Leadership Feeds

A former rancher turned finance leader explains why the “costume of conformity” is costing you clients, credibility, and the career you actually want. EARLY in my finance career, a client and I hit it off over the phone. We had a natural personality match — easy conversation, good rapport, real trust building in real time. When he came to my office for a face-to-face consultation, he saw me from across the room before we’d been formally introduced. He walked out. Didn’t say a word. He wasn’t going to trust the largest transaction of his life to what he saw as an immature individual who didn’t look the part. At the time, I was doing everything I’d been told to do. I’d come into finance from cattle ranching, welding, heavy equipment, truck driving, and underground mining — environments where you dressed for utility, not appearances. When I entered the corporate world, I was subjected to constant scrutiny: how I talked, how I groomed, how I dressed, how I stood. All of it presented as a necessity of success. So I conformed. I put on the costume. And I lost a client anyway — not because I was being myself, but because I wasn’t. That experience, and several like it, taught me something that changed the trajectory of my career: authenticity isn’t just a feel-good buzzword. It’s a business strategy. Here’s why. The People Who Told Me to Conform Didn’t Stick Around Not long after I started dressing and grooming the…

The work isn’t crafting values; it’s living them. Values show up in calendars, promotions, and confrontations. What’s your system for aligning behaviors with commitments? When did your last meeting compare convictions with actions? Leaders huddle in conference rooms debating definitions, grammar, and punctuation. Daily practice is all that counts.

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. John Kenneth Galbraith on power: “An important tendency in all modern political comment is to exaggerate the role of personality in the exercise of power. What rightly should be attributed to the property or organization surrounding them is thus accorded to their personality. Vanity also contributes to the exaggeration of the role of personality. Nothing so rejoices the corporate executive, television anchorman, or politician as to believe that he is uniquely endowed with the qualities of leadership that derive from intelligence, charm, or sustained rhetorical capacity—that he has a personal right to command. Divorced from organization, the synthetic personality dissolves, and the individual behind it disappears into the innocuous obscurity for which his real personality intended him.” Source: The Anatomy of Power II. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld on bouncing back: “William Shakespeare penned the immortal words ‘Some men are born great, some men achieve greatness, and some men have greatness thrust upon them.’ But perhaps what marks greatness above all else is the ability to be great again؅—to reachieve greatness when greatness, however initially gained, is torn from our possession. It is the ability to bounce back from adversity—to prove your mettle once more by getting back into the game—that separates the lasting greats from the fleeting greats.” Source: Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters * * * Look for these ideas every…

Managers lead. Leaders manage. But they have different horizons. Management leans into the present. Leadership into the future. Leadership asks, “Where?” Management asks, “How?” Managers succeed when they fulfill five responsibilities. The responsibilities of managers center on people. Click for more…

LEADERSHIP clarity rarely comes from comfort. More often, it’s found in moments of disruption, when certainty disappears and only what truly matters remains. For more than four decades, I’ve helped leaders learn through experience rather than theory. Across more than 50 countries, I’ve designed leadership development programs built around challenges: ropes courses, night orienteering, search-and-rescue scenarios, scuba expeditions, and even dogsledding in remote environments. The approach draws heavily from the experiential leadership model used by Outward Bound, where I served as both an instructor and board trustee. The premise is simple: place people in unfamiliar situations, require real decisions, and then reflect deeply on what happened and what they learned from the experience. Over time, however, I began asking a more personal question: What if the most powerful leadership lessons don’t come from simulations at all, but from our own lives? When I was 18, I traveled across 11 African countries on an overland expedition. What was supposed to be a four-month journey stretched into six as we navigated breakdowns, border delays, and unpredictable conditions. Along the coast of Cameroon, on the volcanic sands of Batoke Beach, I contracted malaria. I was living in tents in a swamp, thousands of miles from home, with no nearby hospitals and little certainty about treatment. The situation was frightening and uncertain, and the small group of travelers around me suddenly depended on one another in ways we hadn’t anticipated. Years later, I realized that experience had quietly shaped how I approach leadership…

Pivotal moments disrupt life. Running from them shrinks your future. Pivotal moments are interventions that expand potential. Marcus Aurelius said, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Here’s how to seize pivotal moments for your advantage.

Egoless is a myth. Ego reacts before you think. It defends before you listen. It pushes before you understand. “The busier and more overwhelmed we are, the more our Ego runs our show.” Don’t eliminate ego. Manage it. Here’s how…

Most organizations have too little conflict. Teams that can’t fight fair are mediocre. They don’t innovate. They seldom leverage each other’s skill. They fall below the beauty of excellence. Warning: Friction between individuals based on personalities, backstabbing, and gossip hinders productivity. The rule: Everyone pulls together once decisions are made.

Disrespect shrivels people. It awakens the inner accuser. Public correction invites people to feel stupid. Lack of respect promotes learned helplessness. Nearly 80% of employees lower their commitment when they feel disrespected. One of the most powerful things leaders do is show respect. It costs nothing. Respect lets people know they matter.

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Tim Elmore on balancing confidence and humility: “Leading today requires combining these two attributes—confidence and humility. Reality changes so quickly, leaders cannot become arrogant, but must remain in a learning posture. At the same time, team members long for their leader to inspire them with confidence. Bob Iger said, “There’s nothing less confidence inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.” Source: The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership: Embracing the Conflicting Demands of Today’s Workplace II. Hasard Lee on decision-making: “When we rashly turn over our decision-making to external aids, such as committees or computers, we lose the ability to bring the full power of our brain to bear on a problem. We, in essence, have carved out a hole in our understanding and replaced it with someone else’s solution. If we don’t learn the underlying concepts behind that new infor-ation, then we’re blindly trusting that it’s correct. We lose the ability to quickly reconfigure concepts into creative solutions, which is one of the great strengths of the human mind.” Source: The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot’s Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions * * * Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the…

THE gap between what leaders say and what they do may be the single greatest destroyer of hope in organizations today. I learned this the hard way—by being that leader whose midnight emails contradicted my daytime messages about work-life balance. Often, without realizing the impact, organizations reinforce hopelessness across culture, policy, and procedure. From leaders and employees alike, I’ve heard consistent stories about what creates hopelessness in organizations. Frequently, it begins with the signals leaders send through their actions, including: Learned helplessness modeling: Leaders who themselves display resignation demonstrate that there’s no reason to push for change. Inconsistent standards: Different rules applied to different people without clear rationale leave everyone confused and can incite workplace paralysis. Information hoarding: Withholding context that would help employees understand decisions can spark a feeling of detachment. Mixed messaging: Saying one thing while incentivizing another implies there is no clear path to follow. Failure intolerance: Punishing well-intentioned experimentation that doesn’t succeed leads, predictably, to a lack of experimentation. Leadership patterns influence organizations, quietly shaping what people believe is achievable. I noticed this dynamic unfold while coaching a new director. When our work together began, she approached her role with creative ideas and genuine enthusiasm. She would share thoughtful solutions in leadership meetings and engage her team in meaningful initiatives. Over the next several months, however, I noticed a change in her approach. She started introducing her suggestions with phrases like, “I know this might be challenging, but…” and became more selective about which ideas…

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Alan Stein on self-awareness: “It’s called “self” awareness, but the people you choose to surround yourself with play a part in that. A self-aware person is going to invite healthy criticism, and one way to do that is not to shy away from hearing the truth. It’s important to have supportive people who aren’t afraid to tell you things that you need to hear instead of the things that you want to hear.” Source: Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best II. Patty McCord on sharing information: “If your people aren’t informed by you, there’s a good chance they’ll be misinformed by others. If you don’t tell them about how the business is doing, what your strategy is, the challenges you’re facing, and what market analysts think of how you’re doing, then they’ll get the information elsewhere – either from colleagues, who will often be equally ill informed, or from the Web, which loves nothing so much as a rumor of doom or a juicy conspiracy theory.” Source: Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility * * * Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. * * * Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.  …

WHILE we all seek expert advice to increase our chances of success, we also encounter situations in which no expert advice can uncover the right decision to make. For example, expert advice can’t tell someone how to decide between a position in the public sector or a private sector position that pays more but serves the public interest less. Such decisions represent dilemmas — situations that involve competing goals, aspirations, and demands. Moreover, dilemmas such as this career choice involve values and intrinsic motivations, which expert advice can’t address. An expert can’t tell you how to live out your values. Ultimately, only you can determine how to enact what you see as right, given your choices. Arriving at the right answer in such dilemmas involves introspection. It requires examining your values and relying on your sense of personal judgment — not only weighing information and drawing conclusions, but also evaluating the ethical aspects of a situation. A key means to enhance your personal judgment is to understand frames of reference, perspectives, and principles that can balance the competing — and potentially good — outcomes that compose a dilemma. Employing these six questions enables you to capture perspectives that can enhance your personal judgment when addressing dilemmas: What rules may be relevant to this dilemma? What is the consequence I hope to see resulting from my decision? What virtues (patience, courage, humility, etc.) are relevant to my decision, and what virtues do I want to develop and model through my…

HERE’S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in March 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month. Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation by Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Jason Wild Innovation doesn’t just happen. You need to lead it. Discover the three critical roles leaders must play in driving—and scaling—innovation. Constant tech disruption. Unrelenting economic volatility. Radically shifting demographics and work norms. More than ever, we need to innovate amid these daunting global challenges. But do we have the leadership it takes to make this innovation happen successfully? Genius at Scale breaks new ground, showing how moving from generating new ideas to actually scaling them involves cocreation—collaborating, experimenting, and learning with others both inside and beyond the boundaries of the organization. This requires three distinct types of leadership: Leader as Architect, Leader as Bridger, and Leader as Catalyst. Leading with Strategy: Using Your North Star to Guide Decision-Making by Timothy Tiryaki A powerful collection of over 50 adaptable strategy frameworks to solve today’s most complex business challenges. In Leading With Strategy veteran executive coach and strategy consultant for Fortune 500 firms Timothy Tiryaki delivers a transformative guide that clarifies the complex tradeoffs in today’s AI-enabled business environment. Dr. Tiryaki explores the contemporary maze of undiscussed leadership dilemmas that have been surfaced by the latest generative AI technologies and provides unique perspectives on strategic thinking and leadership. At the core…

Here is a selection of Posts from February 2026 that you will want to check out: Why Being Small Could Be The Best Thing Ever by @PhilCooke The Power of Simplicity: 3 Lessons on Why Overthinking is Sabotaging Your Leadership by @BrianDoddLeader Effort is necessary. Results count. by @artpetty Presidents’ Day Doesn’t Cut It by @jamesstrock 3 Signs It’s Time for Your Next Chapter via @KelloggSchool Common Truths in Leadership and Business by @KatColeATL Five big mistakes to avoid when changing careers by @artpetty Leading with Inquiry (How to Have a Better Dialogue) by @edbatista How to Be Great and Be Present More Often by @TomBrady 5 Leadership Mistakes That Cost Your Team Championships and Causes You To Miss Your Goals by @BrianKDodd 21 Things All Great Leaders Do by @cnieuwhof When the 80/20 Rule Fails: The Downside of Being Effective by @JamesClear Rethink How You Think Creatively. Creativity isn’t just about talent or taste; it’s about how you think. Beyond Slop: Human Participation Is the New Currency of Trust via @LBBOnline Norway’s Dominance at the Winter Olympics Has a Lot to Do With Youth Sports—And It’s the Opposite of America by @BStulberg The Mind-Deadening Gravitational Pull of a Leadership Singularity by @artpetty There’s a force at work in too many organizations imposed by senior leaders that gives the appearance of action but reflects cognitive and productive paralysis. How Mental Toughness Can Help Leaders Make A Greater Impact by @LaRaeQuy How to Facilitate a Conflict on Your Team by…

IN The Next RenAIssance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential, AI expert Zack Kass believes “properly harnessed, AI could democratize education, revolutionize healthcare, and accelerate innovation,” but “for Al to truly serve humanity, we will be forced to solve radical new ethical dilemmas, unprecedented economic disruptions, daunting technical challenges, environmental collapse, dehumanization, the loss of identity, and above all, terrifying uncertainty.” Yet because AI is not a tangible tech – something we can see – we are naturally suspicious. How does it work? Kass writes that AI systems must begin to “show their work” rather than just spitting out an answer if they are to be trusted. How did you get to the conclusion it came to? What information was considered? How valid is it? We need real-time transparency. “Real-time transparency gives users a window into what the system is prioritizing and why, helping build informed trust instead of blind faith.” What about the future of work? “Predicting Al’s impact on jobs has become high-stakes roulette, and the bets often say more about the gambler’s worldview than technology itself. Even among industry and economic experts, the topic is very much still up for debate.” Kass offers a set of four principles meant to guide how we live, work, and lead in the age of artificial intelligence. 1. Go Outside: The physical world matters more than anything else. It is life in four dimensions. Serendipity happens naturally. The physical world carries variety that no recommender system can deliver. Algorithms…

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Deborah Gruenfeld on showing respect: “We often fail to realize that the ability to show respect and even submission can also be a source of power. Deference is treating another person in ways that acknowledge that their expertise and experiences are at least as important as your own. It does not mean you have less power than the person you are deferring to. It means you do not intend to use the power you have against your relationship partner. Deference is disarming, it signals an absence of threat, and it creates a foundation of trust that allows a relationship to form.” Source: Acting with Power: Why We Are More Powerful Than We Believe II. Tony Dungy on putting others first: “Instead of asking, how can I lead my company, my team, or my family to a higher level of success? we should be asking ourselves, how do others around me flourish as a result of my leadership? Do they flourish at all? How does my leadership, my involvement in their lives—in whatever setting we’re in—have a positive and lasting influence on them?” Source: The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently * * * Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. * * * Follow us on Instagram and X…

WHEN Johann Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled his chess-playing automaton in the courts of 18th-century Europe, audiences were spellbound. The “Mechanical Turk” was the first machine that appeared to think like a human. It beat anyone it played against, regardless of their playing abilities or social status. For decades, it toured the world as proof that human intelligence had finally been replicated by a machine. It took bribery to finally get von Kempelen to reveal the secret of his unbeatable machine. Hidden inside the cabinet, crouched among gears and pulleys, sat a human chess master. The intelligence had never been artificial. It had just been concealed. This may be an old and well-known story, but its lessons haven’t stuck. Today, we’re once again mesmerized by machines that appear to think, speak, decide, and even lead. From algorithmic hiring tools to AI-generated strategies — even to AI “CEOs” — leadership is being reframed as optimization, speed, and polish. While many see the danger of AI as machines becoming more human, the real danger is that human leaders are becoming more mechanical. In the age of AI, the leaders who matter most will be the ones who lead most like humans, precisely when too many leaders are acting as if they, too, are automated. Just like the automaton, perfection looks impressive from a distance until you can see, up close, that it’s hollow. The more polished leaders become, the more people worry about what they have to hide. This is why the…

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Nicole Vignola on self-talk: “If you tell yourself you’re having a bad day, your brain will find ways to reinforce that belief, and you’ll go about the rest of your day finding ways to prove that this day is bad. And so it is with negative self-beliefs. When you believe that you are not worthy, or not confident, or you have a negative belief about yourself, your body language follows that belief. Moreover, the brain perceives your behaviour as normal and stops paying conscious attention to it, and before you know it, you’ve snowballed to further reinforce this belief with everything you do.” Source: Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change II. Leslie John on the power of opening up: “Something sensitive, we are not necessarily entering a zero-sum transaction. We are creating a possibility for mutual trust, better relationships, connection, growth, even safety. Ironically, what seems like a loss of control is often what unlocks the very things we want most. This is the mistake economists (and, frankly, a lot of us) often make: treating information as a commodity to be protected or extracted. Disclosure is an investment—it’s risk in the service of trust.” Source: Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing * * * Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the…

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Mark Crowley on being passionately curious: “Something insidious often happens when people become adults. We become almost anti-curious. One big reason for this is that our human egos prefer to feel knowledgeable and successful at all times. Not wanting to feel vulnerable to anything unknown or in flux, our minds silence otherwise solid reasons to seek new methods, approaches, or skills. ‘You’re already doing great,’ our egos assure us. ‘There’s no need to invest time and energy in anything new.’” Source: The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams II. Todd Henry on knowing yourself: “The stories we believe about how the world works often play a critical role in helping us interpret the meaning of events. It’s important that we gain an understanding of not only what those deeply held beliefs are, but also how they might be affecting our daily activity. Doing so, and then mapping our activity around that self-knowledge, is one of the keys to sustained success.” Source: Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day * * * Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. * * * Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.  …

WE’RE often told about the benefit of learning from our failures, but the reality is that it’s easier to say than do. Failure feels uncomfortable and exposing. Rather than sit in vulnerability, it’s much easier to move forward and replace reflection and regret with action and distraction. But leaving the learning behind means we miss an opportunity to grow. Our career resilience relies on being able to navigate hard moments with confidence and control and become better because of them. Whether it’s a presentation that’s gone wrong, a relationship that has broken down, or an important deadline that you’ve missed, our first response should be to pause, reflect, and learn from the situation. Waiting for a BIG failure makes it hard to develop this skill. Big failures don’t happen often and come with lots of emotion. Trying to change your behavior when you’re in the middle of a big failure can feel doubly difficult. It’s much better to look for smaller failures to learn from, also known as mistakes. Mistakes are a much easier place to start. We all make lots of mistakes, so we have many more moments to learn from, and they are less emotionally charged so reflection feels less daunting to do. A mistake might look like sending the wrong information in an email, arriving late for a meeting or not having the right data you need for a discussion. Mistakes won’t be disastrous for your development, but missing out on the learning might be. Repeating…

Botanists will tell you to have a vision for how you want a plant to look before you start pruning it. The same is true for your life and your business. Whether you’re talking about programs, processes, personal commitments, or even people – over time, they all tend to accumulate. You simply end up with more of everything. However, overgrowth impedes your ability to scale yourself and your business. In order to grow, you’re going to have to prune. Continue reading The Pruning Principle at Full Focus.

It’s that time of year again. The weather is changing, leaves are falling off the trees, and your favorite leadership podcast is talking about Strategic Planning again. If there’s one thing that humans do well, it’s imagining the future. (We can do it badly, too, of course.) But the important thing is that we can create better outcomes for ourselves and our businesses when we do it intentionally. That’s where Strategic Planning comes in. Continue reading 6 Essential Ingredients for Effective Strategic Planning at Full Focus.

“Quiet quitting” seems to be the hot topic of conversation in business and leadership circles right now. But what exactly is “quiet quitting”? How can you figure out if your employees are doing it? And, perhaps most importantly, how can you create an organizational culture where your team members will feel empowered in their job?   Continue reading How to Avoid Quiet Quitting in Your Business at Full Focus.

You spend your days managing details, scheduling meetings, and replying to emails — by the time you start on the “real work,” the workday is half over. This ends up cutting into your personal life as you try to make up for lost time. It all leads to you feeling more tired, more stressed, and less productive at work and at home. If you heed our advice, you can minimize this pain. The advice is simple: hire an executive assistant! Continue reading 5 Mistakes Business Owners Make When Hiring an Assistant at Full Focus.

Last week we talked about the importance of a thriving company culture. Hopefully, Michael and Megan made the case that a company culture is both important and the responsibility of the leader. We’re going to continue that conversation by talking about how businesses can actually cultivate a thriving company culture – no matter where they’re starting from.   Continue reading 4 Ingredients for a Thriving Company Culture at Full Focus.

Anywhere you find a group of people, you’ll find a culture. That’s true for families, churches, cities, neighborhoods, and anything else you can think of that includes more than one person. This idea is especially true for businesses. Leaders need to have a vision for how they want their culture to look and feel. If they don’t, they could find themselves surrounded by a toxic culture that not only hurts business but makes everyone miserable. Continue reading Why a Thriving Culture Is Essential at Full Focus.

Your business is probably the largest single asset in your portfolio. You’ve invested time and money, and, one day, you may want to see a healthy return on those investments. If you want to maximize the value of your business, then you should start making plans today. Continue reading How to Maximize the Market Value of Your Business in 8 Steps at Full Focus.

There is no denying that you will get further, faster with a good coach. But what about a great coach? How much further could you get with amazing coaching? Today’s episode tackles that question by talking with LeeAnn Moody, Director of Performance Coaching for Full Focus. LeeAnn and Michael break down the four characteristics of great coaching and help you identify what you might need to be successful for your organization. Continue reading What Makes Good Coaching Great at Full Focus.

During the height of the pandemic, everyone was forced to go remote. But, now that offices have opened back up, leaders and staff are confronted with some challenging questions around a seemingly basic concept: Where should work happen? Continue reading What Elon Musk Gets Wrong About Remote Work at Full Focus.

What if you could grow your business and only do about 20% of the work you’re currently doing? If that were true, you would do almost anything to find out how to do it, right? Continue reading The 10/80/10 Principle: Grow Your Business with 20% of the Work at Full Focus.