Why Employees Stop Telling Leaders the Truth
“If My Answers Frighten You, Then You Should Cease Asking Scary Questions.” Every Organization Has Conversations Leadership Never Hears One of my favorite scenes in Pulp Fiction is a philosophical debate between Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta). It includes a line that has stayed with me for years: “If my […]
You’re Fakin’ the Funk
Why executive teams become passive-aggressive instead of high trust One of the clearest signs of dysfunction on an executive team isn’t open conflict. It’s passive-aggression. That might surprise you, because most leaders assume no open conflict means the team is healthy. In reality, too much artificial harmony usually means the opposite. People aren’t disagreeing less. […]
Check Yourself (Before You Wreck Yourself)
What are your employees afraid to tell you? The most dangerous problems in any organization are rarely the loud ones. The real risk is the silence around the thing everybody sees but nobody wants to say out loud. So here’s a better question every leader needs to ask, and keep asking: What are my people […]
Can’t Truss It
Do your best people trust you, or are they just tolerating you? One of the most dangerous things in leadership is mistaking silence for trust. When people do what they’re told, answer when asked, and keep the meetings moving, it can feel like alignment. But sometimes what you’re seeing isn’t trust. It’s tolerance. And tolerance […]
Don’t Believe the Hype
Why Your Retention Problem is not an HR Problem — It’s a Leadership Problem Let me tell you something I learned the hard way, in boardrooms and break rooms, on legislative floors and hospital floors: when good people start walking out the door, the first thing leaders do is look everywhere except in the mirror. […]
How to Expand Your Influence at the C-Suite Level?
Influence Means Different Things at Different Stages of Leadership Several years ago, I was facilitating a leadership session for a group of senior executives when one of the participants asked a question that immediately captured the attention of everyone in the room. He said, “People keep telling me I need more influence. What does that […]
The Hidden Career Risk for Leaders Who Don’t Adapt in a Changing Workplace
The Moment of Clarity I remember a moment early in my career when I realized something had shifted—and nobody told me. I was still performing.Still delivering results.Still doing everything that made me successful. But I wasn’t in the room anymore. Not physically—I still had a seat. But the real conversations?The early conversations?The ones where direction […]
When Doing the Right Thing Could Cost You Your Job
What leaders must do when fear and uncertainty tempt them to protect their position instead of the mission. There’s a moment many leaders experience but rarely talk about. You’ve done your job. You’ve delivered results. You’ve represented the mission well. And then suddenly something you said—or something you did—creates more attention than you expected. Now […]
When Politics Walks Into the Workplace
What to do when war, politics, and global uncertainty enter your leadership team. If you lead people long enough, you will eventually face this moment. Two employees are arguing about politics.Someone feels offended.Someone else says leadership needs to step in. And suddenly, a conversation about the news becomes a workplace issue. This isn’t new. I […]
When Your Team Starts Asking: “Is My Job Safe?
What leaders must do when financial pressure, layoffs, and uncertainty start creeping into the workplace I remember sitting in an executive leadership team meeting during the early months of the pandemic when our CFO said something that immediately changed the tone of the room. “If we don’t open our outpatient surgery centers and start seeing […]