In his book Training in Compassion, Norman Fischer describes aspirations as “very impractical commitments”: “But why not have aspirations so lofty they are impossible to fulfill? To have aspirations any less lofty would be to sell ourselves short. The trick is to keep on making effort in the direction of fulfillment of the aspiration but…
Month: February 2021
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein”
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein Few people feel like they have “enough” time, and yet we all have the same 24 hours each day. One practice that helps me to realize how much time we have is to meditate each day –…
Must it be you, and must it be now?”
Must it be you, and must it be now? A fellow coach shared this question, and I love it as a tool to help clarify where you want to spend your time and attention. Competent people get asked to do more and more at work, and it’s hard to say no when you could do…
Where is your attention?” “” “A common mistake for beginners at downhill sports like mountain biking or skiing is to stare at the rock they want to avoid. Unfortunately, they then tend to steer straight into that rock, as our bodies go where our attention goes. It’s difficult to learn to overcome that natural tendency…
Where is your attention?”
Where is your attention? A common mistake for beginners at downhill sports like mountain biking or skiing is to stare at the rock they want to avoid. Unfortunately, they then tend to steer straight into that rock, as our bodies go where our attention goes. It’s difficult to learn to overcome that natural tendency to…
Continuing my discussion of soft skills, I’ll share a trick that can help to navigate the space of murky interests and multiple stakeholders, which is building a stakeholder map. ” “” “Identify your key stakeholders (peers and execs), and write down the questions they ask and the comments they make at every meeting you attend…
Continuing my discussion of soft skills, I’ll share a trick that can help to navigate the space of murky interests and multiple stakeholders, which is building a stakeholder map. “
Continuing my discussion of soft skills, I’ll share a trick that can help to navigate the space of murky interests and multiple stakeholders, which is building a stakeholder map. Identify your key stakeholders (peers and execs), and write down the questions they ask and the comments they make at every meeting you attend with them….
A difficult transition I’ve noticed for my clients is going from doing the work to defining the work. At the start of a project, the goals are murky, ownership is murky, and there’s very little alignment or clarity. One of my clients said he didn’t like that, and wanted things to be defined with clear…
A difficult transition I’ve noticed for my clients is going from doing the work to defining the work. At the start of a project, the goals are murky, ownership is murky, and there’s very little alignment or clarity. One of my clients said he didn’t like that, and wanted things to be defined with clear ownership before he started. And I told him that his next step as a leader was to dive into the murkiness, and create that definition and clarity, rather than wait for it to be handed to him. “
A difficult transition I’ve noticed for my clients is going from doing the work to defining the work. At the start of a project, the goals are murky, ownership is murky, and there’s very little alignment or clarity. One of my clients said he didn’t like that, and wanted things to be defined with clear…
How do you measure leadership?”
How do you measure leadership? One of the hardest career transitions is moving from doing the work oneself to leading others who do the work. This is particularly difficult for engineers who want a quantitative way to measure their leadership progress. A question I’ve found useful for such clients is “what will be different if…