A few weeks ago, I was assembling a new desk in our studio. Mostly the project was going smoothly, but one pesky bolt wasn’t fitting onto a brace for the desk. The wrench I had clearly wasn’t working well for the job, but I figured I could just force it a bit instead of having to go all the way back to the garage to get the wrench I really needed. I pressed on with the wrongly-sized wrench, only to have it slip out of my fingers and slice into my thumb. This resulted in me having to stop the wor...
Feb 11, 2021•4 min
When I was 16 years old, I discovered that the police department in the town I grew up in had an explorer program. Since I was interested in a career in law enforcement at the time, I attended a meeting and quickly joined. I was never a sworn police officer - nor have I ever done any of the difficult work in policing. However, I did spend two years volunteering in uniform at community events, riding along many times with police officers on patrol, and even graduated from a junior police academy....
Jun 12, 2020•5 min
Most of the devices we use each day have two essential software components: apps and operating systems. The best apps usually do a few things really well. The browser app on my iPhone makes sure I can view websites easily. The task management app makes sure I don’t miss a deadline. I just looked and I have 149 apps on my iPhone. I have no idea how that compares with the general population, but my guess from casual interactions with others is that I’m not alone with a large quantity of apps. That...
Mar 05, 2020•5 min
A client told me recently that his manager was concerned about a behavior he’d observed in customer meetings: You’re not jumping in fast enough. My client agreed with the feedback. He even offered to me that he’s noticed the awkward silence in some meetings when people look to him, expecting his input. As we started discussing what he might do, I couldn’t help but empathize with the situation. Early in my career, I noticed that same awkward silence in some meetings when people would turn to me. ...
Feb 20, 2020•3 min
My son and I are reading the original Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This exchange appears in the book: Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?” The cat asked, “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it really doesn’t matter, does it?” I’m often asked for advice on what to do next in complex situations. The question I find myself asking is: What’s the outcome you want? The most common response to that questio...
Feb 13, 2020•2 min
One of our Academy members reached out to me awhile back. He was handling a delicate situation in his organization, requiring him to navigate tons of internal politics. He needed to suddenly give a lot of people a company line he didn’t exactly agree with. He didn’t have ethical objections to the change, but it noticeably didn’t align with the path he’d been cultivating for his team. He knew people would officially accept it, but also that some of his most trusted employees would ask him questio...
Jan 30, 2020•3 min
This past weekend, I had to do something I’ve been dreading for awhile. It’s been looming over me. It’s been staring at me (literally) for years. The old paint cans needed to go. Several painting projects over the years had littered our garage with half full cans of paint. And, since I’d placed it on my 90-day personal plan, I begrudgingly decided to do something about it. I had our children help me move the cans out of the garage (curiously, they were also not excited about this project). I cat...
Jan 23, 2020•5 min
Mark Twain once received this telegram from a publisher: NEED 2-PAGE SHORT STORY TWO DAYS. He sent this response back: NO CAN DO 2 PAGES TWO DAYS. CAN DO 30 PAGES 2 DAYS. NEED 30 DAYS TO DO 2 PAGES. Twain’s point is as important for leaders as it is for writers. Being concise takes discipline and, ironically, time. All of us put ideas together in different ways. Some leaders like to just write it all out. Others think best by talking things through out loud. Some of us do our best idea generatio...
Jan 09, 2020•2 min
About fifteen years ago, I was sitting in the lobby of a building at a client site, waiting for an appointment. An employee walked into the lobby and started a conversation with the security guard. It seemed they knew each other well and the she either didn’t notice me or have any care about her conversation being overheard. They exchanged a few pleasantries and then she said this: When I got my job here, I was so excited. She went onto describe that she had worked really hard to land the positi...
Dec 13, 2019•5 min
Most of us have had that manager that annoyed us to all ends with micromanagement. They were in our face every three hours about a task because we weren’t quite doing it right and it had to be done their way. As a result, it’s been my experience that most managers have some level of healthy concern about not becoming that person. That’s a good place to be. Until it’s not. I actually find the opposite problem more often the issue. Out of concern to not become a micromanager, people tack completel...
Dec 05, 2019•5 min
I began my career working in a neighborhood education center. Early on in my new job, a parent called one day to inform us that her daughter, who was struggling with math, would not be continuing in our program. I spent a minute or two chatting with the mom. It wasn’t about the money. The child just wasn’t motivated to do the work and she didn’t see the point in continuing to take everybody’s time. Later that day, my boss (who knew way more about the girl’s struggles with math than I did) heard ...
Nov 21, 2019•3 min
A client reached out to me recently and shared a struggle he’s been having. His organization is going through a difficult time — for reasons that have nothing to do with him, his team, or his part of the organization. Strong headwinds are at play for the entire industry that will likely take several years to play out. He mentioned that in the recent past, a few higher level leaders have swooped in for site visits and promised resources and changes to help his team better weather the storm. Howev...
Nov 14, 2019•5 min
This week, I’ve heard lots of bad news. This has included things like an unexpected layoff, dealing with a mental health challenge, losing a major business deal, and an unwanted result from a doctor. The fact that bad things are happening in the world is obviously not news, but it’s personal when it’s someone you know and care about. As I heard about these different situations from the people who were sharing them, I was struck by the odd coincidence that all of them, not knowing each other, had...
Nov 08, 2019•3 min
Years ago, I was instructing a training course for a group of engineers building fighter jets. During the introductions, several the participants introduced themselves as stress engineers. I was curious what a stress engineer did, so naturally I asked one of them about it later. Turns out the job involves analyzing the various materials used on the aircraft and then testing how much strain they can handle. As you’d imagine, figuring this out is pretty important when building an aircraft. If you’...
Oct 31, 2019•3 min
A decade ago, I responded to an inquiry from a new client who had reached out to talk about being more effective. During our first meeting, it became increasingly apparent that he was working a lot. At some point in the conversation, we got into detail on his schedule. He was woking 12-14 hours, most days. “Most days” meant virtually everyday. Monday through Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. On Sundays, he would come in to work for a few hours in the morning, leave to spend time with him family ...
Oct 10, 2019•4 min
When I first started the Coaching for Leaders podcast back in 2011, it didn’t even occur to me to reach out to well known experts to appear on the show. At some point after the first year, I got a little braver. (Not smarter, but braver.) I started sending out some invitations, asking experts to appear as guests. Based on the lack of responses, most of these emails probably went ignored. I still remember well the response from an assistant of a well-known expert who wrote back and thanked me so ...
Oct 03, 2019•4 min
When I was about six years old, my dad bought a Tandy 1000 computer from Radio Shack as a Christmas gift for our family. I remember learning how to use the floppy disks, how to connect the dot matrix printer, and the intricate details of swapping memory boards to upgrade from 128K of memory to 256K. We spent countless hours playing games, learning MS-DOS, and occasionally pulling our hair out in frustration as we navigated this new world of personal computing. It spurred my interest in using tec...
Sep 26, 2019•5 min
Many years ago, I was standing in the lobby of a customer’s building, waiting between meetings. An employee I had worked with years earlier noticed me and stopped to say hello. She explained that she was now working directly for one of the top people in the company — and invited me to come up and see her office the next time I was in the building. So, I accepted her invitation. I’ve long since forgotten most of that second conversation, but something she said made it abundantly clear that I had ...
Aug 29, 2019•4 min
There have been many meetings I have attended in my professional life that have not lived up to the intention that was hoped for when someone first put that meeting on the calendar. No meeting is more likely to cause this kind of disappointment than the standing meeting. This is the staff meeting when we all get together at 10am on Tuesday mornings because, well…because we always get together at 10am on Tuesday mornings. A lot of people get frustrated with standing meetings because they can easi...
Aug 23, 2019•4 min
You may have discovered this journal because of the podcast I’ve hosted since 2011 called Coaching for Leaders. Although for many years producing and hosting Coaching for Leaders was very much a hobby, the listening audience has grown quite substantially to the point where we are now passing 10 million episode downloads. One of the interesting side effects of producing a popular podcast is that I get pitched all the time by potential guests and their agents who want to appear on the show. Often,...
Aug 15, 2019•5 min
You show up for a lunch date with an old friend you’ve not seen in awhile. You share a hug or a hand shake, sit down, and start catching up. You friend asks how you’ve been and what’s been going on in your life and career. You start telling them about some of the things that have happened since you last connected. When you’re done talking, your friend says: That was a great opening statement. If ever you heard something like that from a friend in conversation, I think you’d find it quite a bit a...
Aug 08, 2019•5 min
Between high school and college, I took half a dozen courses in economics. The details of these courses have long since faded from memory, but I remember well one principle that was repeated: Good enough is best. Economics is, after all, the study of how we make decisions with scare resources. Since resources are always scarce, we constantly need to make decisions to say yes to some things and no to others. “Good enough is best,” is a principle that reminds us to stop when it no longer makes sen...
Jul 25, 2019•4 min
You already know about Neil Armstrong’s most famous landing on July 20, 1969. It’s his other landings you might have missed. Before becoming an astronaut, Neil Armstrong was a naval aviator and test pilot. In 1951, he lost part of a wing in his F9F Panther during combat in Korea. Miraculously, he was able to land the plane. In 1956, he lost three of four engines in a B-29 after one engine disintegrated and damaged the rest of the aircraft. Quick thinking by both pilots allowed the plane to land ...
Jul 18, 2019•4 min
A little over twenty years ago, I was completing my final year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In my last semester, I teamed up with two other seniors to launch a new student organization focused on leadership development. All three of us had significant campus leadership experience and we wanted to create something that would be a catalyst for future students. Since we’d had success in other capacities, we were able to get a bit of marketing behind our new idea. On the week o...
Jul 11, 2019•4 min
My first full-time management job was as a center director for an education business. Part of my role was to supervise all the part-time instructors at our location. Like most managers who get promoted up, I inherited a team I didn’t select. I gradually hired the team I wanted as positions opened, but one person I inherited was annoying me. While he was friendly to me and our customers, he was (at best) a mediocre performer. When I’d give him feedback, he would improve slightly. Enough to meet t...
Jul 04, 2019•4 min
Fifteen years ago, I was hired by the franchise owner of a Dale Carnegie office to help grow the business — and eventually develop into an instructor myself. Tom, who hired me, was the kind of person all of us hope to work for in our careers. He cared about people so much that you could barely ever get him talking about himself. Just as important, he lived and breathed the values of Dale Carnegie. Carnegie offices have always been on the conservative side in business attire and Tom was on the co...
Jun 27, 2019•5 min
Last week, a few minutes before I arrived to pick up our kids at summer camp, our 5-year-old daughter had fallen and hit her head. By the time I walked in, the nurse had already checked her out and she was perfectly fine. Her camp counselor, a teacher, the nurse, and our son all told me what happened in a whirlwind of several conversations as the kids were getting dismissed. Our daughter also told me the story. All five stories were different. There were similarities, but they were different eno...
Jun 20, 2019•4 min
The airspace above our home is at least partially designated for pilots in training on small, single-engine planes. About once a week, I hear a small plane above us, that suddenly cuts its engine…only to restart it, shortly after. The pilots and their instructors are practicing engine failure procedures so that, should an engine actually fail in flight, a pilot is more likely to be able to land the plane. Recently, someone asked me: How do I keep things from bothering me so much at work? I asked...
Jun 13, 2019•3 min
A decade ago, I was instructing a communication and human relations course for Dale Carnegie. We were about halfway through the multi-week program when a participant asked a question of me in front of the class: What do you do when your wife claims that you’re just being nice to her because you’re taking this course? When the laugher stopped, I offered this: If you stop being nice to her when this course is over, then she was right. I appreciated the bravery of what that individual asked all tho...
Jun 06, 2019•4 min
For years, I’ve heard countless people give this well-intended advice on structuring a briefing or presentation: Tell 'em what you're going to tell them. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you've told them. I bet you’ve heard that too. It might be advice for someone who’s giving a presentation for the first time. That’s because it’s a simple outline that most people can follow successfully. But most professionals should move beyond this fairly quickly. That’s because, it’s awfully boring to listen to someo...
May 30, 2019•4 min
