectual understanding doesn’t equate to in-the-moment skill. Developing a skill takes practice. Repetition. A willingness to make mistakes. That said, here’s a quick rundown of what not to …
Got questions?
Questions are good – right? Leaders are told to ask questions. I teach my students and clients to ask questions of themselves and of their people. So, questions are good, right? Well … yes … and you have to ask the right questions. Last week, my husband texted me from work to ask if I’d gone to the market yet. I answered, …
Communication, Comfort, and Tools
I teach tools for communication and leadership, rather than scripts, templates, or blueprints, for a very specific reason: tools adapt to the situations within which we use them, but scripts, templates, and blueprints are fixed – static – rote. I also talk about the problem of what I call “communi-telling”: top-down delivery of information or mandates about what is going …
If at first you don’t succeed…
Practice. It’s a word everyone loves to hate. Because it means we can’t just intellectually understand something. We have to do the thing, and in the beginning, we’ll do it badly – because that’s what it means to learn how to do it well. And leadership skills – practicing leadership – it’s scary. It’s vulnerable, and those who deeply want to …