Many years ago, when I was working in Indonesia, my boss, who was a bit of contrarian himself, recommended I read The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, by Steven Sample. I did. And, over 20 years later I still circle back and refer to my key takeaways. One his...
Passive vs Proactive Procrastination – and How to Tell the Difference
It’s so ironic that I have been procrastinating on writing a piece about procrastinating! But I’m taking a deep breath and diving in. The motivation for writing this came from my new favorite book (I’d call it my book of the year but that feels a little presumptuous...
What Throws YOUR Mind Completely Off Balance
This is not the article I sat down to write this morning - it's the article about what I do when I get mentally thrown off balance!I wanted to write a piece this week about values. How if we can articulate our own values it can actually help in relating and being more...
Tips for Staying Focused in the Company of Others
This article about the ‘in between’ gatherings – not the ones that I love and want to be at OR the ones that I just shouldn’t bother with in the first place. These are meetings that I know I need to be at and yet for some reason it’s really hard to keep my attention. What can I do to show up and bring my attention where it is needed?
Networking or Net-weaving?
Several years ago I was about to leave for a conference on innovation in San Francisco when my boss asked me what my plans for networking there were. This threw me into a sense of panic for two, potentially contradictory, reasons. On the one hand, as a borderline...
Catching Up With Myself
Have you ever arrived somewhere after a long (possibly plane journey) and felt that, while your physical body is present, there are parts of you that are still somewhere else, possibly high over the water somewhere, possibly still lingering at your last destination?...
Helping You Facilitate the Gatherings You Lead
Are you hosting an internal retreat, meeting or gathering and facilitating it yourself? Do you feel that you are 90% there but would like a bit of extra support or access to some new or different activities to incorporate? Do you know what you want the content of the...
Do Mistakes Get Easier the Better We Are At Something?
Exploring the irony of how I find it easier to make mistakes the more experienced I get in something.
Seeing Meetings as Punctuation, Not the Novel Itself
Or... One Big Mistake Many of Us Make When Planning Gatherings, Meetings, Retreats and What We Can Do About It! Many of us have a gut reaction when we are told we need to go to a conference, retreat, work gathering, off-site, or simply an all-day meeting. There is...
Why I ask the obvious questions
If I ask you to think of a butterfly, most likely an image pops into your head. Maybe of the butterfly at the end of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, maybe a Red Admiral or Cabbage White if you grew up like me in the South of England, maybe a big yellow...