Like athletic coaching, executive coaching is not remedial work. Athletes don't hire a coach because they don't know how to run. They hire a coach because they're already fast, and they want to find out what's possible beyond that. My clients usually want to become better at something they already care deeply about. They are already capable, accomplished, and respected. They may have built organizations, led teams through uncertainty, created meaningful growth and change, or

Beneath burnout, quiet quitting, and the reorganizations that never seem to end, there's often a quieter pattern: a leader stuck in reaction, cut off from what creative, sustainable leadership would actually require. The phrase "sustainable leadership", gets used almost exclusively for climate action and corporate sustainability reporting. That's not what this article is about. This is about a leader's inner game, and how that inner game shapes the culture underneath you. The

We humans have a curious relationship with definitions. We crave them. We want to know what something is, to draw a line around it, name it, and make the uncertain feel a little more certain. Or, sometimes, to undermine it. If you’ve been anywhere near leadership development over the last few decades, you’ve seen the endless search for the definition of a great leader, as if somewhere out there exists the perfect mix of qualities, behaviours, and competencies that will finall

A friend once handed me a reframe so simple it has followed me for years. I complained that I never bring my son a beach chair because he never sits with us anyway. My friend paused and said: "Maybe he doesn't come to sit because you don't have a chair for him." That sentence casually revealed a pattern that shows up everywhere: we often mistake absence for disinterest, when it's really about the conditions we've created, often unconsciously, for who can belong. The cha

You can meditate at dawn, optimize your calendar, track your steps and drink water, and still feel bone-deep exhausted if your days are filled with ambiguity, tension, an d unsaid truths . You can love your work and still dread your meetings. You can believe in your mission and still go home feeling strangely empty. That’s not a failure of mindset or self-care. It’s a signal about your relationships. Most of us were taught to think of thriving as an individual project: better

If thriving isn’t just being happy or the absence of stress… if it’s not simply a good week, or even success, then what is it? Thriving is the feeling and the reality that your life is going somewhere good: with enough stability, meaning, connection, and inner capacity to keep moving… even when the world is loud, fast, and complicated. In the research, thriving is often described as more than mood, it feel more like momentum. As organizational scholars Gretchen Spreitzer a

Ideas are fragile things. They arrive soft, incomplete, easily startled, like small animals stepping tentatively into the open. And yet most of us, meet them with reflexive judgment. We evaluate, categorize, critique, or dismiss them before they’ve even taken their first full breath. Too expensive. Too risky. Too unrealistic. We tried that. We don’t do that. Not the right time. We don’t notice how fast we do it. We don’t notice how many ideas we kill. And we almost never ask

For thousands of years, cultures around the globe have told a version of the same story: the hero leaves home, faces trials, slays the dragons, and returns with treasure that saves the community. Joseph Campbell called this the Hero’s Journey, and it has shaped our imagination of what leadership should look like. Even today, we unconsciously expect ourselves as leaders to embody this myth. We look up to that elusive notion of a heroic solver of all problems, the one who leave

I watched an interview with musician and songwriter Phil Cook recently, where he said something that stuck with me: “When you’re...

It’s Friday afternoon. You’ve worked hard all week, but instead of feeling accomplished, you feel wrung out. It’s not the workload that...

And How to Use Them to Strengthen Yours When Fin took over a passionate literacy team, he thought things would click quickly. Seven staff...

Great leadership requires humility, it means recognizing that the route you took to success isn’t the only valid route. When we hire people who solve problems differently, we multiply a team’s creativity, resilience, and results. After 20 years in global, private, and nonprofit leadership, and another decade as a CliftonStrengths® coach, I’ve watched this principle prove itself again and again. “Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the gre

Picture a factory floor in 1890. Stopwatches. Quotas. Supervisors shouting over the noise of machines. That is where performance management was born, in a world that treated people as interchangeable parts. We have changed the tools since then. We have not entirely changed the mentality. Control. Anxiety. A form to fill out once a year, so everyone is "measured". Modern work asks for something else entirely. Creativity, not compliance. Adaptive learning, not rigid goals. Huma

We live in a culture that’s obsessed with what’s broken. Somehow, criticizing and pointing out flaws is considered a sign of intelligence. From an early age, we’re trained to default to this lens. It becomes our operating system: focus on what’s not working, work hard on it, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be praised. But even if you're not, at least you’re staying within the lines. You're staying controllable. In today’s world, it is an act of pure courage to recognize your st

Do you really know who you are as a leader? Far too often, we step into leadership because we excelled at our last role. Maybe we were high-performing individual contributors, technical experts, or founding members of a small team that grew quickly. Maybe we inherited a leadership position in a family business. One day, we looked around and realized: “I guess I’m in charge now.” Without ever being explicitly taught how to lead, most of us unconsciously begin to imitate the le

Even if you’ve never watched Grey’s Anatomy, there’s a scene that captures something important about leadership. Dr. Cristina Yang, ambitious, brilliant, and laser-focused, is being mentored by a senior surgeon. She’s asked to narrate her actions to others in the room. She resists. It feels trivial. But the feedback she receives is humbling: sometimes, before we chase complexity, we need to revisit the basics. After over 20 years in leadership, as both student and teacher, I’

Why slowing down, asking better questions, and being present still changes everything. In leadership, we often talk about communication,...

You’ve felt it before, that moment where everything in you wants to speak up, but something holds you back. Maybe it’s fear of conflict, fear of saying the wrong thing, or the worry that you’ll make things worse. And so you hesitate. Or stay silent. Or sugarcoat what really needs to be said. Here’s the thing: avoiding difficult conversations isn’t leadership, it’s self-protection dressed up as diplomacy. If there’s one thing leadership research continues to confirm, it’s this

Whether we speak or remain silent, show up or withdraw, every action, or inaction, sends a message. Communication isn’t just about what we say; it’s also about what we don’t say. Silence, hesitation, and avoidance are just as communicative as words. And in leadership, these unspoken messages often speak the loudest. “One cannot not communicate.” — Paul Watzlawick Avoiding hard conversations erodes trust. When we sidestep giving feedback, delay naming tension, or choose silen

And Why Most of Us Are Settling for So Much Less There is a question I hear underneath almost every coaching conversation I have. It is rarely spoken directly. It lives in the pauses, in the exhaustion behind someone's eyes, in the way a high-achieving leader will sometimes stop mid-sentence and say, almost surprised by themselves, "I don't actually know if I'm happy." The question is this: Is this it? Is this what a good life feels like? If you've ever asked yourself some ve