Resilient Wednesday Weekly Memo

I visited the coast of Northern California last week meeting with some prospective clients. One of them invited me to go to a “you-pick-em” strawberry field at a local commercial operation. This fellow, who is now the CEO of a thriving technology company shared some of his background with me in response to my questions […]

Nobody likes to be micromanaged and we usually associate it with an overbearing boss who just likes to stick his nose into everyone’s business. Micro-management, however, does have its rightful place in many workplace situations. Recently I was meeting with a regulatory and compliance officer for a technology firm and she shared about the challenges

A few months ago, I found the room spinning when I went to get up out of bed. It only lasted 15 seconds or so but after 4 days of it, I thought it best to see my physician. He diagnosed me within a few minutes as having “‘benign paroxysmal positional vertigo,” (it’s always good

We’re in Canada this week with our family traveling between Montreal and Quebec City. Canada and the US celebrate independence during this first week of July with our Northern neighbors commemorating the formation of the Dominion of Canada. In 1867, the British colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Canada (eventually Ontario and Quebec) came

I ran into some youth baseball players having pizza with their parents. They had just finished their game and were down. One of the dad’s shared that they had won two games yesterday and they were all feeling good about their victory, but their personal and group self-esteem took a downward hit as their team

In one organization I worked with, I was facilitating a meeting where the team was reviewing their weekly dashboard report that consisted of mostly green dots indicating that all was moving along well. The head of the group stated that everyone was verbally reporting to her that they were having trouble keeping up with the

We were in New York last week celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary when we headed off to the Broadway half-price ticket window and bought tickets to a new and mostly unheard of show called Hadestown. This musical recalls the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and their journey to dark reaches of the underworld.

Most teams run by working through an agenda and then sending everyone out to do their thing. They rarely work together and even worse, just assume that everyone understands how to be a good team member, as if it is genetically programmed. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, most people don’t know

Getting the right jump on your morning can set the tone for your entire day. You already have your ritual in play and it may include reaching for your phone to see if your boss sent you an email over night or checking out the morning’s news shows where you’ll get caught up in the

I attended a meeting last week with my mastermind group and our coach, Alan Weiss in Washington, DC. I was discussing Retooling Leadership Development (my new book with Michael Couch due out in early 2020) and the best ways to promote a book after it is released. The group came with a variety of best