Witness, in this image, both the beginning and the end of my conversation with this suspicious whitetail buck. As soon as his eyes locked with mine, ears pricked forward, I knew I had pushed too far, too fast. Separated though we were by the impenetrable undergrowth, my last careful step put me inside his “fear radius.” The wordless language of this dialogue is universal, bridging the gaps between different species (those gaps are narrower than we imagine). I had snapped the invisible tripwire on his survival instinct, and he was telling me as much. A split second after I captured this frame, he turned and vanished in buoyant, effortless parabolas, the namesake white flag of his raised tail warning his comrades of the apparent danger.
I started to write a different piece this week, my first after taking the summer off from writing, but there was something in the way.
The story begins with dogs and kids. You see, when our daughter, Abby, was about three, we had two dogs, Marlee and Neo, both standard size labradoodles. For little Abby, they had simply always been there. I think they occurred to her more like older siblings t...
Every manager has been there. A task was assigned. The expectations seemed clear and understood. Time passes. It doesn’t get done.
Every parent has been there, too.
In fact, we've all been there with ourselves.
We tell ourselves, “I must do Task A by the end of the day on Tuesday.” Tuesday comes and goes, and we can’t help but notice that we failed to do the task.
Do this once, and the result i...
Conquering each of Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for overcoming the next.
Trust must be present for a team to engage in productive conflict, but it does not guarantee they will do so.
Conflict is essential for achieving clarity and buy-in, but it does not automatically result in commitment.
Commitment is required for team members to...
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Work, life, and leadership in a complex world.
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