What creative process teaches us about leading through uncertainty Here is something most leadership books won’t tell you: clarity is rarely where you start. It’s where you end up — and only if you’re willing to tolerate the mess that comes first. In...
I learned to drive on an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme in the 1980s. I am under five feet tall, and the seat of that car was not built with me in mind. My parents solved this practically and without fanfare: they bought rocking chair cushions and propped me up until I...
You’ve Been Training for This For the last few weeks, I’ve been having a similar conversation with leaders—the same conversation I’m having with myself. We’re forgetting what we’ve already been through. Why We Can’t See What We Know...
Something you might not know about me: I love and collect children’s picture books. I don’t mean this in a nostalgic, “I-used-to-read-them-to-my-kids” kind of way. I mean I actively seek them out, I think about them seriously as art and...
How often do you balance your checkbook? I pop into Quicken almost daily — at least during the work week. I’ve found that staying on top of our transactions in small batches is far less overwhelming than letting them accumulate for a week or two at a time. And...
Oh no! It’s Friday the13th! What gets scarier than Friday the 13th? Follow up, of course. Especially, picking up the phone. It’s easy to fall into the rut of only following up with email. And to convince yourself that, since you’re sending one email...
The first (only?) time Marc and I attempted canoeing together wasn’t pretty. I was in my second trimester of pregnancy. We had been married for just four years. And we were leading a camping trip with a dozen high school students from the boarding school where we had...
Some of the hardest leadership moments come when you don’t have the authority to decide. You’re not the one running the meeting. You don’t get the final say. Your name isn’t on the door—or the org chart. And yet, you feel the weight of what’s happening. You notice...
Living Leadership that Fits There are seasons when leadership is obvious. A title is given. A decision is public. A role is clearly defined. People know who is “in charge.” And then there are seasons – often longer ones – when leadership is quieter and...
If you’ve been around Concord Leadership Group for any amount of time, you’ve heard us talk about Q3LC—Quadrant 3 Leadership Coach Certification. This program grew directly out of Marc’s book, The Surprising Gift of Doubt. From that work, we developed a ten-week...
