Leadership Feeds

Jim Collins said, “Humble leaders look in the mirror when things go wrong and out the window when things go right.” Arrogance advantages self over others. Competence without humility creates dangerous capability. Humility puts strength to work for others. Here’s how to spot the humility advantage.

The alternative to evaluation is self-deception. In your head you’re a superstar. But the team struggles with your mediocrity. Bridge the perception gap with questions. How are you making yourself unnecessary? How are you making yourself accountable? Click for more unexpected questions.

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…

My wife laughed at me while we were singing in church. I complained, “What? I’m singing harmony.” She said, “No, you’re not.” The hardest person to see is yourself. The most common blindspot: believing you don’t have them. What if the people who hint you should change are right? 5 Leadership Blindspots…

Poking fun at death relieves the tension. “After Wendell Phillips’s death, someone met Judge Hoar and asked him if he intended to attend the funeral. ‘No,’ answered the Judge, ‘I don’t; but I approve of it.’” NY Times 1885 A friend asked, “What two words would you love to hear at your funeral?” I dodged the question…

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…

Smart is time-specific. Yesterday’s smarts are today’s stupidity. No one intentionally chooses stupid. What looks smart behind your desk often looks stupid in the real world. “Those who think they know, don’t.” Edward de Bono Peter Drucker taught, “What everyone knows is usually wrong.” Learn 4 Smart Practices

Leading feels like bullfighting. You don’t control the bull. You control the cape. Don’t ignore the bull. Respond to it. Focus energy on responses. For example, you can’t control people. Control how you respond to them. You can’t control interruptions. Determine how long they last. How to control the cape…

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…

On her podcast A Bit Personal, Jodi Shelton asks NVIDIA founder and CEO who’s the smartest person you’ve ever met? Jensen Huang:“Who’s the smartest person I’ve ever met? “I can’t answer that question. And I know I know what people are thinking. The definition of smart is somebody who’s intelligent, solves problems, technical, but I find that’s a commodity. And we’re not, we’re about to prove that artificial intelligence is able to handle that part easiest, right? Yeah. And so, as it turns out, let me give you another example. “Everybody thought software programming was the ultimate smart profession. Look, what is the first thing that AI is solving? Software programming. And so, it turns out that the definition of smart is very different than most people think. And I think long-term, the definition of smart and my personal definition of smart is someone who sits at that intersection of being technically astute but human empathy and having the ability to infer the unspoken, the around the corners, the unknowables. You know, people who are able to see around corners are truly, truly smart, and that their value is incredible. To be able to preempt problems before they show up, just because you feel the vibe. And the vibe came from a combination of uh data, analysis, first principle, life experience, wisdom, sensing other people. That vibe that I think that’s smart, that I think is going to be the future definition of smart, and that person might actually…

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. Brad Stulberg on being patient: “Remember that doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff isn’t progress. It’s just doing stuff. Be patient, you’ll get there faster.” Source: The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds—Not Crushes—Your Soul II. Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar on ruminating: “When a big change occurs, our negative thoughts can take on a life of their own, nestling into our psyches and stoking our biggest fears. This is known as rumination, and it can involve obsessively rehashing something in the past, grappling with perceived problems in the present, or catastrophizing an imagined future. When we ruminate, we keep going over and over the same negative thoughts, and we get stuck in a loop. Our brain trick us into believing we’re making progress on our problem when we’re often just making things worse.” Source: The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans * * * 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.  …

HERE’S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in February 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month. Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done by Rebecca Hinds Meetings are broken. They are relics from a bygone era of top-down hierarchies and factory-like procedures—designed to issue orders, flaunt power, and keep the hierarchy intact. In today’s digital, collaborate-or-bust era, this model isn’t just inefficient, it actively harms employees and organizations. Drawing on decades of research and stories from leading companies like Google, Salesforce, Pixar, YouTube, and Dropbox, Your Best Meeting Ever provides a blueprint to transform your meetings from monotonous, soul-crushing time sinks into powerful tools for collaboration. The secret? Treat them like products. Using seven product design principles, you’ll turn your meetings into well-designed products that actually drive work forward and serve your most important users—the people in your organization. The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers to Achieve Their Aspirations by B. Joseph Pine II Welcome to the Transformation Economy. To truly compete in today’s marketplace, enterprises must create transformative experiences that guide customers to achieve their aspirations, whether that’s improving well-being, increasing prosperity, developing knowledge, or finding purpose. These aspirations speak to customers’ greatest desires, their dreams for the future, and their conceptions of who they are and who they strive to be. In this book, bestselling author B. Joseph Pine II builds on his iconic work…

Here is a selection of Posts from January 2026 that you will want to check out: Interview with R.R. Reno, author of Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West with @jamesstrock Your Biggest Enemy of 2026 by @joshlinkner The invisible hand of decision by @DavidStroe Seventy Years of Steady by @KevinPaulScott Greatest Hits: On the Same Page Vs. Aligned via @TheDaily_Coach Being on the same page is a strategy for achieving a specific goal. Being aligned is a daily choice. It’s about arranging all facets of an organization to best achieve the long-term purpose. The Devastating Power of GroupThink by @PhilCooke The 2026 Clarity Manifesto by @stopyourdrama Marlene Chism The Power of Constraints by Ted Lamade via @collabfund Manager, not interested in climbing the ladder but still want to thrive? Develop in these six areas. by @artpetty Want to Know About an Organization? Ask The Janitor by @PhilCooke High Agency in 30 Minutes by @george__mack When Emotions Run Too High in the Workplace via @AdmiredLeaders Five Flares: Minneapolis, Berlin, Caracas, Los Angeles, New York by @jamesstrock Are We At Risk of Urban Conflagrations? Extending the Time Horizon by @KevinPaulScott Confidence Isn’t Given. It’s Earned. by @AlanSteinJr 7 Secrets to Q1 Success by @PredSuccess Les McKeown The future belongs to the creative generalists by @higapod Michelle Higa Fox The kind of generalist creative skillset I’m talking about is the ability to know why something should or shouldn’t be done. When It Comes to Creativity,…

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. Heidi Grant on feedback: “What happens when people lack a feeling of effectiveness? In the short term, it wipes out motivation. Research shows that when people are unable get any kind of feedback about how well they are doing on a task, they quickly become disengaged from it.” Source: Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You II. Simon Sinek on trust: “Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you—not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.” Source: Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action * * * 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.  …

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. Jason Feifer on the good ol’ days: “If we’re surrounded by the belief that yesterday was better, we’ll become less open-minded to future opportunities. To prepare for an uncertain future, we need to release ourselves from the rosy memory of our past—and begin to build a new, more durable narrative about ourselves instead.” Source: Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career II. Basketball coach Geno Auriemma on leading: “I used to think that I could affect winning and losing. I,I,I,I I keep using that word. Then it became more of, I have very little control of winning and losing, the only thing I have control of is … am I putting them in a position every day in practice to learn how to win?” Source: VIDEO The Psychology of Feedback via What Drives Winning * * * 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.  …

AGGRESSION carries a negative connotation. It’s often described as an attribute of anger and a lead-in to violent behavior. But aggression can also be equated with the tenacity with which someone goes after their goals. In this sense, it describes somebody who pursues their goal with great passion, enthusiasm, or intensity. An example may be a young executive, in the process of trying to impress her bosses, who utilizes unconventional tactics to increase her clientele. Her increased status leads clients of one of her coworkers to transfer to her accounts. While her goal had been to increase her sales, she had no intention of hurting her colleague. But nonetheless her coworker clearly was, even though hurting someone wasn’t the goal. Such tactics are often the case with people who become successful. Aggression has been shown repeatedly as paving the way for success. Aggression is the tenacity with which someone goes after their goals. Aggressiveness, which is the adverb describing behavior, captures this best. While there have been misunderstandings when we describe someone as aggressive, people mistakenly think that it means that they’re violent. In fact, there are two main types of aggression: instrumental aggression and reactive aggression. Instrumental aggression is when somebody is pursuing their goal with great passion, enthusiasm or intensity, in order to increase the likelihood of achieving that goal. A secondary consequence of that behavior may be to harm someone, but it is not the goal. For example, a basketball player is heading to the hoop…

LEADERS are under tremendous pressure to stay ahead of the curve while increasing output and notching wins. The tendency is to rush from project to project, overcome hurdle after hurdle, and never stop for a breath. But truly successful leadership requires taking time for reflection between one project and the next. Rather than diminishing leaders’ effectiveness, pausing in between heightens their insight and power. In Tibetan Buddhism, in-between periods are known as “bardos.” In these intervals, the teachings tell us, “the intellect becometh ninefold more lucid.” Bardos offer us a rich opportunity to step outside our usual ways of seeing and discover fresh perspectives. Our busy-ness can make us feel we’re on track, when the reality is that we’re drifting like a boat that’s steadily and unnoticeably veering off course. Striving to meet today’s glorified standards of productivity, we think we’re taking care of what matters most when, in fact, we’re putting it off. Tomorrow you’ll analyze what went wrong and what went right with the latest project. Next week you’ll acknowledge your team’s efforts. Later in the month you’ll take time to better understand how the processes you’re overseeing work. Next year you’ll strategize for succession planning. Now, as the new year gets underway, make a commitment to honor intermediary periods. Resolve to set aside time between projects for conscious attention to your relationships, your principles, and your purpose. By turning your attention to this kind of reflection on a regular basis, you can reset your compass, course…

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. Ryan Holiday on social intelligence: “Our curiosity, our desire for understanding should extend not just to the person in front of us but to how people function within groups. Both because it is an endlessly fascinating topic and because it’s essential to getting things done.” Source: Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. II. Michael J. Fanuele on inspiring others: “Passion and Reason work against each other. Passion is the energy that wants you jumping out of your seat. Reason wants you to sit and think for a little longer. Adding one decreases the other. “By all means, use your reason and logic and the full force of your big brain in figuring out what’s right and wrong, what you want to do and what you don’t, in composing your strategy. But then, when it comes to moving people to inspiring, I’m sorry, but Passion and Reason are indeed enemies. You’ll have to find the right balance between adding one and subtracting the other.” Source: Stop Making Sense: The Art of Inspiring Anybody * * * 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.  …

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. Performance Coach Julie Gurner on caring deeply: “You have to care deeply to be able to challenge directly, and … somebody has to know that you care deeply about who they are in their role, that you care about their performance, that this is coming from a place that’s meant to make them better. And if it’s not coming from that place, and it’s coming from a place of punishing or shaming or humiliating or dominating, it’s not a really effective thing to do. But people can take hard feedback from people that they know are in their corner.” Source: The Knowledge Project Podcast: Caring Deeply, Challenging Directly II. Heidi Priebe on loving someone as they change: “To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people are too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. “We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along…

HERE’S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in Janaury 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month. Intentional: How to Finish What You Start by Chris Bailey Setting goals is easy. Following through on them? A whole lot harder. It turns out, the secret to finishing what you start isn’t sheer willpower or the latest productivity hack. It’s becoming more intentional. With Intentional, bestselling author Chris Bailey distills a decade of deep research on productivity to deliver a profound, practical, and counterintuitive road map to getting things done. Forget extensive to-do lists and a never-ending workload. To reach your goals, you must structure your daily actions around what’s most important to you—and let go of the rest. This way, getting things done becomes second nature. The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential by Zack Kass An eye-opening discussion on the transformative impact of AI and how to prepare for a new future. In The Next Renaissance, acclaimed AI advisor Zack Kass presents an optimistic and compelling vision of how artificial intelligence will shape our lives. Drawing on historical context, cutting-edge advancements, and firsthand experience, Kass lays out how AI will become a collaborative partner in building a better, more creative, and more compassionate world. Just as the original Renaissance revolutionized art, science, and society, today’s AI-driven Renaissance will redefine how we create, innovate, and flourish. Kass leverages his deep industry…

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.