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My early years of professional service were spent pretending to be an athletic coach.  I heard Nicholas Keith of the Texas Education Association speak this week to to the powerful progression recipe for learner development: > Acquisition (initial learning of the...

We all want to feel like we matter. The wisest leaders I know are masters of helping us feel like we matter. How do they do that? They... LISTEN to us, intently. ASK us questions, to probe our perspectives, opinions, assumptions, values. TREAT us as equals and...

The day we stop learning is the day we put the first foot in the grave. Becoming the very best version of ourselves is a learning journey, from the first breath to the last. Existing, however, is not the same as living a meaningful life. Some things that help us...

A car without fuel won't go. An electrical appliance that is not connected to a power supply won't spin, chop, heat, cool, light, jiggle, or ??? A sailboat without wind drifts. A solar panel without sunlight won't generate electron activity. Stuff that requires energy...

We tend to think of learning as just one process or event. In fact, the most impactful learning is a three-fold undertaking:  Learning > UN-Learning > RE-Learning Fundamentally, this triadic process is a state change. What we know gets modified, what we can do...

Maybe the problem is not the problem. Maybe it emerged as result of a faulty pattern. Looking upstream of the problem is often very revealing as to why the problem is a problem in the first place.  And the thing about pernicious patterns is that they reliably persist...

Delegating is sometimes -- too often -- viewed as a way to reduce load. There are, however, some powerful underlying reasons for delegating important tasks and decisions to others on the team (whether that team is one's family or a multi-national organization). ...

We deceive ourselves when... > We think we're smarter than everyone else. > We consider talking of more value than listening. > We accept blame and excuses as proxy for solutions. > We assume that ignoring a problem will make it go away. > We...

I once heard physician and leadership guru Dr. Eddie Erlandson say, "At the end of the day, we all just want to be more effective." An excellent point. A number of years ago McKinsey & Company (a multi-national consulting firm), conducted a study of leadership...

I worked once for an impactful leader who taught me much about how to think and behave if I wanted the best from others. Dr. Tom Gaul regularly reminded us that he "didn't hire us to enforce policy, but rather, to do what was right for our students (aka customers)." ...