• How much of what happens next is leadership?

    Picture a boat. Visibility is near zero. The captain can barely see the North Star. The oars don’t match, so no one is pulling with the same force or in the same direction. Below deck, the hull is taking on water. The captain is steering but the one person who knew a critical piece was…

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  • Skill, will or circumstance?

    I’ve developed a few rules for myself. I’m reliably bad at following them — that’s how I know they’re the right ones. One of them comes from attribution error theory. It sounds abstract, but in practice it’s just one question. Before I give feedback, start a hard conversation, or jump to conclusions, I try to…

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  • The burnt-out autocrat

    One of the stranger leadership ironies: the leaders most afraid of autocracy are often the ones who create it. We taught a generation of leaders that good leaders don’t impose. Now the meeting has been going for three hours and nobody will call it. It starts with the best intentions: participation, inclusion, everyone being heard.…

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