Articles
Below, you can read my best articles on strategy and strategic leadership, sorted by topic.
Downloadable Collections
Strategic FUEL
How to lead change by reducing our judgments and analyzing the barriers to change for those we want to influence.
Leading Strategy
Leading Effectively
Developing Others
Delegation
When leaders stop making decisions, it can enable otherwise passive followers to become proactive leaders. These lessons from David Marquet and Turn the Ship Around! show us the way.
Building Trust & Connection
The major reframe that helped these Black leaders feel comfortable showing vulnerability at work: concluding that while self-protection is legitimate, it's not always useful.
Building Team Culture
Having opinions can close off inquiry, calcify our thinking, and increase the odds that we’ll enter into ego-filled contests to defend our perspective.
By changing one’s approach to brainstorming—focusing more on questions than answers—leaders can yield more instructive insights.
Power & Politics
Effective Meetings
Effective Communication
Three strategies for how to make sure our stories aim at the right target and break through to our audience.
A framework for preparing for communications, inspired by Let the Story Do the Work by Esther Choy.
Finding Joy & Fulfillment at Work
Purpose & Vocation
Managing Energy & Presence
Yes, being a professional means being able to focus when we need. But real pros also know when they need to cut themselves off.
Prioritizing and Managing Your To-Do List
Greg McKeown shows that even after you’ve cut everything that is nonessential from your life, things can still feel off. Thankfully, in Effortless, he provides strategies to achieve an effortless state.
Dealing with Overwhelm
Instead of fighting the overwhelm perhaps we should just give up and start from scratch.
Lessons for how we might see our own agency when trying to overcome feeling overwhelmed.
Managing Your Career
Authenticity, Vulnerability, and Boundaries
How using humor, centering, and putting oneself in the story can help black leaders communicate more effectively.
The major reframe that helped these Black leaders feel comfortable showing vulnerability at work: concluding that while self-protection is legitimate, it's not always useful.
The leadership literature says that leaders should show vulnerability. But can black leaders be vulnerable in the workplace? It's tricky.
Being Fearless & Tackling Imposter Syndrome
Quieting our judgments is how we can lean into our development rather than cutting it off because it doesn’t feel good.
Life
Work-Life Balance
Family & Relationships
In Unleashed, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that leaders should make real choices in strategy. And they suggest that we can do the same in our family lives.
Planning
Just for Fun
Lessons from Sports
Comparing the leadership insights from NBA champion coach Phil Jackson to other leading thinkers.
Apropos of Nothing
Is Top Gun the greatest movie of all time? Definitely. Is Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone a great lesson about leading ourselves? Definitely maybe.
What U Can’t Touch This can teach us about leadership, and why I’m maybe not the best parent.