February 5, 2025

How is Your Workplace Limiting Your Emotional Freedom?

We’ve read a great deal about employee engagement in recent years.  Great talent is supposedly in short supply. Many organizations are looking to attract and retain the best people, especially in anticipation of economic challenges that are the new normal. We scrutinize what constitutes great leadership.  Phrases like “Culture eats strategy for lunch” (or is it breakfast?) are organizational memes. […]
October 11, 2021

The 3 R’s of Leadership ~ Reflection, Relationships & Resiliency

I’ve often written about the slow death of command and control leadership – envisioning the demise of that mindset as the prevailing force in organizational life. It is slow going – isn’t it?  At least it feels that way to me – even as an “observer” in my role as a consultant. The power issue hangs over us.  Although there […]
August 1, 2021

Beyond Anger Management – You and Your Anger

“The beliefs we have about anger and the interpretation we give to the experience are as important to its understanding as anything intrinsic to the emotion itself.” Carol Tavris   Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion Anger has been called the “misunderstood emotion.”  Why is that? Seems like we know everything there is to know about anger, don’t we?  While there still is […]
February 21, 2021

What is an Intentional Workplace?

  What is an Intentional Workplace?  We may have to use our imagination more than our experience in trying to answer this question. The dictionary defines intentional as:  done with intention or on purpose. Not many people have had the experience of working in environments that operate intentionally or “consciously.”  You know – the kind of organization, team or workplace […]
February 19, 2021

Collaboration: The Emotions You Need to Do It

Succesful collaboration is built on a high level of emotional literacy. Without the capacity to generate and sustain certain feelings, our ability to collaborate with others is not possible. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workplace, our emotional repertoire has become habituated. Emotional habits are then fueled by our thinking process which is often fixed into patterns. […]
February 5, 2021

Why Neuroscience Should Change the Way We Work~ Pt.2

Since Part 1 of this article was published it has consistently remained in the blog’s top  10.  I’m grateful for the response and I’ve been inspired to write more about the fascinating, emergent world of neuroscience. While I am a very informal student of the science, what I’ve learned has reshaped the way I approach my work.  As I wrote […]
August 11, 2020

Leadership and Emotional Contagion

“Employees are not emotional islands. Rather, they continuously spread their own moods and receive and are influenced by others’ moods. When they work in groups, they literally can catch each others’ emotions like viruses, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion. ” Wharton @ Work, University of Pennsylvania There has been an important finding in neuroscience that should impact on how […]
April 26, 2020

The Self-Aware Leader

  My Google search for leadership turned up 499,000,000 results. It’s a well-covered topic with every nook and cranny explored.  What more is there to say? There is general agreement that leadership models are changing dramatically. But to be sure, the old command and control leadership paradigm is still at work. There’s more talk than ever about We cultures, but […]
February 11, 2020

Why Neuroscience Should Change the Way We Work

Photo by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash Most organizations and their leaders take pride in updating their systems with the latest technology and equipment. They devote significant resources to ensure their employees are using state of the art processes and materials. Most organizational leaders would agree that without constant upgrades, they would be trying to achieve success with their hands tied behind their backs. […]