Blog

Leading for Wellness

By |2021-07-19T19:31:26+00:00July 19th, 2021|Featured Articles, Leadership, Resilience|

In a time of rapid change and disruption, a leader’s pursuit of transactional efficiency is the fastest path to irrelevance because it crowds out necessary transformational thinking. A wellness app or program, no matter how well designed, simply adds to the transactional load unless it’s accompanied by a deeper shift in our mental model of work and life.

Insights on “Leading Up”

By |2021-06-22T22:21:18+00:00June 22nd, 2021|Featured Articles, Leadership, meta-leadership, Thought Leadership, Writing|

One of the more challenging tasks for anyone in an organization is leading "up" to your boss. You have no authority over that person. In fact, they have all of the authority over you. Navigating this power imbalance requires cultivating influence and building a trust-based relationship. When it works, each person can make the greatest contribution to shared goals. This is never more true than in a crisis when a leader relies on followers for essential perspective on what is ...

Rethinking the Future of Humanitarian Efforts

By |2021-05-19T16:48:47+00:00May 19th, 2021|Conference Development, Experience, Featured Articles, Speaking, Thought Leadership|

I enjoyed moderating the opening session of the Emergency Show at the 2021 World Humanitarian Forum. Panelists Craig Fugate, Rupert Douglas-Bate, Paolo Garonna, and I explored the future of humanitarian response and how thinking needs to change. A clear theme was moving beyond the traditional donor country/recipient country relationship that fosters elitism. Instead, there were calls to acknowledge affected populations as a resource and deep listening to those communities to understand what they want and need.  "The community knows best," ...