Category: leadership

  • Education: Key to Adapting in a Disruptive World

    Education: Key to Adapting in a Disruptive World

    “Education is inoculation against disruption.” Robin Sharma I read this line in The Wealth Money Can’t Buy and it immediately recalled two things for me. First was how different Black Friday is from a decade ago. There are no more newspapers filled with fliers in the days before. No more long lines at stores before…

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  • Asking Questions > Answering Questions

    ‘But Nathan, they don’t respect my time!’ ⏰ That’s right. They don’t respect your time because you don’t respect your time. And if you don’t, why should they? This was part of the conversation I had with a manager I was coaching. He was explaining why he didn’t complete something that he committed to in…

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  • Coaching or Managing?

    Coaching or Managing?

    Are you managing or coaching your team? Which one is more effective?  That was my thought as I was listening to Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast interview with Canva co-founder Cameron Adams. In case you’re not familiar with Canva, they are one of the one of the world’s most valuable private software companies, used by 95% of…

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  • Good leaders don’t need to be right

    Good leaders don’t need to be right

    Good leaders care more about getting to the right answer than having the right answer. I was coaching a new leader recently, whose working model of leadership was that the leader comes up with all of the answers. Through our coaching, he said that it was an epiphany to him that his job as a…

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  • How to make leadership part of your culture

    How to make leadership part of your culture

    I talk to a lot of business owners, CEOs, and founders, and not one of them has ever told me: ‘You know what I need? Fewer leaders. There are just too many people leading in my company.’ In fact, it’s most often the opposite; they have a need for more leaders in their growing businesses.…

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  • What would happen if your people felt free to fail?

    What would happen if your people felt free to fail?

    A story of leadership from soccer ⚽ Playing the way the coach wants “gives us confidence because we don’t feel any pressure and if we make a mistake it’s his fault, which is the license that he gives us, which is refreshing.” That’s English Premier League soccer player James Maddison, talking about his new manager,…

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  • Contribution is Key

    A plant supervisor I coach told me about something that solidified his belief in his company. And it’s a great lesson for leaders everywhere. This supervisor’s work occasionally took him on location with their customers in other parts of the country. And seeing the huge benefit local communities get from his company’s product, gave him…

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  • Learn from experience… of others

    There’s an old saying that you’ve probably heard. It’s, “Pride comes before the fall,” and it’s one that I think of often.  The saying originates with the Bible. Proverbs 16:18 states: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”  It’s a reminder that wisdom is eternal – and universal.  I see that…

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  • Staying calm is a choice

    In business lots of things can get us worked up – even when we’re not in the midst of a pandemic quarantine. We frequently don’t get to choose our circumstances – but we always get to choose how we respond to those circumstances. That’s what was going through my head yesterday as I was transferring…

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  • Only Coach the Coachable

    I’m a third of the way through reading the Trillion Dollar Coach. At the end of chapter three, the authors summarize Bill Campbell’s coaching style: He started by building trust, which only deepened over time. He was highly selective in choosing his coachees; he would only coach the coachable, the humble, hungry lifelong learners. He…

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