lenses of leadership

One of the most frequent things that clients bring into coaching is frustration with a colleague who they believe feels totally confident in their perspective and will not bend to create collaboration or innovation.  And sometimes, that’s true.  But most of the time, the person who seems so difficult, so obstructionist, so cocky, is actually acting out their fear rather than their confidence.  We know this seem counter-intuitive but it makes sense if you really think about it.  One way…

Last week we talked about 5 ways to focus your efforts when things go awry.  We believe it’s critical that you attack the problem and leave the people associated with the problem intact.  Number 3 on that list was: Get participants to move forward because of a commitment to the organization rather than getting caught up on the notion of “trust”.  At that time, we promised to share more of our thinking on trust, so here goes.  In our experience…

One of the more difficult, and important, things for us to do as adults is to understand that most of the things that happen to us, or around us, are not personal.  In fact, despite sometimes being directed toward us, they often have very little to do with us at all.  It’s tempting to believe that the events unfolding around us have been thoughtfully crafted to influence us or designed to upset us and throw us off our game. Most…