It wasn't that I forgot my new coffee KeepCup this morning. I just haven't yet developed the habit of taking it with me. (It was a Father's Day gift.) More important than coffee cup habits are the habits that either enable us to achieve our aspirations or hinder us from pursuing them successfully. And that's a central point of Bernard Roth's book, The Achievement Habit. "Fear of failure," he says, "often keeps us in an unsatisfying routine. Instea...

Amy Edmondson has been studying teams for many years. Early in her work she was intrigued by the apparent paradox of the highest performing medical teams also being the ones that had the highest rate of reported negative incidents. How could that be?
It turned out that these high performing teams had a culture that encouraged them to put up their hands when they noticed a problem. Rather than cover up mistakes or let concerns remain silent, the members of these teams spoke up confid...

It's not every week you get the opportunity to visit somewhere as far away or interesting as Warsaw, Poland. But that's exactly where the Center for Leadership Studies asked me to go in August to work with a wonderful group of facilitators from across Europe and even futher afield. It was a great opportunity to share the Situational Leadership approach and support the development of training professionals. And Warsaw looked a picture in the late summer ......

A recent workshop included participants presenting reports on their application of learning from earlier sessions. They're always rich and interesting experiences.
One of the presenters talked about introducing sessions into his leadership team meetings that focused more attention on "the fluffy stuff". The team he worked with were from "hard skills" backgrounds and were more accustomed to facts and figures. Focusing on communication behaviours, collaboration...

"Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act"  (Dr Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go.) Life is indeed a great balancing act as Dr Seuss's little book wisely reminds us. Sometimes it's relatively easy to maintain our balance. And sometimes it's anything but. Whether it's a change of role or a change of pace, a change in leadership or a change in place we live and work in environments that rarely stay stable for l...