We All Need a Common Enemy – Part 3
In my last two posts, I introduced you to Santiago Genovés and the bonkers social experiment he conducted in 1973 with four men and six women aboard a raft in the middle of the Atlantic. And then I rounded up some of my favorite highlights of how it all went totally...
We All Need a Common Enemy – Part 2
Last week, I introduced you to Santiago Genovés and his utterly bizarre, misguided, and terribly executed social experiment with four men and six women aboard a raft in the middle of the Atlantic. Here’s a quick recap: Genovés, an anthropologist, thought he could...
We All Need a Common Enemy – Part 1
One look at the front page of any major newspaper — or most of our social media feeds, for that matter — will make you feel like the world is always in conflict. And to some degree, that’s true. As humans, we have the capacity to treat one another in horrible ways....
Avoiding the Cliff
I recently received an urgent call from one of the Sheriff’s offices I work with. They asked me to facilitate a call between two people in their organization in an effort to address an issue before it became a full-blown problem. See, in law enforcement, “SRIMs” are...
Have Your Best-Laid Plans Gone Awry? Here’s What to Do Next
By this point in the year, if you’re like most people, the resolve you had for your resolutions in January has probably long since faded. To paraphrase Scottish poet Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” So, if you know me, you likely see...
What to Do When You Don’t Have the Luxury of Building a Team from Scratch
If you’ve read my last few posts about Andrew and the amazing opportunity some of us get to build a team from the ground up — the right way — you might be feeling inspired. You might also feel a bit deflated or discouraged because your situation is entirely different....
New Leadership Opportunity? Here’s How to Build a Team from Scratch The Right Way
In my last couple of posts, I’ve talked about a client of mine who had the extraordinary opportunity to rebuild an organization basically from the ground up — how he could prepare himself for the leadership responsibilities and opportunities ahead and how to set his...
How to Set Your Team Up for Success as a New Leader
In my last post, I shared a story about a client who was given the opportunity to make a career shift and take over his father-in-law’s property management business. We talked a lot about how he viewed this opportunity from his point of view — how I encouraged him to...
Are You Being Called to Take a Journey or a Leap?
One of my coaching clients (we’ll call him Andrew) is a CPA with a local firm. When his father-in-law recently retired, he passed the baton to Andrew to lead his property management company. To help with the shift in careers and teams, Andrew came to me for some...
Self-Imposed Enemies, Expectations, and How to Break Free
In my last blog post, I shared how expectations are the ultimate killer (and why the secret to a better life involves playing the long game). Here’s another potentially unpopular opinion: We create atrocities of expectations — unrealistic, undefined, unclear,...