The Cool Down
Leadership lessons from unexpected places. Books I couldn't put down, movies I think about for weeks and months after watching, and the occasional detour into whatever else life happens to be teaching me.
The Hardest Part of Leading a Creative Team Is Knowing When Not to Fix It
We romanticize creativity. We imagine it as expansive and energizing. But more often, especially when the work is real and the stakes are high, it looks like deterioration before it looks like anything else.
Ikigai Frustrated Me. That Was the Point.
Ikigai kept asking me to find the one thing at the center of it all. And I kept coming up empty. What I didn't understand yet was that I was reading a Japanese philosophy book with a western brain.
On betting on yourself, even when the room isn't ready
Belle da Costa Greene walked into every room having done the work. Hard work with integrity has a way of rewriting the narrative over time. That's the reminder I needed.
You Don't Have to Choose Between Being Liked and Being Respected
In 13 years of corporate life I've learned that the people who last are almost never the loudest or the hardest. They're the ones who figured out how to be taken seriously without making everyone around them feel small.