I have heard it in townhalls, written it in culture decks, and said it to my own team more times than I can count โ: ‘bring your โWHOLE self to workโ’. For the better part of a decade, though, what it actually โgot read as was something soft: put a plant on your desk, mention …
A new strategy is announced on Monday. By Wednesday, budgets are being revisited, someone is worried about their role, and delivery is still expected to continue as planned. Almost none of that gets resolved by the strategy document. It gets โuravels, or doesn’t, โat one layer: โthat of the managerโs standing between the decision and …
When I first read Patrick Lencioniโs The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, one phrase jumped off the page: fear of conflict. It triggered a memory from my early career, sitting in a leadership meeting where a young manager disagreed openly with the CEO. The room went still. You could almost hear people silently begging, please …
I was just entering my middle management years when I was handed my first real opportunity to lead something from scratch. A large-scale project that didnโt exist yet in form, but was full of potential. It was all heart and all grit. Long days, high stakes, but the joy of creating something meaningful made it …
This is back in the day when we only had landlines. My father was a General Manager of this large pharmaceutical company. He used to keep so busy that I rarely saw him much on weekdays. However, almost every day after school, Iโd dial the landline number of his office (I didnโt know the extension). …
Why AI Anxiety in Creative Work Is Real โ and What to Do About It By someone who once spent three days choosing the right shade of teal for a pitch deck โ and still thinks it mattered. I started my career in advertising, back when vector logos were guarded like family secrets and nobody …
A few years ago, I had a moment of realization that changed the way I think about leadership. I was working on a particularly thorny challenge one of those problems that doesnโt have a clear solution, just layers upon layers of shifting variables. At some point, I found myself longing for a simpler time, a …
Yes, we knowโitโs a bit of a clichรฉ to start a Womenโs Day post with Maya Angelou. But honestly, nobody puts it better than she does. So sometimes, cliches are good. “Iโve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them …
The Leadership Catch-22: Why Complexity Trips Us Up (and How to Beat It) A funny thing happens when we face complexity: instead of leaning into it with curiosity, our nervous system often sounds the alarm. Fight, flee, freeze anything but engage. Itโs as if our brain mistakes a messy spreadsheet or an uncertain future for …
๐๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐๐ง๐ฌ๐ฐ๐๐ซ ๐ญ๐จ “๐๐จ๐ฐ ๐๐ซ๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ?” ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ฅ๐ฐ๐๐ฒ๐ฌ “๐โ๐ฆ ๐๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฒ,” ๐๐ญโ๐ฌ ๐๐ข๐ฆ๐ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฌ๐. How often do we respond to โHow are you?โ with โIโm busyโ as if that somehow validates our worth? Jennifer Garvey Bergerโs conversation on The Conscious Hospitality Podcast with David Arraya made me realise that busyness is often a mask. …
