Everyday Leadership

The exhausting challenge. The amazing opportunity. Resilience . . . Plus . . . At no time in my 60 years of life in America, has our collective life so totally invaded my, and our, private existence. The events, threats, and responses to Covid strike at our individual identity, our “who I am.” We are … Continued

Recently, I had the honor of interviewing a friend of mine, Niket Desai, for a leadership course at Berkeley. I invited him to speak on what can be a mundane topic – objectives and key results, or one common format of organizational goal setting – because of his particular focus within it: deep reverence … Continued

Wow, what a time we are in. Our upcoming Zoomcast series on Resilience could not come at a better moment. “I feel tired,” a friend said. And: “No offense, professor,” a student of African descent said to her 40 Zoom-mates and me in class on Monday, “but I really don’t want to be here. … Continued

By Laura Andersen of LeadingX2 “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” – James Baldwin In the wake of the killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, … Continued

I have always written R2L for “everyday leaders,” because the functions of leadership can be served by anyone. You can lead up or across, as well as “down.” And you can lead in classes, neighborhoods and homes, as well as in business. Today, I share some thoughts I shared over the weekend with a handful … Continued

I’m becoming like my old man who couldn’t assemble anything physical but loved to take words apart and put them back together. I wish I’d taken Greek as he had in seminary, and that I had paid closer attention during Latin class. I was wondering about Covid-19….We all know that “co” means “together” or “with,” … Continued

Dan has been writing Read2Lead weekly since March 1, 2000. Twenty years! A new era of Read2Lead begins today, with Dan’s partner Laura Andersen, weighing in. She will now periodically contribute, as they lead by two! The topic is right on point. In a recent post, Dan described his experience speaking to students as their … Continued

[If you are fed up with politics, I think you, especially, should read this, but I certainly understand if you don’t. For my part, I think we need to keep speaking and listening, and not falling into all the same divisive traps. If we are connected, you may have read an earlier version of this … Continued

When I say “leader,” you likely see a speaker. You likely see someone separated from the crowd, perhaps facing them. That was me in my lecture last week to 80 non-MBA graduate school students. But add a couple elements to the picture. Before I began speaking, I asked for a couple volunteers to take careful … Continued

Vic Granholm, my wife’s dad died on Tuesday past, January 21, 2020. His body was cremated, and he was memorialized at church. In many traditions,* the soul leaves the body at death, yet remains for a time. What’s next – whether an after-life, in heaven, in the body of some newborn creature, or not … Continued

“Bias creeps into you as a child without your permission, like the cold on a wet foggy day.” Where I grew up, “we” was a weird and sloppy mess. We lived in Inkster, Michigan; about 35,000 of us. (We knew people called us Stinkster, but we called their towns of Garden City and Westland – … Continued

I’ve been away from writing for a month. I return: back to basics with two stories and an invite. On Wednesday, Jennifer and I found ourselves on a bucket list hike to the top of Machu Picchu in Peru. Our guide, Marcilino has led over 500 hikes of a day or four-days length. He’s had … Continued

With two weeks to go in the year, most of us face the choice of getting IMPORTANT things done . . . or not. The “not” result can easily happen when on the one hand we feel pressure(d), and on the other we feel a mix of “there’s just no way to get it all … Continued

What would you say is the #1 leadership characteristic? Not necessarily what will gain recognition from others, but what you should focus upon to achieve greatness? And in particular what would you focus on NOW – in the waning days of November? For me, the answer is easy: Perseverance. In January, I’d say: do the … Continued

Ron Heifetz writes that “attention is the currency of leadership.” And Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner say, “credibility is the currency of leadership.” I agree with my friends and mentors that leaders pay attention and they build up their credibility for when they’ll need to spend it down. But perhaps “courage” is the golden currency … Continued

One of the enormous joys of teaching at a university is that students appear with passion to learn, grow, and become. I can sense it in my classroom of 65 and in the mega-class that holds 700. But I especially feel it during office hours or my weekly lunches with students. They are wisdom seekers, … Continued

Today’s Read2Lead is different than nearly anything I’ve written. I REALLY want feedback and have one supposition and one question for you. I would like to write more about this (here but also in wider forums), and I am looking for you to help me think about this. Supposition: We all know and would hide … Continued

I have been exclusively coaching pairs, almost always the top two in their organizations. Typically I begin by “onboarding” them in the sense that the two will retreat with me for a couple days – after they have been working together for just a few months, or sometimes right from the get-go. I help them … Continued

I was asked by the Berkeley Women Leaders in Business at Berkeley Haas to kick off their evening Manbassadors session, convening a conversation with men and students of all genders next month. That came on the heels of presenting to an affinity group of people of color at a large corporation. I must be an … Continued

Last week I wrote about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Gawande deals with what patients and doctors DON’T want to deal with . . . the inevitability of death. The denial of death often results in brutalizing treatments that make life more painful (and sometimes even shorter) than is necessary, and the denial means people make choices … Continued