Owning up

This is what remains when we are confronted with failure. We can blame shift, or design elaborate excuses. This just drags the failure along with us. The only way to move forward is to own up. For leaders, this is even more complicated. Leaders can delegate responsibility, but never accountability. The final outcome is always […]

Burden of Leadership

It’s a sacrifice. Leadership is not about you. Healthy leadership understands the price required to steer and pursue the purposes not of an individual, but of a collective entity, a team, a business, a group, a party. Leadership is a function with a high personal cost. If you succeed, you reap the rewards of association […]

Second Fiddle

In music, the first instrument usually plays the melody or the more advanced piece of music. The role is thus reserved for the most accomplished player in the orchestra. Playing second fiddle then, by definition means, you are not the best. You are runner up. You are good but not great. These are the connotations […]

Powerful Pauses

It’s something great artists use. Every musician, artist, speaker, and poet uses pause. For the majority of us, it’s there to take a breath or form an outline. It’s functional and necessary. This is just ‘pause’. In the hands of an artist, ‘pause’ is intentional, not functional. Pause is the absence, the silence, the negative […]

Lessons in Thankfulness

Today is one of my favourite days of the year. Every week we write a note listing all the things we are thankful for that week and place it in our thanksgiving jar. Today is the day we crack it open. Every year I am amazed by the sheer number of increadible things for which […]