By: Judith McCartney on February 23, 2025
Shaping the Future of Leadership. I read an article from Harvard long ago called “Women less inclined to self-promote than men, even for a job. My curiosity peaked when they discussed how even when a woman knows she answered 15 out of 20 questions correctly on a task and a man knows he answered 15…
By: Linda Mendez on February 20, 2025
I hired someone to manage our Unhoused Mobile Shower clinic in August of last year. However, in January, they resigned. Two weeks into the job, she requested a meeting to share concerns about my leadership. I will admit it was tough to hear. I had never had an employee challenge or question me like she…
By: Jess Bashioum on February 20, 2025
I have had leadership on my life since I was young. My mom told me that when I was 4, I would line up my dolls and stuffed animals and give them inspirational speeches about things they should do with their lives. Unfortunately, I grew up with a dad and a church community that didn’t…
By: Christian Swails on February 20, 2025
Pursuing and accepting leadership is a crash course in exposing my triggers. (so is being married and having a child). When I arrive late for an appointment, or make a scheduling mistake on a complicated work-week, or if I am questioned about….anything – my chest tightens, my breath shortens, and my body puts on…
By: Jeremiah Gómez on February 20, 2025
Scrawled across my office whiteboard is a haunting and helpful question, especially as I face painful challenges in my current leadership season: What would a GREAT leader do? How would a fantastic leader dig into my organization’s challenges and opportunities? What would they do to navigate the turbulent and dangerous waters of transition and financial…
By: Mika Harry on February 20, 2025
Completely overwhelming. As I turned the last page of Leader-smithing, I was overwhelmed. The idea of 52 action items, one for each week of the year, felt daunting.[1] Are leaders really supposed to adopt a new practice for 52 weeks straight? The sheer magnitude of such a task feels insurmountable in my current season. Much…
By: Betsy on February 20, 2025
A predecessor to Google Search for finding contacts before smartphones and search engines took over in the UK was called The Yellow Pages. It was a massive yellow book with a familiar strong smell, about the size of a small suitcase with all the contact information for different work sectors and friends and was the…
By: Darren Banek on February 20, 2025
When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., the Port Authority initially advised people in the South Tower to stay put. Rick, Morgan Stanley’s Vice President of Corporate Security, ignored this directive.[1] He immediately grabbed a bullhorn and systematically guided the corporation’s employees out of the…
By: Robert Radcliff on February 20, 2025
Eve Poole’s book, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership, discusses how Practice and Pressure are needed to forge healthy leaders. A key to leadership is knowing yourself and feeling resourced to accomplish the task.[1] Critical incidents shape the lives and outcomes of the leader. Practice templates help develop muscle memory for known situations and…
By: Alex Mwaura on February 20, 2025
This is an age-old question that I will attempt to answer in this post. I’ve been reflecting on the conversation earlier this week in our cohort group regarding the volatile situation in the world characterized by the shrinking space for candid and factual dialogue, the impact of information overload and addictiveness on social media and…
By: Joff Williams on February 18, 2025
“And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” Zechariah 13:9 “I need your…
By: Rich on February 18, 2025
I got a call one Sunday afternoon from the drilling rig. This was unusual. My job was to do the theoretical work and hand it off to the planning engineers. They in turn wrote work instructions for the operations crew, the team who ran the drilling rig. A call on Sunday afternoon couldn’t be good.…
By: Michael Hansen on February 18, 2025
“Let’s go to the whiteboard.” I have used this phrase frequently for over thirty years. As a leader in operational roles in the military and civilian sectors, the whiteboard has proven invaluable. For small teams, it can serve as a focal point for deliberate planning discussions, where you can see and hear feedback in real…
By: Ivan Ostrovsky on February 18, 2025
I was in seminary, and one of the required classes focused on leadership. It was one of the most pointless classes I had ever attended. First, I had a terrible teacher who didn’t seem to care about us (you’d think he would, especially considering it was a seminary). All he cared about was sharing the…
By: Linda Mendez on February 14, 2025
I was not raised in this country; at age five, my parents moved my older brother and me to Central America. For ten years, we lived in three different countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras. While my cousins and friends in the U.S. were starting to learn about Game Boys, Walkmans, and computers, my…
By: Judith McCartney on February 13, 2025
I grew up in the 70’s and I recall being allowed on the house phone for a certain amount of time. I was not allowed to be on it for too long as I was told I’d be seeing them in person or was already with them earlier that day. It was revolutionary for us…
By: Michael Hansen on February 13, 2025
My grandparents gave me a Coleco Electronic Quarterback Handheld Game for Christmas 1978. Outside of an N-gauge electric train kit and later an Apple 2E computer, it was probably one of the only digital games I owned as a kid. Playing it was exhilarating; sometimes, I couldn’t put the game down. At night, I would…
By: Mika Harry on February 13, 2025
Forget lions, tigers, and bears. The danger looming for today’s society is more from the pervasive influence of fear, ignorance, and depression. This week’s articles discussed how the rapid advancement of AI and the ever-present nature of social media have profoundly exacerbated societal disconnection, distrust, and injustice. The articles highlight that while the internet and…
By: Jeremiah Gómez on February 13, 2025
What comes to mind when you complete the phrase, “Knowledge is ___________”? When I ask this question as part of an exercise in a leadership workshop, the answer that most people share is power. Though not likely what Francis Bacon intended when he committed the phrase to paper[1], many take “knowledge is power” to mean…
By: Betsy on February 13, 2025
I was walking through a mall in Oxford to grab a coffee when I saw a crowd of mums with buggies all drinking the same brand of coffee I was pursuing. All the babies were around nine to eighteen months, and their little hands each clutched a screen. Research has confirmed our gut instinct that…
