Insights
What’s Your Impact on Your Peers?
When someone gets promoted, your gut reaction tells you a lot.
Is it a warm surge of YES!! They deserve every bit of this?
Or is it something more complicated?
When Contempt Enters the Room
As I interviewed George, I heard all the right things. But his voice and body language told a different story. Every time he said the right thing, there was a slight edge in his tone when certain names came up. A pause before responding that was half a beat too long. A way of quoting other people’s ideas that landed as a dismissal of those ideas. A slight raising of the eyebrow when he described a peer’s impact.
Underneath all of it was contempt. Unadulterated contempt.
I had to name it. And naming it out loud, with George sitting across from me, opened something that months of careful conversation had not. What followed was not unusual. What was unusual is that we finally went there.
Return-to-Office Mandates Expose a More Uncomfortable Problem
When a professional services firm I work with rolled out its return-to-office mandate last year, the executive team invested significantly in getting the communications right. Town halls, manager talking points, a well-crafted rationale. What they spent almost no time on was a harder question: did their teams have the design and leadership conditions to be effective together in person? Three months after the mandate, attendance was up. Engagement scores were not.
Exploring Team Norms: Why is this ok?
Most leaders think they have a communication problem.
They don’t.
They have a tolerance problem.
I worked with a leadership team where:
11 out of 40 people responded to a survey…
…and that was considered a win.
Why?
Because non-responsiveness had become normal.
Unchallenged norms are what keep teams stuck.
Not lack of skill. Not lack of effort.
If you want to shift performance, don’t start with tactics.
Start with this question:
“Why is this okay for us?”
When the Deadline Lands on Five Different Teams at Once
Here is a question worth asking before the next major initiative hits your organization:
When the deadline arrives, will your organization move faster—or will it meet more often?
Most executives recognize the pattern immediately: a mandate emerges that demands coordination across multiple functions, and while the objective is important, the deadline real and everyone agrees the work must get done, it stalls.
The Story Your Team Tells About You (And How It Becomes a Workload Problem)
“Am I Being Too Nice?”
The Team Habits That Make Innovation Stick
Over the years, I have learned that the gap between a good idea and real innovation is rarely brilliance. It is support. It is the everyday, unglamorous choices teammates make to help each other think wider, take smaller risks, stay steady when resistance shows up, and tell the story in a way people can hear.
So what does that support actually look like?
Your Team Isn’t Resistant. They’re Tired.
Organizations across industries are navigating continuous change. New strategies, evolving structures, technology implementations, culture shifts, and performance expectations often occur simultaneously.
When change efforts slow down or meet hesitation, it is easy to label the response as resistance. In many cases, however, the underlying issue is change fatigue.
Why Are There Still So Many Bad Managers?
Most days, I walk out of my office proud, energized by the integrity, courage, and human-centered leadership my clients demonstrate. But then… there are days that leave me shaking my head, frustrated and frankly stunned.