Complex transformations— societal, technological and work-related—are having a profound impact on people’s lived experiences. A common theme is psychological stress related to a feeling of lack of control in the face of uncertainty. These issues deserve more attention: declining psychological and emotional wellbeing is a risk in itself—and one that also affects the wider global […]
Relating Your Life to Your Environment
One of the many distinctions between the celebrity and the hero … is that one lives only for self while the other acts to redeem society Bill Moyer, paraphrasing Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth How does your life influence your environment? How does your life influence you? How we view and engage the world […]
Thinking by Levels
The discipline of project and program management contains a helpful framework for thinking about the levels within which we function. Project – An activity with a beginning, middle, and end that we pursue in order to create change. In a personal context, this could be writing a book, following the initiation phase of a diet, […]
Principles vs Decisions
The best leaders in dual-purpose organizations consider their high-level principles sacrosanct but their ground-level decisions provisional. Harvard Business Review, “How Companies Can Balance Social Impact and Financial Goals,” January 2019 The benefit of Agile and agility is the flexibility to maneuver based on what is in front of you. What typically gets lost is the […]
Evolution Happens – How You Can Work With It
How is your life different from last year? How is your life different from 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 20 years ago? Since you left college (or high school)? How has your life evolved over time? Is it an orderly progression of steps towards mastery? Is it a series of plateaus punctuated by periods […]
The Power of Periodization
In 2009, I found myself carrying almost 25 pounds more than normal and having to go shopping (yet again) because my clothes were too tight. I knew it was bad when Mom began to give me her hand-me-downs because they were too big for her. I needed to do something. My weight had been stable […]
Combining Conflicting Goals
I abandoned my pursuit of a History Ph.D. in 1996. At the time, my colleagues asked “So what are you going to do? Teach?” They had images of me standing in front of a classroom of 6th graders. My response was “I’m not sure, but I have transferable skills as a result of this education. […]
Combining Goals with Your Why and Your North Star
When I was 14, I wanted to be a roadie for Led Zeppelin. Nevermind that John Bonham had died in 1980 and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant had stopped speaking to each other. This dream wasn’t about meeting rock stars (I wound up meeting plenty – just not Page and Plant), or about travel (good […]
Emotions
As I sat with Empathy, I realized that the foundation of that conversation is our relationship to our emotions. Some of us (myself included) come from families and work in environments where Spock is a role model. Emotions are an inconvenience (at best). “Happy” is acceptable. The rest of it – not so much. “Calm […]
Empathy
In response to my Top 5 Skills for 2019 post, a mentor of mine asked, “What about Empathy?” I found myself resisting. Hard. We all have Empathy. Some of us squelch it – partially by training, partially out of self-preservation. Some of us overdo it – inappropriately taking on the emotional labor of others. Some […]
