Blog

The United Airlines Crisis of Human Dignity

Someone working in that situation should have had the strength and presence to say, “Hold up. We don’t do that. We don’t treat people like that. It’s not who we are.” The United Airlines event yesterday was an attack on human dignity, the most basic of human needs. The people staffing UA Flight 3411 from ...

Turn off Your Notifications. Seriously. Do It.

Casey just commented on a post you are following! Turn off your push notifications. The alerts, app banners, pocket vibrations, ringtones, the little email preview pop-ups. Do you depend on them for your job? Is it really urgent? Is it? Turn them off. All of them. “The effectiveness of communication is not defined by the ...

How to Trigger a Great Day

Whatever you love to do, aspire to be, or dream of creating, keep at it. Keep at it every day. Even if for just a bit. Think of it as your craft, something you need to stay close to, something that requires nurturing, like gardening or singing or cooking. If you don’t attend to it, ...

A Trick to Reduce Election Stress and Up Your Game

The glass is not half full, or half empty. It is refillable. Your value to an organization is not in the hours you clock, the number of emails you flip, slide decks you build, and it’s certainly not in the air miles you log to get in to Zone 1 boarding. Your value is in ...

Three Ridiculous Myths About Leadership

This article is excerpted and edited from my new book, Small Acts of Leadership. Enjoy! As one of the most revered coaches in American history, John Wooden, the “Wizard of Westwood,” coached his University of California basketball team to an unprecedented ten national championship titles in twelve years. This remarkable winning streak included an astonishing ...

Thinking for Yourself and the Art of Intelligent Disobedience

What if your boss asks you to do something you think is wrong? What if there are practices your company engages in that are just ridiculous, or redundant? Or worse, what if there is an institutionalized process in your company that you think is flat-out unethical? Maybe you work in a look-the-other-way culture, or a ...