Chiggers, mosquitoes, piranhas, and cats. These are all things that bite, in increasing order of size. (I know. He looks cute, but rub that oh-so-soft belly fur, and you’ll… get bitten.) Chiggers are tiny – very tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye tiny – insects that live in the grass, can move from said grass to your waist in 15 minutes, can’t be seen …
Identical twins actually aren’t
Identical twins: two children created from a single egg fertilized by a single sperm, and therefore with identical DNA. Know any? Maybe you are one? We’ve all seen stories about identical twins playing pranks on people who can’t tell them apart, or even how identical twins separated at birth appear to have remarkably similar lives. But… Did you know that …
How do you define “culture”?
We can agree that a company’s culture is important – that it has a huge effect on employee experience, the ability to hire good people and then retain them, and ultimately on the customer experience and the company’s success. But what IS culture? Is it how you feel about going to work every day? Is it measured by your turnover …
Is it really burnout?
~ Values ~ ~ Ethical behavior ~ ~ Burnout ~ ~ Meaning ~ What do these four things have in common? They’re all related to how we feel about our work. And of course they’re related to leadership as well. So let’s start at the top. Values Whether we take the time to identify them or not, we all have …
Debunking “normal”
Normal, according to Merriam-Webster, means “conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern: characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine.” Predictable. Stable. A sense of certainty, of knowing what’s likely to happen. None of that ever truly existed, of course, but at least we could pretend, act “as if.” We could set strategy, make five-year plans, look to …
Setting goals amid uncertainty
How can we set goals when everything seems to be changing from one week – one day! – to the next? One minute we’re all ready to head back to the office (at least some of the time), and the next minute we have a new covid variant and a whole new set of questions to answer. Reality can be …
Priority list – or to-do list?
Did you know that the word priority was never plural until the 1940s-ish? Think about it. It makes sense. Priority means The Most Important Thing. How can there be more than one? Yet as leaders and within organizations, we have endless lists of priorities. Too many. Research tells us that, to be effective, we should focus on at most three projects at …
Are you (inadvertently) enabling mediocrity?
People want to do a good job. They want to contribute. It’s part of what makes going to work every day worthwhile – in some ways, a more important part than the paycheck (always assuming said paycheck is in line with roles and responsibilities). So what happens? Why do we have people under-performing or completely missing the mark? There are – …
Is that meeting an email in disguise?
You don’t need me to tell you that we’re all Zoomed out. So I’ll make this short. Are you defaulting to yet another meeting – yet another Zoom video call – without stopping to think if that’s what you really need? Before sending out that invitation with the log-in link, I challenge you to ask: Could this be an email? Or …
Leadership, chiggers, and COVID (oh my!)
Yes, that headline is a tad weird. Stay with me here. First, “leadership” should be a verb, not a noun, no matter what the dictionaries say. Leadership is an action. It’s something we can choose to do, moment to moment. It’s how we show up in those moments. It’s not complicated, but it can take courage because it often feels vulnerable. And …