Who are you influencing today? No one? I assure you that is most definitely not the case. Whether you are aware of it or not, whether you like it or not, everyone has influence. You are always exerting it, and it can be dangerous to pretend it's not there. Not...

Once I was working with a team, and the situation they kept facing was that one team member felt like they were being picked on. Now, according to most everyone else on the team, they weren’t being picked on at all. Rather, they actually had some performance issues,...

When it comes to conflict, sometimes it isn't the subject of the conversation that causes the rift: it's the framework in which we discuss it. It's the assumptions we make when we dive in. In my experience, the CVI can be a great way to understand this on a deeper...

I had a client recently who was getting caught up in the idea of being a ‘great’ supervisor. She really wanted to be the best she could be — a very worthwhile endeavor! The tricky part comes, however, in how we measure ‘greatness.’ “So,” I asked her, “have you ever...

Let me lay out a scenario that is, I'm willing to bet, all too familiar to anyone reading this. Your boss tells you to do something, but you don't think it's the right call. You know that your time would be better spent elsewhere, and yet if you say that, you know...

You can’t stop dynamite from exploding once it’s ignited. At least, it's incredibly foolish and dangerous to try. It's much more effective and safe to try and mitigate the explosion instead.  If we call in the bomb squad, to oversimplify their dangerous work, they...

It's true that there is a lot to learn from the past, but all too often we get stuck there and it can cause great leaders to stumble. Say their team has a critique of them, or a past decision turns out to be a mistake, or that past decision is still cause division...

I discovered this image on Unsplash recently, and for some reason it really struck me. It's beautiful, yes; it also evokes Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," the literal picture of a traveler stopped in the wood and trying to decide which way to turn. The hiker in...

Have you ever worked so hard for your team that you kind of wanted to brag about it, even though you just know that won't go over the way you hope it will? Don't beat yourself up about it. It's a natural response to want our teams to know we care, especially when so...

Last week, we talked about taking blame versus taking responsibility. For many leaders, distinguishing between the two can be difficult; in our sincere desire to take responsibility, we often assign ourselves blame -- and blame is never productive. It can be even more...