You have an important meeting coming up with a key stakeholder for your program, and the agenda is packed. Yet you notice that your colleague is distracted. He apologizes and shares that he just returned from a funeral. Suddenly the project discussion does not feel so important, yet how do you handle this moment? Do you avoid probing for fear of getting too personal, or saying something wrong? Do you acknowledge it and then transition back to the work discussion? Or ask, “What feels important for us to talk about today?”

This last question is a kind invitation to “hold space” for someone who is grieving—the topic we discussed at our recent CliffsNotes Book Club. Adam Kugajevsky led a discussion about the book Witnessing Grief by Holly Margl. The book is a treasure trove on a difficult topic. (In case you missed it, check out Adam’s extensive book notes on the portal.)

Margl talks about having the “courage” to stay present and sit with discomfort. Key points from the book:

• Your emotional response to someone experiencing grief has the power to enhance or diminish your relationship with that person.
• A critical first step is to notice and name your own emotional reaction to a challenging topic or discussion. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”
• Offering support means being with the person without trying to change, improve, or redirect anything.
• As coaches/colleagues/friends, we can witness another person’s pain without getting caught up in it.

Throughout the book, Margl points out “what not to say.” For example, she talks about showing empathy, but maintains that empathy alone is not enough. In place of an empathetic question such as, “How are you managing,” Margl proposes asking, “What would it mean to you to feel a sense of stability?”

As a coach, I have to remind myself that the most important thing I can do in these moments is “witnessing.” There’s nothing else I have to do or try to accomplish. I also have found that asking, “What are the tears about?” is respectful and allows the person to share if they’d like to.
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What has worked for you?

We tend to focus on projects, events, and meetings, but what would happen if we were more intentional about the space in-between? How many conferences have you been to where the speakers are accomplished and polished, the schedule is packed with breakout sessions and vendor presentations, but the best collaboration happens by chance, at the breaks?

While attending the PopTech conference a few weeks ago, I found my mind wandering mostly about creating more space. How could I leverage my skills around building community, motivation, and facilitation to help others think and innovate?

I met with a client, and when I asked what they wanted to see differently six months from now, the leaders said that they wanted to see staff take more initiative, experiment with new ideas, and focus on continuous improvement. After interviewing the team members, it was clear what was going on. They didn’t need a workshop on innovation, they needed their senior leadership to get a handle on their workload and priorities. Once they could handle the workload and feel that they could keep their heads above water, they magically became more innovative. They were able to carve out time to think, imagine, and dream up new ideas.

If you don’t have the space, your team will eventually burnout. So, how do you, as a leader, intentionally create the space your team needs?

Here are a few ideas to get you started, but I would love to hear what you do as well.

As in the example above, examine your team’s workload and priorities. As we know from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a team needs to manage the foundational pieces before moving to higher level activities like collaboration and innovation. The three key foundational areas that I always address are 1) Goals (i.e., having a realistic number of goals that are clearly defined, 2) Roles (i.e., each team member knows how they contribute) and 3) Expectations (i.e., all team members know how to work together and what is expected of them in their role). Once you have these foundational team elements in place, you can build from there.

​Sometimes, you need to schedule the downtime or intentionally embed it into other activities. For example, before your weekly team meetings, take a “moment of pause.” You can rotate responsibility for this each week and you can leave the parameters open. In one of my teams, we had a variety of pause activities such as visual meditation, a song, a poem, a funny video, and interesting research. It only needs to take three minutes at the most, but it will help everyone get present for the meeting and sets a tone of innovation and openness.

In addition to team meetings, think about how often you carve out time for reflection and strategic thinking. Imagine sitting in the office (yes, back in the days where people went into the building) and your manager walks by, and you’re sitting back in your chair staring at the ceiling. Would they think you’re working? Of course not! But in fact, allowing time to sit back and think is exactly what you need to propel you and your team forward.

Now if you work from home, you have no excuse not to do it.  If you don’t intentionally schedule strategic time to think, you will likely fill that time addressing the emergency of the week or anything that feels more urgent. Some leaders have good intentions and create a recurring meeting for themselves to reflect and think once a week. However, if you’re like me, I always seemed to have something more urgent pop up and rarely honor that time for myself.

One way to mitigate this is to schedule your strategy meetings with at least one other person. Maybe it’s a colleague who is in the same department, maybe it’s with your senior leaders if you manage a larger team, or maybe it’s with your executive assistant. Whoever it’s with, you’ll be more likely to honor that meeting if you invite others and will benefit from other perspectives, too.

​What would you add to the list?

​As we know from the various personality assessments available today, some people naturally gravitate towards being people managers, while others are more comfortable with being task managers. There's an on-going debate as to which to focus on first. Do you focus on your people, and then see your efforts yield great results, or do you focus on results, and see morale, pride, and engagement grow?
 
If you've done any work with me, you already know my answer: it's a polarity!

​Successful leaders focus on both the people and the task. However, I sometimes find it difficult to make the case to a "task" manager as to why they should care about the people side of things. I have been challenged many a time. “What’s the business case, Laura?”
 
They say things like, "I'm a private person, and I keep my personal life out of the office!" and "These are my colleagues, not my friends."
 
And about small talk, what I hear a lot is, "It's not that I don't care, it's just that I don't have time for coffee-chats every day."

​At last month’s CliffsNotes Book Club, we talked about The Laws of Connection by David Robson, and we went deep on this discussion.

​(In case you missed it, head to the portal to check out the fabulous book notes Tommy Zarembka prepared.)

​The question I posed at book club is, how do you frame the benefit of connecting with others?
 
In the spirit of crowdsourcing, here are some ideas that I have used, and others that came from the group:
 

• In the book, Robson maintains that craving connection is a universal experience, and a deep sense of connection comes from constructing a ‘shared reality’ with another person. He defines ‘shared reality’ as when your thoughts, feelings and beliefs coincide.
• It’s now or later. Explain that you're either going to put the time in now (i.e., to connect with intention) or later (i.e., when something goes wrong), you decide. (Thanks to my colleague Katy O’Neill for this one!)
• Connecting builds trust, and trust is essential to getting quality results.
• When you take the time to know others, they will open up—sharing their struggles vs. hiding them. You avoid the situation of others “pretending it’s all under control” when there’s a project risk.

 
What would you add to the list?

​So it’s time for a well-earned promotion. You are rewarded with additional responsibility and a larger team. The transition is seamless at first, but you realize that you wish you had known a bit more about how to manage your focus and time. Some aspects of leading a large team have surprised you.

Over the course of many years of leadership coaching, as I helped people navigate the transition from being individual contributors to a strategic leaders, I have spotted some clear themes. Here are the three most common surprises.

1. People leadership becomes your job, not an add-on. When moving into a leadership role, many leaders have unrealistic expectations of how much time they will need to invest in connecting with staff. Most people come into the role managing their calendar around projects but don’t realize the time needed for people development activities. For example, one-on-one meetings with direct reports, team meetings, assessments, etc., can take significant time, and in some organizations, such as consulting firms, the time is above and beyond your targeted "40" hours.
2. Your identity shifts. If your identity is tied to your work, and if your job satisfaction is derived from crafting deliverables, you will need to make a mental shift. Taking on a leadership role means getting work done through people. In order to elevate, you will need to take pride in facilitating work, removing roadblocks, and connecting ideas. Your days of being heads-down on a task are over.
3. Accountability does not mean responsibility. New leaders will receive requests from their senior leadership team about solving a difficult problem, or tacking a new initiative, or creating a new product. These requests are often misinterpreted by new leaders that they, themselves, must take on the majority of the work. However, successful leaders remain accountable for the output while encouraging others to take responsibility for the multiple tasks involved. It’s not a request for the leader, it’s a request for the team.

In Vince Molinaro’s book, The Leadership Contract Field Guide,
​he outlines four aspects of the leadership contract.

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These are:

• “Step up,” leadership is an obligation
• “Get tough,” leadership is hard work
• “Connect,” leadership is a community
• “Make it,” leadership is a decision

Growing up has a few facets to it. Of course, there is physical growth which happens most notably during our first 20 years of life. From an intellectual standpoint, as we progress through school, we learn to think critically and manage large amounts of information. But what about emotional growth? It can be neglected. For most people, emotional intelligence does not develop unless you actively work on it—such as working with a psychologist or doing a lot of reading and exploration.

​As a coach, I find that a lot of wildly successful leaders need to work on emotional intelligence as part of their professional growth. For example, one of the toughest challenges in a stressful workplace is staying grounded when someone is pushing your buttons. A common conversation I have with coaching clients is about understanding your triggers.

​At Book Club last month, we discussed the book Leading Lightly by Jody Michael. In the book, Michael presents strategies for increasing joy by becoming more mindful of your choices and by taking back control.

​(In case you missed it, head to the CliffsNotes Book Club portal to check out the fabulous notes and book summary that Katy O’Neill prepared.)

The discussion was high-energy, and we shared related resources as the book sparked ideas and we connected them to other models, theories, and resources. Here are some more resources and methods that came up during the book club discussion…all worth exploring:

1. Three Brains (book) by Karen Jensen – This book talks about the three “brains,” which are head/heart/gut. It’s a reference for connecting your thoughts and feelings and movement to how you are nourishing and maintaining your body.
2. Tara Brach’s RAIN model (RAIN = Recognize-Allow-Investigate-Nurture) – This mindfulness resource is a tool for anyone who wants to practice living in the present. Brach calls it a practice for “radical compassion.”
3. Corporate Athlete (article) by Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz – This resource talks about managing your energy, not your time. Taking notice of the energy drainers and the energizing aspects—including relationships—in your life can drive great insights for leaders at any phase in their career.
4. Positive Intelligence (book) by Shirzad Chamine. This book presents a model for developing emotional intelligence, and a list of “10 saboteurs,” that can cause you to repeat patterns that no longer serve you. These are: Judge, Avoider, Controller, Hyper-Achiever, Hyper-Rational, Hyper-Vigilant, Pleaser, Restless, Sticker, and Victim.

 
What resources help you manage your hot buttons?

When it comes to managing work through people, I have a shortcut formula I often reference in discussions with leaders. It’s just three things…

I learned this formula years ago from Tim Gallwey’s book, The Inner Game of Work. That is, a leader’s job is to maximize their employee’s potential and minimize the interference.

What do we mean by minimize interference? Here are some examples:
​

• If a team member has interference because of lack of skills, you as the leader may need to help them find the right training, or connect them to the right mentor or on-the job experiences.
• Perhaps the interference is less visible and may be due to a lack of confidence. As a leader, you may look for “small wins” for this person to help build their confidence.
• Or, maybe the interference is simply a lack of resources or inadequate equipment. As a manager, you may have to build a case for new resources.

It makes sense that so much of leading people is minimizing the interference, one roadblock at a time. But it never really occurred to me to introduce interference.
​
This was the big “aha” for me when I read the book The Friction Project by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao. At our Cliffs Notes Book Club this month, I discussed this book and explained the concept of “interference” as a form of friction. There are times to step on the gas (to reduce friction) and other times when you need to step on the brakes (to increase friction).  

​The authors define friction as “the forces that make it harder, slower, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in an organization.” Friction is any force that makes it harder or more complicated to get work done. It’s the unnecessary steps in an inefficient process. In the workplace, it could appear as layers of approval, a clunky user interface in computer program, bureaucracy, or other barriers to entry.

We typically think about reducing friction as being a good thing, and it is. However, the authors also talk about good friction. They urge the reader to look around for situations in which you may benefit from adding friction. That is, there are times when it makes sense to slow things down.
​
An example of good friction in a work setting is an IT protocol to make it hard for someone to hit ‘reply all’ to a large group email.

Outside of work, there are examples where efficiency is not always the end-goal. For example, at a time when many stores are introducing self-checkouts, a chain of Dutch grocery stores initiated “slow lanes.” Customers who appreciate the discussions at the store, and the social interaction, welcome the friction. They enjoy shopping and chatting—and value this over the increased efficiency of self-checkout.

The book provides a list of questions that are useful to help assess areas of friction. As with all decisions, there are trade-offs, and it’s wise to consider the effort versus possible impact/benefit of making a change. Here’s a set of questions to save, share, and refer to.

Friction Forensics Questions
adapted from The Friction Project

• Is it the right – or wrong – thing for you to do?
• Do you have enough skill and will to do it well?
• Is failure cheap, safe, reversible, and instructive?
• Is delay wasteful, cruel, or downright dangerous?
• Are people already overloaded, exhausted, and burned out?
• Does it require people to work alone or together?
• Will reducing friction for some make it harder for others?
• Is the human and financial toll worthwhile?

Imagine this scenario…Managers are not holding their people accountable. Deadlines are missed, requirements are not met, and performance is not up to par. You peel back the onion a bit and learn that information is not flowing, and trust is broken. Team members are not clear about what is in their control and under their authority. Leaders are not backing decisions made at the lower levels. It’s an all too common scenario that results in frustration and disengagement, yet it’s an oversimplification to say that people are not being held accountable for their actions. Accountability is a complex topic that requires some discussion.

​One of the challenges for new and experienced leaders is setting the tone for a culture of accountability. That is, a team where people have the power and authority to work with autonomy, where individuals own their actions and decisions, and where everyone displays leadership, regardless of their level.

In such a culture, everyone is responsible for outcomes—good or bad. A lot has been written about this topic, but I’d like to pile on with three things that stand out to me as effective ways to foster accountability and create a workplace that minimizes the “not it” moments.

1. Become a Champion

After years of working with leaders and coaching executives, I have found that the leaders who successfully create a culture of accountability often position themselves as “champions.” These leaders not only advocate for their teams but also provide air cover and take responsibility regardless of the outcome.
​
The biggest gift a leader can give their team is air cover. If you set out to empower your team and push down decision-making, the team must know that they have the autonomy to conduct their work and that they have your support on any decisions they make.

How to communicate this? Frequently message, “I got your back,” and mean it.

2. Focus on Ownership

Gustavo Razzetti recommends shifting the narrative away from accountability. In this article, Razzetti makes the case for shifting from focusing on who is accountable, to acknowledging ownership. He argues that ownership is intrinsically motivated, purpose-driven, and rewarding. An organization that has a culture of ownership cultivates pride and motivation. The shift from accountability to ownership is a subtle change with powerful outcomes.

3. Emphasize Shared Success

At a recent CliffsNotes Book Club meeting, we discussed Accountable Leaders by Vince Molinaro. (If you missed it, head to the portal and check out the fabulous notes Jeff Fetterman prepared.) Molinaro outlines how to drive accountability in great detail. In the book, he shares four strategies:

1. Make leadership accountability a priority
2. Define leadership expectations
3. Build the resilience and resolve of those you lead
4. Help others succeed across the broader organization
​
The fourth item—helping others succeed—is a refreshing and insightful aspect of accountability, and it relates to the community element of this cultural norm. Focusing on the combined success of the organization is a great way to build community and emphasize shared ownership for collaborative efforts and handoffs, including those transition points where something can slip through the cracks.
 
What has been your experience with fostering ownership? What has worked for you?

We have all heard it (maybe said it) a thousand times: People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers. The manager + direct report relationship is fundamental to your experience in any job. Margaret Wheatley talks about leaders’ having the power to create “islands of sanity”…

Wheatley defines these islands in her 2023 book, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity. Wheatley challenges us “to create the conditions, both internally and within our sphere of influence, where sanity prevails, where people can recall and practice the best human qualities of generosity, caring, creativity, and community.”  She urges leaders to use their powers for good—to create the spaces of refuge at work and beyond.
​
We explored the concepts of in this book at our CliffsNotes Book Club in April (check out the notes on the portal for more details from the book). The discussion really resonated, and I began to think about the islands I have witnessed, been part of, and created.

There are a few exceptional and extraordinary examples of entire organizations that seem to make their own rules, and are functioning as islands of sanity. The Motley Fool financial advisory, whose motto is “Making the world smarter, happier, and richer,” is consistently rated among the best financial advisors. Their model is to democratize financial advice, and their employees enjoy flexibility and generous benefits. What’s more, they set up a foundation to support “social innovation” in the space of helping people get out of the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.
​
The book  Beloved Economies by Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea presents many other remarkable examples. The core premise of the book is that the current economy focuses on financial profits and sucks us dry, such that we have no time, energy, or resources to enjoy life.

In the book, the authors pose the question, If you work in a company where you trust your employees and treat them with respect, how would you design the systems differently? They share examples of organizations that truly put people first, and that are successful regardless (or because of it…).

​One example from the book is Creative Reaction Lab. They facilitate customized learning experiences using equity-centered community design. Also, PUSH Buffalo (PUSH = People United for Sustainable Housing), a community organization that has been mobilizing residents to create strong neighborhoods with quality affordable housing and greater local hiring opportunities.

Another fabulous example is Dan Purvis, founder of Velentium. It’s impressive how intentional and thoughtful Purvis was about designing the company culture. A guiding principle was to be “principles heavy and rules light,” or “more like soccer than football.” Purvis knew that the company could not be innovative and nimble if weighed down by overly cumbersome rules. He managed to stay true to this rule even in a space like medical devices, where documentation and regulation are rigorous. (See my blog on this great company.)

While there are a few examples of entire orgs as “islands, I am certain many of us have seen or been part of  islands as “pockets” inside bigger organizations. The secret behind these? Leaders who make it possible. Wheatley talks about the sphere of influence of an individual leader and encourages us to leverage it. The key is to ask yourself, “What is in your control?”

How can you show up as a leader and create your own island? Here are some practical ideas:
​

• If you are in a situation where you do not align with a new company policy, recognize that you can still find a way to implement it, while supporting the team. Acknowledge the sometimes brutal reality of the environment around you, and provide encouragement for the team to move forward.
• Handle conflict with firmness and kindness.
• At times of layoffs or other crises,  find a way to support the team through the period of turmoil.
• Balance individualism and collectivism. This brings out individual strengths and contributions of team members while creating a collective team culture.
• In the world of AI and technological leaps forward, honor the systems already in place while looking for ways to embrace change.

What islands of sanity have you been part of? If you have created one, how did you make it work?
 

​Just when you think we have talked enough about remote work, I have some ideas to pile on. Our March CliffsNotes Book Club discussion was on the book Remote, Not Distant by Gustavo Razzetti. (Many thanks to Mary Power for leading the lively, info-packed discussion! If you missed it, check out the notes on the portal.)
 
Razzetti sparked some interesting ideas, in particular discussions of mindset shifts. That is, for years we have been thinking about “workplace” and “office” with a specific frame. It’s time to shift our thinking.

Virtual First. Remember a few years back when smart phones were starting to win us over? If you designed a website at that time, someone who was more tech savvy would nudge you and say, “Remember, mobile first!” It was a reminder to ensure that the interface you were designing would work well on a smaller screen. Now, just a decade later, it’s second nature, right? Well, Razzetti urges us to make a similar mindset shift as it relates to designing meetings, etc. He calls for a “virtual first” mindset. That is, design with virtual in mind first, regardless of whether you are virtual or hybrid.

Rethink the Purpose of an Office. If you have spent decades “going to the office” for work, you likely have a set idea of what “office” looks like, and how it’s used. I am thinking about things such as what activities take place there, what time of day it’s active, and who participates, etc. Razzetti urges us to rethink that. All of that! If an office is purely for collaboration versus for getting everything work-related done, what would the space need to look like? How would you redesign it, and what opportunities does that open up for your organization? As part of this, Razzetti talks about the need to clarify which arrangements the company is going to make and where flexibility is allowed. Razzetti urges teams, not individual leaders, to think through and plan out all the details.

Bring Together Ideas, not Bodies. Another mindset shift is related to how we get work done through and with others. For Razzetti, collaboration is about an exchange of ideas, not a meeting of people. If you focus on the flow of ideas, you may realize that being co-located is not necessarily required. Razzetti advises that the first step is often to look at your current workflows. Examine how is work getting done now, then redesign your processes.

​Razzetti’s Culture Design Canvas© is an amazing tool to guide a team or organization in reimagining the workplace. The center is the starting point. First, define your purpose and outline your values. Then, begin to design the remaining elements. Visit Razzetti’s "Fearless Culture" website for more downloads and resources.
 
As always, let me know what ideas this sparks!

Given that many of our friends and neighbors have teenage children, this is the time of year when we are talking a lot about college admissions. It’s high stress and high stakes, whether walking the dog or watching a high school sports game. For so many young people, so much seems to be hinging on what your top choices are, and where you get in. The school decision, and so many others, is about status and achievement versus the joy of learning. How did we get here?
 
At our February CliffsNotes Book Club discussion, Brenda Martineau presented highlights from the book Never Enough by Jennifer Breheny Wallace. The book talks about a “toxic achievement culture” that is taking over our kids’ and parents’ lives. In a society where the pressure to perform is deeply embedded in schools, sports, and beyond, how can we teach our kids to strive towards excellence without crushing them? (If you missed book club, check the book club portal for the notes.)
 
The author puts forward a seemingly simple answer. That is, children need to feel they matter, and they must feel intrinsic self-worth that is not dependent on external achievements. What’s the role of parents, teachers, and trusted adults? When they make children feel they matter, children see themselves as valuable contributors and important parts of the community. That’s when kids thrive. And, frankly, that’s when any one of us thrives.

I have been reflecting on these same challenges, and over the years, you’ve heard me talk about leadership at work and beyond. At Mendelow Consulting Group (MCG), we believe leadership skills go way beyond the office walls and spill into all domains of life—with family, neighbors, and the community.

MCG’s Group Dynamic Engagement Model™ supports leaders in the workplace and parents at home. Per the model, to feel engaged, you must feel Connected, Valued, and Empowered. The model represents engagement at work and beyond. In working with executives in the boardroom and parents tackling the morning routine, we have found that the model holds true in both domains. Here are a few brief examples...

There is an art of creating a culture of engagement at work and at home, and it’s dynamic. At any given time, you may need to focus on one or more of these psychological needs. As a leader, at home or work, you also want to recognize how to address these needs, so you don’t accidentally over-accommodate or sacrifice your own needs. You want to accommodate and stand your ground; you want to be flexible and also have boundaries in place.
 
When it’s a well-oiled machine, you will find that those around you are more committed, more creative, and more fulfilled. That’s big-picture engagement. I know many of you are thinking about these same issues, so please send us your best practices. I’m curious to hear what strategies you employ to create that culture of engagement either at work or at home.

Years ago, I read an article that suggested that, in order to be the smartest person in the room, you had to do only one thing...listen!

​They argued that simply paying attention to the conversation in a meeting gives you a leg up over all the other great minds in the room. Years later, I find it’s true. Given the temptation to multitask and the distractions that we all face during the workday, it’s no wonder that paying attention is now a special skill that requires discipline—and that stands out.

I was thinking about the importance of listening (fully) in a meeting as I read this fabulous HBR article “10 Ways to Prove You’re a Strategic Thinker,” by Brenda Steinberg and Michael D. Watkins.

The article stands out because it’s a practical breakdown of behaviors and actions that define what it means to “be strategic,” a concept which can sometimes be squishy. The authors talk about both thinking strategically and the related skill, communicating.
​
As an organization development consultant and executive coach, I have worked with leaders for more than 20 years. I find that, to many people, being strategic means drawing a strategy on a slide. Well, yes and…there’s a lot more to it. The article outlines specific ways to be a strategic thinker and communicator. For example, demonstrating that you are informed, building on ideas, and connecting the dots between ideas.

If you are at the director or division-lead level, for example, paying attention to the broader discussion across your organization, and becoming informed on other groups’ activities and plans is what you need to develop an enterprise-wide view. That’s the big-picture.

Leading your Team vs. Leading with your Peers

As an executive coach, I find that many of the leaders I work with excel when it comes to leading their teams. In preparation for a team event or meeting, they actively engage, plan out talking points, and block time to ensure they minimize distractions. They show up. They listen fully and are able to ask those great “look ahead” questions, map ideas to the strategy, and engage the group.

When it comes to gatherings of peers, however, these same leaders may not prepare as much. They may allow their minds to drift if a peer is briefing on another area of the business, or they may send a delegate if they are double booked. In some cases, they don't even show up.

What’s the perception with their peers? It could be a view of a leader who is unprepared, siloed, not totally present… Their peers don’t see the strategic thinking in action. Why is this so important? Besides the fact that you’re missing opportunities to collaborate and provide more value to the organization, from a personal development perspective, if your desire is to be promoted, peer feedback and adding value at the peer level is critical. If your cohort doesn’t feel that you’re ready to move up, you will likely not be promoted regardless of how well you manage your own team and projects. 

​We spend a lot of time taking photos and videos of life’s moments—from documenting our meals to vacation selfies, our phones hold a lot of memories. The pictures and images we record help us remember what happened. But what helps us learn from it?
 
The strategy I use is to make time for reflection. As a practice, I try to do a little reflection at the end of the week, when a project or client engagement ends, and at the end of the year. Spending a little time looking back helps me celebrate my successes and learn how to fail forward. It also helps me remember the great ideas—those aha moments that are big and powerful, but that can get lost over time.
 
Trying to take my own advice, I looked back at my 2023 blogs. I stood back and squinted my eyes a little to see what really popped. No surprise, much of it happened thanks to the CliffsNotes Book Club discussions (visit the portal for the schedule and book summaries). Having a regular injection of ideas, and great discussion with fellow coaches and OD consultants is always a highlight for me. Here’s my ‘Lucky Seven” list:

1. A lot is wrong, and we have the power to redesign it. The insights I carried from the book Beloved Economies by Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea blew my mind. (Read more in this blog.) The basic premise is that our current way of working is not working for us, and we have the power to reimagine, and redesign it. All of it! The authors pose a great question: If you work in a company where you trust your employees and treat them with respect, how can you design the systems differently? What I love about it is that it puts us in the driver’s seat. It’s where we have been all along, but at times one can forget… 
2. Subtract, don’t add. We humans have a tendency to take on more and more. Over time it can result in an overloaded calendar, a packed workday, and a cluttered life. This is the central argument of the book Subract by Leidy Klotz. (Read more in this blog.) Next time you want to improve a process, think about what you can subtract instead of add.
3. Imagining the future you want helps you create it. The act of imagining the future can open you up to new, and possibly better ideas. A different part of the brain is activated when you think about one year from now versus the distant future—say 10-years from now. Intentional focus on the long-term can help you create your future, by training your brain to be more open and creative. (Read more in this blog.)
4. Stop making decisions. Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Purvis and Jason Smith, authors of 28 Days to Save the World. (I wrote up highlights in this blog.) These leaders have amazing stories of their tech organization—and many transferrable lessons for leaders in workplaces everywhere. One point that stuck with me was when Dan said his two favorite words are “you decide.” He leverages this phrase to instill trust and autonomy in his direct reports to encourage them to make decisions on their own. I think about that every time I work with clients who want to push down decision-making authority or drive accountability.
5. ‘Abundance’ mindset. One powerful mindset shift is to move from ‘scarcity’ to ‘abundance.’ Leaders with an abundance mindset look for win-win situations, trust others’ intent, and support creative solutions. Their actions permeate the workplace culture and positively impact engagement overall. In this blog, I share ideas for how to make the shift. 
6. Write out the unwritten rules.  People often ask me what the secret to a high-performing team is, and establishing Group Agreements is a tactic I can’t emphasize enough. Group Agreements are norms and guidelines, created by a work team or division, that explicitly state the otherwise unwritten rules of how you agree to interact. For more on how to set them up, check out this blog.
7. Create more friction. Email is out of control, yet we all continue to rely heavily on it. One big insight I had this year is to make it just a little harder for me to shoot off that email. Before hitting send, I try to imagine having to get up from my desk, walk down the hall, interrupt the person from their work, and verbalize the email message to the actual person. If I think it’s still worth it after all that, then I send the message. Otherwise, I save it for a meeting or capture the thought elsewhere. Creating this extra 'friction' helps to reduce the amount of information we send and be more intentional with our communications. (For more on this topic, see my blog and visit the portal  for the book notes on A World Without Email by Cal Newport.) 

 
Thanks for letting me share my “lucky seven.” Let me know what ideas this sparks, and what strategies you’re looking to implement for 2024.

If email is not working for us, why are we working so hard to work around it? This thought honestly never occurred to me before reading the book, A World Without Email by Cal Newport (Many thanks Carla Dancy Smith for co-leading last month’s book discussion on this and creating the discussion notes.) And, it’s so true, I’ve come up with email folders, filters, rules, automatic responses, etc., just to stay on top of this never-ending stream of communication...
​
The book club discussion triggered my thinking about what we can do now to make email work for us. You may not be in a position to eliminate it entirely (although, some organizations have, believe it or not) but I challenge you to thoughtfully design another way to operate…or a way to love the one we’re with.

• Simulate the 'Friction' One of the challenges with email is simply the volume. It’s just too easy to send a message when a thought pops in your head. And as a result, we send and receive way too many. The fix: Here’s a thought exercise…Imagine there is more 'friction' when you send an email. Imagine having to get up from your desk, walk down the hall, catch your colleague in a free moment, and ask the question. If all of this effort were needed, would you still send it? If not, save it for your one-on-one meeting. Which brings us to our next point.
• Maximize your Meetings A key way to eliminate many emails is to make better use of other means of exchange, for example meetings. The fix: Set the expectation with your staff about how you’d like to work together. Ask them to save their non-urgent questions until you meet 1:1 or as a team. Another option is to create a shared document where everyone can drop their thoughts during the week. Then review it to ensure the ideas are captured/addressed.
• Take time to Triage There’s a big blind spot with email—we tend to underestimate how long it takes to organize info. In fact, many people answer messages as they come, without any real method for triage or thoughtful prioritization. The fix: Here’s an exercise you can do tomorrow morning. Time yourself as you are reading and organizing 50 emails in your inbox. Then dedicate that amount of time every day--actually block the time on your calendar--to organize your inbox. Organizing your emails is separate from actually responding to messages and will make all the difference in how much you feel in control of your inbox. The general rule, from David Allen’s Getting Things Done, is if it will take longer than 3 minutes to respond to an email, it’s considered a task. Therefore, you will need to block time on your calendar to complete the task.
• Create Team Agreements on How to Communicate One challenge with email is that it tends to become the default, without regard for the other communications channels available. The fix: Team Agreements are a big help as it relates to communication norms overall. Working collaboratively with your team, come up with agreements on how you will use Slack/IM/Teams – versus email. Agree to revisit the agreements periodically, say when new people join the team.

 
I hope this short list gets you thinking…and do let me know what works for you, as you rethink how email can work for us!

1. Normalize it – Many accomplished professionals, men and women alike, have moments where they don’t feel that they can live up to others’ expectations of themselves, even though they have the expertise and have proven themselves to be credible time and time again. It happens to the best of us. Many people experience the it after they’ve been promoted into a position with greater responsibility. Listen to a few stories about Michelle Obama and Maya Angelou, just to name a few, in this Hidden Brain episode “Success 2.0: The Psychology of Self-Doubt,” with psychologist Kevin Cokley. 
2. Reframe it – There’s a fine line between anxiety and excitement. With both emotions, your body reacts in similar ways in that your adrenaline is pumping, sweat is dripping, and your heart is beating fast. Is it possible that some of your nerves with starting a new role or job may actually be excitement that you’re labeling as anxiety? How would it benefit you to reframe those sensations as excitement? How would you respond differently?
3. Put words to it – Finding what is at the root of imposter phenomenon requires leaders to do some personal introspection—and also examine the external factors that may exist in the culture or work environment. Oftentimes, the “fix” for imposter phenomenon is not at the level of the individual leader, it’s at the organizational level and may require systemic changes over time. However, at the individual level, recognize what is in your control. Find a trusted colleague or coach and begin to examine what exactly is causing you to feel like an imposter. Break it down to the behavioral level, if possible, and then brainstorm strategies to address each of your concerns. 
4. Be prepared to recover from mistakes – Often when someone takes on a new role, they are afraid of saying something dumb or not having an answer that they “should” know. Prepare yourself to perform at your best and prepare yourself to fail. For example, how would you recover if you were in a situation where you didn’t know the answer? Think of the way you’d react, and the words you would say.
5. Access your past – The best way to build your own confidence is to recall real experiences from the past in which you felt you had genuine success. Think about why you were successful. What did you bring to the table? How did you add value? And then think about how you can access that same skill set today. BTW, this is a great technique to use if you’re helping others build their confidence too (co-workers or even your kids). Instead of empty statements of how great they are, give specific real examples of when they succeeded in the past. 
6. It’s not about you – It’s often the top executives who experience imposter syndrome. They think, who am I to be in this role and spout out wisdom and advice to others? Actually, no one wants you to do that. Your team wants you to value them for what they bring to the table. Instead of focusing on your expertise, highlight your team members and let them shine. If you’re in a senior leader or executive role, you’re no longer relied on for your expertise. You are now the choreographer, the facilitator, the communicator, or the collaborator. Think about the ways you add value that have nothing to do with your expertise.

 
As always, pile on your thoughts on the topic! I love to hear what ideas this sparks for you.

At last month’s CliffsNotes Book Club discussion, we explored strategies and tips for navigating career changes. Our facilitator for the month, Paula Brand, led a fabulous discussion and shared a lot of context from her experience as a career coach. (If you missed it, check out the portal for Paula’s notes.)
 
My “aha!” moment as I followed along was that career changes have a special way of pushing people out of their comfort zones! In particular as it relates to networking, many people hesitate to be proactive—or put it off for too long—because it’s simply too uncomfortable. I wanted to share a few strategies I have worked through with coaching clients over the years…that will help reframe the challenges.

Challenge #1: It’s been a while since you connected with someone, and you hesitate to get back in touch.
Keeping up your professional network is a must, but for a number of reasons you may find yourself in a situation where you have not been in touch with your key “career success” people in a while. Perhaps you changed jobs, they moved, or you left a mutual group where you would regularly interact.
 
The reframe: Remember a relationship goes two ways.
Asking someone for time to talk can feel like an imposition, especially if you have not been in touch in a while. But remember that it is highly likely that they will also benefit from talking with you. When you reach out, be open about what you are asking for, and also offer to support them. This reframe can alleviate some of your discomfort and make the discussion feel more ‘give and take,’ and balanced.
 
 

Challenge #2: You cringe at the thought of bragging about yourself.
It can be uncomfortable to many to openly speak about accomplishments, skills, expertise, or credentials. Even if you are proud of your background, talking about it so as to ‘sell’ it can be hard.
 
The reframe: Put the spotlight on the organization. 
In an interview, focus on the organization rather than your experience or background. Lead with what you appreciate about the organization and how your particular expertise could support/further their efforts. This allows you to share your success stories and skills in the context of enhancing the organization.
 
 
Challenge #3: You need to talk to strangers.
Often times, expanding your network involves connecting with new people. For many, this means being "on.” It can be particularly draining and anxiety-inducing!
 
The reframe: Set goals for yourself and network with purpose.
Networking goals can help remind you of the purpose and your desired outcomes. You’ll find it’s not about quantity (e.g., reaching out to everyone), it’s about quality (e.g., identifying a few key people you can make meaningful connections with). First set clear goals on what you are trying to achieve, then seek out people who can help you gain clarity on them. Instead of filling your calendar with coffee chats, this will help you engage in purposeful discussions with a wide variety of people.
 
 
What networking challenges have you faced, and how have you overcome them?

If I asked you to write down the rules and norms for your household, it may take some reflection to generate a robust list. Yet, one shortcut is to observe a child in action. When learning their way in life, children make a lot of missteps. From “Don’t put that in your mouth” to “We don’t look in other people’s purses,” listening to what a child is being corrected for can signal the long-established group norms. In many cases, these “broken rules” are things you would not think to articulate—that is, until a child enters the picture!

In the workplace, it may take some discussion to reflect on and develop a list, but it’s well worth the effort.

Spoiler alert: One of my favorite Group Agreements is to use an Elmo doll in meetings. "ELMO" stands for "Enough, let's move on." You can throw Elmo or just show a key-chain size Elmo on a virtual meeting, and everyone gets the message in a playful way.

Group Agreements are norms and guidelines that explicitly state the unwritten rules of how your team agrees to interact. They work best when discussed, formally written down, and kept in a prominent place. What’s more, they are a living document that needs to be adjusted as the team grows. It’s important to dust them off, review them, and discuss them periodically.
​
People often ask me what is the secret to a high-performing team, and establishing these norms is a tactic I have seen be very successful in many different types of settings. Known by many names including “group charter,” agreements are a set of expectations that you (or others) can refer back to and reinforce to optimize interpersonal and team dynamics and address issues that may occur. They create psychological safety—a safe space for conversation that allows people to be more honest and forthcoming.

​Why are Group Agreements so helpful to leaders? Imagine leading a team that includes a team member who is a challenge. She’s extremely intelligent and follows the rules, but she shows up as defensive in meetings. Her presence has a negative impact on team dynamics.
 
Yet, it’s hard to give her feedback against a specific skill area or core value because she’s a great performer. However, if you have agreements in place, you can refer to them.
 
For example, some teams include in their agreements Steven Covey's rule, "Seek first to understand then be understood." In a feedback conversation, you can frame your observation in terms of this agreement. Like competencies and core values, the agreements are something tangible to refer to during feedback conversations.

​If you know me, you know my motto, “Leadership at work and beyond.” The skills we develop as leaders are transferrable to many settings outside of the workplace, including the home. With some tweaks, e.g., display on the refrigerator door vs. on a PowerPoint, you can leverage agreements for your family.
 
One day when my boys were young, I came home from facilitating a workshop and had all my supplies in tow. I was holding flip chart paper with the words “Ground Rules” at the top. My oldest son who loved structure asked about this and was curious what I was doing creating rules with people I work with. I explained to him that we established the rules of how we want to work together before we start a workshop. He immediately then asked, “Can we do rules for our family?” Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? So, that week we sat down and came up with our family rules that included “Talk nicely,” “Recover when you make a mistake,” and “Care about others.”
 
These rules reflected how we wanted and expected to interact with each other as a family. My husband and I always had these expectations, but we never thought to discuss them with our kids and write them out. We selected some rules that we knew our boys needed to work on and some that we were already doing well. The rules applied to everyone, not only the kids.
 
We created “Spy Journals” and everyone was asked to spy on each other during the day to catch others living out the family rules. If you saw something, you wrote it down on a piece of paper and then we read them to each other before bedtime. We would describe the behavior and what rule it aligned to. One time I remember writing, “I saw Jack get an extra bowl for Drew during breakfast, and that shows he cares about others.” Instead of empty praise or kudos, we wrote down what we actually saw and connected the dots to the family rules.  
 
Although agreements are helpful when having to give constructive feedback, they work best when you “catch others doing something right” and this applies at home or at work. Agreements should not be used to shame or punish others, but rather leveraged to reinforce the positive behaviors you want to see repeated.

While it works best to establish the norms early on as a group is forming, you can also introduce the concept after a team is established. The important thing to remember is that the agreements surface through discussion and input. To gain buy-in, they cannot be imposed by the organization or a leader.

I often work with groups in designing norms and have jotted down some common agreements that work for many groups. If you decide to work with your team to establish them, you could refer to these and see what resonates. Then edit, add, delete as needed.
​
Group Agreements – Examples

• Assume positive intent – shift from threat to connect
• Dialogue, don’t debate
• Be transparent – share your pain points
• Invest in relationships to build relationships
• Own your own mistakes
• Don’t let issues fester
• Feedback is for learning, not evaluating
• Demonstrate empathy
• When a project goes off track, inform early in the process and offer suggestions
• WAIT – When speaking in a meeting, ask yourself, “Why am I talking?”

 
Agreements for Virtual Teams

• ELMO – “Enough, let’s move on” (distribute Elmo stuffed toys for team members to show on camera)
• Elephant picture or stuffed animal – show on camera when you want to discuss “The elephant in the room”
• YES/NO signs – Show your agreement through physical signs
• Be camera-ready
• “Mute” until you have a comment
• Turn off video if unable to be present
• Turn off the pings! (e.g., IMs or email pop ups) during important conversations
• Use the reaction features to communicate
• For longer meetings, take stretch breaks

 
If you have experience with Group Agreements, drop me a line below to let me know what unique guidelines you have established, and how they have helped your team!

Many of the leaders I support are working hard to increase their intentional focus on supporting Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility (DEIA) efforts in their organizations. They are personally dedicated to making their own workplaces more inclusive. This is a wonderful goal! However, as it relates to collaboration at work, many leaders tell me they now err on the side of reaching out to more people, inviting more input, and ensuring broader stakeholder engagement. And…their managers are inviting them to more meetings and discussions, too. There is a point at which this level of collaboration is “too much.” Our inboxes are pinging, and our calendars are screaming!
 
Author and researcher Rob Cross has looked closely at trends in collaboration at work and he tells us that, over the past decade or so, the time we spend on email/chat and in meetings has increased by roughly 50 percent. In his book Beyond Collaboration Overload, he makes the case that all this increased collaboration with colleagues is not necessarily adding value. And it’s causing overwhelm! (For more on the book, check out the discussion notes from the July CliffsNotes Book Club.)

​So, how do we get a handle on collaboration while also being inclusive?

When considering the “best way” to do collaboration, it’s helpful to consider the polarities, or seemingly opposing forces, at play. On the one hand, you wish to be inclusive, on the other, focused. After all, you do not want to overwhelm your colleagues or engage so many people that you’re hogging resources unnecessarily. In thinking about collaborating with colleagues to get input on your work, you may want to both include a diverse group of perspectives and engage those who have the closest expertise or most stakeholder interest. There are upsides and downsides to both sides of the polarity, and ideally you will find a way to maximize both. Take a look at the polarity map, and consider the dynamic...

Here are some tips to keep in mind as it relates to effective collaboration:
 
Plan your list of attendees. This may seem obvious, but at the moment of hitting “send” on a meeting invite, you may wish to quickly complete the task and be done with it. It’s important to pause and reflect before issuing an invite, especially if you have more than three attendees listed. Take a moment to think about the purpose for your collaboration, and who will help you get to the desired outcome. Write two lists.

• List 1: Who really needs to actively engage?
• List 2: Who can be informed of the outcome after the meeting?

Make the invitation an option, not an obligation. I recently saw a meme that said, “It’s okay to say ‘no’ even if you are not already booked.” In the workplace, it can be especially hard to say “no,” and many workplaces have the practice of sending delegates to meetings. While this practice can be hard-wired into the culture of the organization, as a leader you can set the tone for allowing people to opt out. Taking the extra step to reach out and ask people personally how they will engage on a topic, sharing a RASCI if you have one (i.e., “Do these roles look right?”), and laying out the plan for communicating any decisions, etc., will help all “invited” attendees decide how best to collaborate.

Protect your “go to” people. Every good leader has a team of people who you are quick to reach to. You work well with them, they “get” you, and you know they will deliver. When considering who you regularly collaborate with, take care to protect them and ensure you are not burning them out. Everyone wants to feel appreciated and needed, but over-collaboration is a real risk. 
 
What tips would you add?

​Be honest with yourself. Think about advancing in your organization. What’s your mindset, is it, ‘every person for themselves’ or ‘we’re all in this together?’ This is often referred to as an abundance/scarcity mindset. Where do these mindsets come from? During our CliffsNotes book club discussion on The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper, by Heather McGhee, we examined this mindset through the lens of racism in America. (Many thanks to Kari Uman for facilitating!) The author approaches the discussion of racism not as a sociologist or anthropologist, but as…an economist!

​McGhee frames the discussion on the cost of racism on people of color and white people alike. For example, one observation McGhee makes is how the zero-sum paradigm is at play in racism in the U.S. Zero-sum is the notion that when one group wins, another loses.
 
She shares numerous examples of how public benefits have been lost in recent decades. One compelling example is that of city swimming pools. In the 1950s, public pools were required to desegregate. In response, many communities chose to close the pools rather than open them up to all. As a result, many communities lost the benefit entirely. In their place, private pools opened, which are a benefit only to those who can afford the cost of entry/membership.
 
So, imagine for a moment, you were child who grew up in a lower socio-economic neighborhood and experienced services either taken away from you or not even offered to you in the first place. Perhaps your parents applied for a loan to launch a new business or buy a house, but were denied over and over again. What might be your worldview as you grow up? For people who have not benefitted from abundance—people who have been treated poorly or less than for most of their lives—it is common to see a scarcity mindset show up in how they engage as leaders. This scarcity mindset may help you with being driven to succeed, but you will likely hit a wall once you move into a leadership role.
 
(For more on abundance vs. scarcity, listen to this May 2023 episode of Freakonomics radio.)

​For leaders, an abundance mindset puts you in a posture of openness. Leaders with an abundance mindset look for win-win situations, trust others’ intent, and support creative solutions. From a people development standpoint, they build people up. Leaders with an abundance mindset joyfully share kudos and create opportunities for others to grow in their careers, etc. Their actions permeate the workplace culture and positively impact engagement overall.
 
The question we raised in the book club discussion, is how do we help leaders who may have grown up feeling “lesser than,” for whatever reason, to help them adopt an abundance mindset?

In working with leaders especially in coaching relationships, I invest time up front to understand where people are coming from. One of my introductory questions is, “What are the defining moments that have shaped who you are as a leader?” It is a question that leads to reflections on upbringing, early family life, dynamics at school, etc.
 
One executive I supported a few years back came across as having a chip on his shoulder. He felt he always needed to prove himself, despite the fact that he was brilliant and had all the credentials and experience needed for his role. At his core, he felt he was never good enough. In getting to know him, I learned that he came from a family environment where his basic needs were not met. His family was poor and food insecure much of his childhood and adolescence.
 
As an adult, he created a barrier with his team and peers. To help him make the shift from scarcity to abundance, I asked him to focus on two things:

1. Being of service | I asked him to find ways to offer support/help/ideas, with no expectation of getting something in return. He looked out for opportunities to be of service to others in meetings, etc., and then make himself a resource to them. He learned to give of himself and not keep tabs on how the good deed was rewarded.
2. Proactively reaching out | I challenged him to reach out to colleagues for input and opinions on his work. This involved being vulnerable about challenges and unsolved problems, and sharing ideas before they were fully baked. In doing so, he demonstrated his openness to others’ ideas and learned to iterate on them, versus relying solely on his own.

 
Over time, his reputation shifted. He became known as someone who was collaborative, supportive, and inclusive. He built some strong relationships and truly connected with team members. His mindset shifted as did perceptions of him.

Racism in America is a topic where continuous learning is needed. At Book Club, the group shared their most helpful resources for going deeper into racism and social injustice. We also updated our resources list, originally created in 2020. Check out the newly-added resources below.
 
WATCH

• TED Talk by Heather McGhee
• TED Talk on Alpha Chicken, about impact of defensiveness in mediation/negotiation
• Radical Collaboration video
• Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America by Jeffery Robinson (on Netflix)
• Jim Crow program on WETA

 
LISTEN

• Hidden Brain episode about the cost of upward mobility, ends with using the model of immigration as an abundant model
• Hidden Brain episode on Psychology of Self Doubt

 
READ

• Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
• How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
• My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
• There There by Tommy Orange

DO/VISIT

• Living Legacy Pilgrimage to Alabama
• The Civil Rights Museum in Memphis

​In 2012, Dan Purvis was busy building a medical-device business. It would be called “Velentium,” which is a combination of the words velocity, momentum, and talent. It’s not just the name that’s creative. From the start, Purvis was also carefully and intentionally designing the culture. The business reason for existing was to support the development of medical devices but the human reason was deeper. In four words, Purvis describes it as: “culture-forward, family first.”

Over the past decade, he’s succeeded in growing the company with intention, and—what’s more—the company played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic. As he describes in 28 Days to Save the World: Crafting Your Culture to Be Ready for Anything, co-authored with Jason Smith, Velentium, in partnership with their client Ventec Life Systems, successfully increased production from 100 units of ventilators per month—to 10,000 per month.
 
Today, the company continues to boom, and they have not lost sight of their aspirations for a people-centered culture. When Purvis talks about the vision to grow to 1000 employees, you will hear him say that the company will “include 1000 families.” Families, not employees, because the whole person is at the heart of every decision. With every business decision, he acknowledges that each employee has many dimensions and roles in life, and the ‘career’ part is just one…
 
At this past month’s CliffsNotes Book Club, we had the honor of hosting Purvis and Smith. It was one of those meetings that gives you goosebumps and fills your notebook with ideas. I encourage you to read the book, but in the spirit of the CliffsNotes Book Club, where we pass notes to our besties, here are some of my takeaways from the discussion.
 

• Principles heavy; rules light – I was struck by how intentional and thoughtful Purvis was about designing the company culture. A guiding principle was to be “principles heavy and rules light,” or “more like soccer than football.” Purvis knew that the company could not be innovative and nimble if weighed down by overly cumbersome rules. I was impressed by how they managed to stay true to this rule even in a space like medical devices, where documentation and regulation are rigorous.
• Humble charisma – Purvis is passionate and committed to the mission and dedicated to excellence, but he does not take work too seriously, and he considers mistakes to be inevitable. When he talks about mistakes, he talks about “humble charisma” as a key trait and success strategy at Velentium. In recruiting, he looks for smart professionals, but mostly, he wants people who are “teachable” and will learn from mistakes.
• You decide – Purvis says his favorite words are, “You decide.” Pushing authority and decision-making down to the lowest levels is critical to empowerment. When discussing what it takes to make a culture where people at all levels are empowered to make the tough calls, Purvis talks about the key elements: “authority,” “ability,” and “autonomy.”
• Saving starfish – Purvis shared the story of the child who walks along the shore and tosses beached starfish back into the ocean. When a passerby says, “You’ll never save them all.” The child replies, “Yes, but I can save this one.” In much the same way, Purvis looks for unique and personal ways to celebrate his team members, with personal gifts and recognition that are deeply meaningful.
• Smart meetings – There’s tremendous opportunity cost to gathering a team in a meeting, and Purvis aims to make the most of the meeting time. One practice he has implemented at the end of each meeting is to have each person rate the meeting, on a scale of 1 to 10. If anyone rates the meeting an 8 or less, they discuss why, and aim to adjust, and learn from it.
• Forward-looking – In the Book Club meeting, we talked about looking back to learn from mistakes and looking ahead at what’s next—you must do both. In the spirit of Appreciative Inquiry and what’s working, one of the questions Purvis recently posed to his leadership team is, What is one thing you currently do that, if you doubled it, would make us better off next year? That’s one for my back pocket!

 
And that’s just the CliffsNotes, folks! Check out the book and head to the portal for the presentation notes.

As you watch a professional tennis player preparing to receive a serve, you’ll notice they are in constant motion. Knees bent, they stay on the balls of their feet, shuffling, ready to react swiftly to a serve coming at them at 100+ mph. As we think about what the future is about to serve us, what does that ready stance look like? And what does resilience look like?
 
The book Imaginable by Jane McGonigal presents an approach for “How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today.” It’s the mental equivalent of shuffling on the balls of your feet, leaning in, eye on the ball…This book was the feature at our CliffsNotes Book Club meeting in April, and we had a great discussion about how future-thinking leads to a higher level of resilience. (Thanks again to Cate Rodman our fabulous facilitator! For Cate’s notes, visit the portal.) What’s more, it is not simply about imagining what the future may hold, but also about promoting actions today to influence a possible future. In the book, McGonigal gives us the tools to help shape the world we want to live in.

In the book, McGonigal explains that imagining the future is a tool that gets you out of rational thinking and puts you into a more creative space. And we can train the brain to do this—to imagine what is un-imaginable, and to think what is un-think able. The neuroscience is fascinating. As an fMRI scan shows, a different part of the brain is activated when you think about one year from now versus the distant future—e.g., envisioning a scenario 10-years from now.
 
In our book club meeting, we opened the discussion by sharing one thing that is true about our lives today that ten years ago we would not have imagined. It’s a powerful question to engage a group and demonstrate that we don’t always know what the future will look like. This encourages people to dream about the future to come and be open to potentially crazy ideas or new realities. Afterall, if a crazy reality came true in the past, then why wouldn’t that be possible in the future?

It reminded me of the famous quote from Henry Ford. When asked about customer input, Ford once said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." As was the case for Ford’s customers, they could only imagine more of what they already had for transportation. It wasn’t in their realm of possibility yet to image an automobile. When you are able to tap into the power of your imagination, you open up new possibilities and new realities.

​For the past few weeks, I have been looking at everything, from my schedule to my closet to my task list, and asking myself a question…
 
What can I subtract?
 
At our February CliffsNotes Book Club meeting, we discussed the book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz (if you missed it, check out the notes on the portal). Sally Bloomberg led the discussion and pushed us to identify something we can stop doing, or cut out from our lives, to find more joy.
 
The book takes a broad look at the notion of stopping things, resetting priorities so they match your values, and intentionally choosing how to spend your time. The author argues that it is our tendency to add, or to take on more, and over time it can result in a cluttered life. It got me thinking about a challenge many of the leaders we support, through coaching and in leadership programs, struggle with…
 
Some call it “finding balance” and others call it “setting boundaries” or “finding ‘me’ time.” Many dream of taking some time off, a vacation or a sabbatical, to hit reset. While I am a big fan of a true-unplug-vacation, I would argue that the sustainable way to subtract is by looking at your daily routine. Specifically, how do you rework your daily routine, rather than operating in two modes – “on” and “off” – where “off” maybe happens one week a year while at the beach? (Because, let’s face it, a post-vacation glow only lasts so long…)

We’re obsessed with time-savers, yet…
Tech advances and digitalization have been framed as “timesavers.” Automating our work and the endless list of handy apps seemingly streamline our to-do lists, but we tend to add tasks to fill the space, rather than enjoy the newfound free time.
 
In the book You Are Not Your Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz, we learn the four steps to rewire compulsive habits. Originally designed to help people with OCD (read more in this brief article), the steps can help with common struggles in the office such as the compulsion to check email frequently—even when you have the luxury of a block of time for deep work. The curious thing about the findings presented in the book is that people who were able to overcome their compulsive tendencies then faced an unexpected challenge. They needed to manage and actively tend to their down time. If they did not, they were at risk for a relapse.
 
We’re hungry for info, yet…
Gallup poll data tells us that people feel it is harder to be informed about what is happening in the world now that information is readily available at our fingertips. I am old enough to remember when there were exactly two opportunities to hear the news every day – the morning newspaper and the evening news broadcast. Ah, the good old days. Today, with real-time information on happenings across the globe, we feel less informed. It’s harder to vet news sources for credibility, and it’s harder to keep up with the gushing stream of news. On the social front, we keep up with many more “friends” than we used to, given social media. So while we may know what our third-grade bestie, who we have not seen since she was under 4 feet tall, ate for dinner on Saturday, we feel less connected to friends in real life. Research on how we gather socially tells us that Americans see less of our friends in real life.  
 
We’re encouraged to continuously improve, yet…
The often-cited research, popularized in Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers, on how it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert also included data on downtime. In addition to the hours of practice, it also takes 12,500 hours of “deliberate rest” and 30,000 hours of sleep/naps in order to become an expert. The downtime is as important!
 
So back to the initial question, what exactly can we subtract? Here are some ideas and questions to get you started. But please pile on! (Oops – I should be encouraging subtracting!)

• When someone comes to you with a request, think about what you need to let go of before you commit to this project. Or, if this person is your manager, engage in a negotiation of what you can “pause,” delay or delegate while you focus on this new request.

 

• Thinking strategically and coming up with innovative ideas often requires your active brain to take a rest (that’s why our best ideas often pop up in the shower!). How can you actively take a step back during the day to intentionally allow your brain to wander. Consider taking a walk around the block, sitting and staring out the window, or going to have an in-person lunch with a colleague.

 

• Be more realistic with how much time things take and block that time on your calendar so you don’t overload yourself. I learned this a while ago when I attended a workflow productivity course. For example, I learned to block time on my calendar to organize my inbox. This does not mean responding to email (unless it will take 3 minutes or less) but rather organizing the information. During this block of time, I determine what needs to be filed, what needs to become a task on my calendar, what needs further attention, etc. I find most people underestimate the time it takes to organize information that is incoming every day. If I think a task should take me an hour, I block off 2-3 hours. This allows for me to be more realistic with my time and I know exactly when I’ll be working on certain tasks because “project time” is blocked out on my calendar.

 
As always, let me know what ideas this inspires and what’s working for you.

You know that feeling when you hear a word for the first time, and then in the span of a week it shows up three or four times, as if it’s always been there, right under your nose? For me, what keeps showing up in my client discussions, reading, and research is the notion of doing work differently, or not accepting business as usual. It’s about putting people first while also doing meaningful and profitable work, rather than focusing on profits at the expense of people’s well-being.

To some, it means creating more opportunity for collaboration, flattening the hierarchy, and pushing down decision-making. The January CliffsNotes Book Club book Beloved Economies by Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea offers several examples – check out the book notes on the portal and my recent blog). 
 
It's also about taking away the noise (bye-bye, meeting-packed days!) and trusting people to do good work—with minimal or no supervision. This episode (39 min) of the Wisdom from the Top podcast with Basecamp founder Jason Fried is a great example. This wildly successful company has always had a small remote team (approx. 50 people), and one of their practices is to ensure people have focused time to work—meaning a full 8-hour day to work, with minimal meetings. There are no shared calendars, and there is no practice of “grabbing time” on someone’s calendar to talk. 
 
It’s also about redefining wealth. Many organizations have adopted the “triple bottom line” as the primary success factor where they consider profit, people, and planet. What’s interesting, however, is that typically decisions are still driven to increase profit. For example, wellness programs are established but the rationale is that when you have healthier employees, they’ll be more productive and therefore you’ll get more out of them. It’s challenging to find an organization that truly honors all three equally. One of my longtime clients Capitol Benefits is an excellent example, and their strong retention and engagement is no coincidence.
 
And yet for others, “doing work differently,” means making space for people who would otherwise not have a chance at an interview, much less a career. Busboys and Poets, a unique restaurant/bookstore/events space with several locations in the Washington, DC, area, is a great example of this. It’s their practice to “ban the box” on the employment application question that asks applicants to declare if they have a criminal record—which ensures all applicants have a fair chance. 
 
Rethinking your practices on decision-making is an example of doing work differently that many leaders can implement at their team level. And it has a huge impact on team effectiveness. Whether you are a senior executive or a frontline leader with a small team, you likely have discretion to design your decision-making process. 
 
Now, a reality check. It's easy to idealize an environment that does work differently and, in doing so, we may not consider that there are pitfalls to avoid. So let’s look at this more closely. I want to help you make positive changes and make sure that you don’t swing the pendulum too far over to the other side... ​

I have been looking at this topic in terms of the polarities—or seemingly opposing forces—at play. Let's look at "Hierarchy" versus "Collectivism."

Many of us have already experienced the downsides of working in a hierarchical environment. Perhaps you experienced that you weren’t involved in decisions, didn’t have a voice at the table, and weren’t bought in to the vision. Naturally, if you have the ability to do work differently, you may think, “When I lead a team, I want to include everyone in all decisions and value all perspectives.” Which seems great at the surface level, but what happens when you lean into this approach too far? 
 
Then there is the collectivist model...If you are too inclusive in decision-making, you may find yourself in a situation where every tiny decision needs to be socialized. Organizations that are overly collaborative tend to move slowly, and the result can be frustration or missed opportunity. Also, when everyone has a chance to weigh in, you may have difficulty making a final decision. Are votes needed every time? What about contentious issues? 
 
Being aware of the pitfalls will help you navigate through this polarity to get the best of both approaches. Here are a few tips based on what I have seen work in several organizations over the years. ​

Organizations that do decision-making effectively and make it collaborative tend to:

1. Agree on the process before jumping in. Taking time to discuss how you will reach a decision before​ you begin talking about the decision is critical. Will you be making an executive decision by the end of the month? Are you going to delegate the decision to a committee? Or, maybe by the end of the meeting, you agree to take a vote, and the majority wins. Ensure everyone agrees on the process before you start and will be aligned to the outcome—even if they disagree with the decision. Focus on alignment, not agreement. 
2. Be intentional about who and how. We recognize some decisions warrant input from the full organization and some need to be taken by a small few. Intentionally think about who will be impacted by the decision? Whose voice is critical (and challenge your thinking here too)? Who has the data, experiences, and expertise to shed light on the decision?
3. Encourage communication and push back. You probably don’t want to hear this, but you will never get it completely right. For this reason, build in a feedback loop process. For example, if someone felt excluded and has information they feel is important, create a space for their voice to be heard and valued. This may happen through soliciting feedback during 1:1 manager check-ins, it may be an open, anonymous survey, or an online “Ask me Anything” session with the key decision makers. 

 
Questions to prepare you to do work differently. Ask yourself:

• What am I pulling away from?
• What could potentially happen if I lean too far into that new approach?
• What is helpful about the approach I want to change?
• What are ways to get the best of both?

Have you ever read a book that continues to rearrange things in your mind long after you turn the last page? The book Beloved Economies by Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea is that book. It has challenged everything I know about work, about employee engagement, and even about the role of leadership. The core premise of the book is that the current economy, “in its lovelessness,” focuses on financial profits while compelling us to work in ways that make it harder for most of us to have the time, energy, or resources to be together in the ways that make life good. What’s more, it’s all by design—so why not set out to re-design it?

That’s right, re-design…The goal of this book is to help transform the way we work. They make the distinction between innovating on what’s known and truly transforming or reimagining work. And that’s why, weeks after I read it, I can’t stop imagining what’s possible!
 
Wait! How did we get here?
The authors set historical context for several things we “take for granted” in many work settings in the U.S. They argue that, deeply embedded in the world of work, we find practices that reinforce the belief that everything operates best when controlled by a few. Moreover, seemingly innocuous practices such as spreadsheets to track inventory and calculations such as depreciation schedules can be traced back to the days of slavery and plantations in the U.S. south.
 
Reimagining Work: Where do we start?
In the book, the authors introduce concrete ways that people have successfully broken out of the mold from “business as usual” to a “Beloved Economy” workplace. They offer these ideas as inspiration and ask this question:

If you work in a company where you trust your employees and treat them with respect, how would you design the systems differently?
 
Although I know many of us feel that we are not in a position to reimagine our workplace, I challenge you to think of small changes that might have a large impact. Here are a few ideas that come to mind to get your brain going…

Reimagine accountability. Our current practices of spreadsheets and status reporting can be over-emphasized in organizations where trust is low. What accountability measures do you put in place when you hire and work with highly competent, motivated people? Maybe in those environments, it’s not a focus on what you’re working on, it’s more about what should come off their plates or be reprioritized. The manager is coming from a place of support in helping others get the right work done, rather than a place of blame when things are not getting done. 

Reimagine career pathing. If you take a look at the “jobs” or “careers” tab on the websites of many large organizations, you’ll find reference to pre-defined career paths and tracks. But is it the responsibility of managers or an organization to lay out a career path for an employee? The underlying assumption is that the employee is not capable of determining their own path. Each person is unique in what they bring to the table and an organization may not even have a career path that would leverage a person’s potential. What if instead of the manager carving out the path, the manager learns to be an exceptional career coach? They can ask questions that will bring out the best in the employee so their strengths are being leveraged and identify the needs of the organization at the same time. 

Reimagine authority. In many organizations, the senior leaders make the critical decisions, especially when a project needs to pivot or change drastically. This then often causes a ripple effect down to the people who are working on the project day-to-day. Rarely do senior leaders engage with the “workers” to ask their opinion on changing the rate or scope of work. What would it look like if the people engaged in the day-to-day were asked their opinions on how to handle major changes to the scope of a project? Imagine if you were considerate of the impact the change has on everyone involved and create a forum where people could voice their opinions before announcing a big change in the project?

Reimagine relationships. We often hear in organizations how important it is to build a network and maintain relationships, but it’s often for the purpose of gaining something in the end. In other words, there is a means to an end. In Beloved Economies, people build relationships because they genuinely care and are curious about another person. What would happen if you took someone out to lunch or had a quick virtual coffee with someone in your organization whom you don’t work with, and have nothing to gain from? Perhaps you take out a new employee for coffee, even if they will never intersect with your work. Or, perhaps connect with an employee outside of work who may live close by but your roles would rarely have a reason to connect. What else could you gain from building new relationships? Maybe it’s simply a good laugh, or a mental break, a moment of pause, or a joyful celebration. Think of ways to connect for the sake of being human, not necessarily for productivity. 
​
Check out the portal for notes on this eye-opening book, and let me know what ideas this discussion sparks for you.

​As a coach and organization development consultant, I spend many days facilitating group discussions with people who have never met and/or who don’t know each other well. Often one of the goals of the sessions is to help accelerate relationship-building, and icebreakers are an important tool to meet that goal.

But I hate the cheesy ice breakers!

I am always listening for good questions and, like many facilitators, am a collector of them. I thought it would be fun to share some, and after decades of facilitating group discussions, to give you insights into my criteria for what makes for a good icebreaker question. And, they’re not just for the workplace. Try them out during the holidays with family and friends, too!

The best questions…

• Act as a ‘hook’ on which we can place some piece of info about the person that’s memorable—such as a mini story
• Spark some creativity
• Allow people to share as much or as little personal info as they want to, and don’t put anyone on the spot
• Have levity, which has the power to stop most of the eye-rolling that happens with some people (there are always some, in any group!) who are on 'Team Anti-Icebreaker'
• Can be answered quickly, one minute or less per person—it’s important to keep it moving at a brisk pace
• Are relevant and interesting for that group

Should you feel inspired, here are a few that check all the boxes and will set you up for success!
 

1. If you had to give a TED Talk next week, what would the topic be?
2. If you were a doll, what two accessories would you carry?
3. What was the first job you had, and what did you learn from that job that still helps you today?
4. You’re receiving an award, and the recognition means the world to you. What is the award?
5. What question should you ask me if your goal is to really get to know me quickly?
6. If you wanted to get to know me, what activity would we do together?
7. What song do you listen to when you need a mood booster? (Bonus: you can make a playlist of all the songs, to share after the discussion.)
8. What is your diving-board moment?

​The last one on the diving-board moment is a fun one I picked up from this article, and it requires a bit of explanation. Here’s how to set it up…
 
Imagine we are making a documentary about your life: What is the opening scene?

Think of a pivotal moment in your life and describe it. For example, when actor Reese Witherspoon asked Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant what the opening scene in his documentary would be, he said he’d be a teenager, standing at the top of the high-dive, trembling.

​Grant had been a competitive swimmer for much of his youth, yet the high dive was scary. Today, he is the author of best-selling business books on the psychology of leadership, a wildly successful podcast, and numerous resources to help leaders thrive. As he tells the diving-board story, you can imagine where he got the determination and self-discipline to push his limits and conquer mind over matter.

As you think about your diving-board moment, the ideal story will take us to a real moment in your life when you overcame odds, realized something about your strengths, or defined for yourself an important core value. Fun question, huh?
 
What are some of your favorite ice breaker questions?

​Remember how we started the pandemic nearly three years ago with so much uncertainty? If I had to draw a cartoon of myself in the spring of 2020, I'd be sitting under a mountain of used Clorox wipes asking a series of never-ending ‘what if’ questions! And at the same time, those of us who wanted to be forward-thinking and strategic were determined to look ahead and make sense of the mess (no offense, past-self, I know you were doing your best!).
 
At some point I lifted my head up from the sewing machine where I was making cloth face masks and asked, “How do we want to emerge from this pandemic?”
 
It was a noble question. The years that followed have provided us with some answers, but many of us are still stitching it together.
 
So how do we want to emerge? I can throw around some buzz words like “resilient,” but to be honest I am jumping to a more practical thought: I’d like to hold onto the best “innovations” of the pandemic while learning from the others.
 
And speaking of buzz words, fast-forward to April 2021, Adam Grant’s NYT article made us all feel seen. He gave us the vocabulary that described what many of us had been feeling in the first year or so of COVID-19. It was not burnout, it was not depression, it was not grief—it was “languishing.”

• Leverage video. I know it’s annoying to have to shower and put on a nice shirt, but it’s critical that you visually see people throughout the day. From my experience, there is a drastic difference between the companies that use video and those that don’t. Those leaders who use video seem to have teams that feel more connected and have less miscommunication.
• Of course, we’ve all felt the Zoom Fatigue as well and we know it’s real. To counteract that, some companies are creating “no Zoom” days or they encourage phone-only meetings. One client has a virtual walking meeting for their 1:1s where both parties are walking outside while talking on the phone.
• Participate in events such as virtual conferences or our virtual book club sessions to continue to prioritize your networking and professional development (The CliffsNotes Book Club is a great example!). This will help to keep you stimulated on new ideas and feel current in your industry.
• Keep to a structured, scheduled workday, as you would if you were driving to the office and needing to truly “shut down” at the end of the day—and that includes structured meal times, too.
• Make time for movement, whether that means walking the stairs in your house or raking the leaves while on a short break.
• Proactively engage with your team leads and/or managers. Communicate more regularly to offer status updates and solicit feedback on your work when appropriate. This will reassure others of the work you’re doing, help you stay visible and involve others in the process.
• Before engaging in each meeting, be intentional about small talk. Ask about the person’s weekend or an event they recently attended. These 5-minute chats will enhance relationships and build trust over time.
• Carve out time for “meet and greets” with new team members.
• Proactively set up quarterly career conversations with your manager. Highlight areas that energize and de-energize you and discuss areas of interest to grow into.
• If/when you do go into the office, make the most of your in-person time and plan for social time, too. Schedule coffee meetings, team brainstorms, or collaborative sessions that will maximize your time in the office.

What would you add to the list? What’s missing to help you get to a point where you are truly “flourishing,” pandemic or not?