The Cambridge Dictionary defines the saying, "light a fire under someone" in this manner: to make someone act quickly or forcefully, especially someone who has not been doing enough before. When my daughter Addison first started karate (in October 2021) she was somewhat interested but wasn't that eager to put in the hard work it took, both inside and outside the dojo, to truly be successful. It wasn't until karate got taken away from her for one year (from January 2022 to January 2023) that she realized just how much she actually wanted and liked it. When she came back to her karate doj ..read more

"A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth." -Aesop In a 2015 Hallmark Christmas holiday movie called, "I'm Not Ready for Christmas" (starring Alicia Witt as Holly), we learn that if you tell lies, eventually those lies will catch up to you. The main character, Holly, is not a bad person, but she lies and stretches the truth in order to avoid the commitments she made, to avoid disappointing others & letting them down, and to achieve her own self-absorbed goals. Stewart Leadership’s LEAD NOW! (2nd ed.) book is an amazing coaching guide with 21 competencies. One of those co ..read more

Bronnie Ware is an Australian woman who spent many years working in palliative care. Her patients were those who had returned home to die. Bronnie was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. She shared what she learned about their regrets in a 2009 blog post, which was later turned into a book. In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie shares a very sad story about John (a workaholic) who promised his wife Margaret he would retire after their kids were grown and had children of their own. Margaret had asked John to retire since they were both healthy and had ..read more

According to the book The Leadership Challenge, one of the things leaders can start doing to become better leaders is to ask people to give them feedback on how they’re doing. Unfortunately, the opposite seems to be happening — that is, leaders do not ask for feedback. "Most leaders don’t really want honest feedback, don’t ask for it, and don’t get much of it unless it’s forced on them" (Kouzes & Posner, 2014). "Self-reflection, the willingness to seek feedback, and the ability to engage in new behaviors based on this information are predictive of future success in managerial jobs" (Kouze ..read more

RIGHT KIND OF WRONG - PART ONE In Part One of her book (Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well), Dr. Edmondson introduces a framework of failure types. She begins by talking about key concepts in failure. She follows by describing the three failure archetypes: intelligent (Ch. 2), basic (Ch. 3), and complex (Ch. 4). What Is the Right Kind of Wrong? "You might think that the right kind of wrong is simply the smallest possible failure. Big failures are bad, and small failures are good. But size is actually not how you will learn to distinguish failures, or how you will assess their va ..read more

Many years ago I had a chance to meet and interact with a middle manager who, while appearing on the outside to be very self-assured, was quite poor at handling pressure and stress. On multiple occasions when put in a situation that this person was ill-equipped or unprepared for, the reaction was often one of panic, then domineering behaviors, and sometimes even followed by odd or peculiar behaviors. In FYI: For Your Improvement (a guide for coaching and development), Lombardo and Eichinger talked about lack of composure (Lombardo & Eichinger, 2009, p. 454): “[L]osing one’s cool and getti ..read more

Petty is an interesting word. The Collins Online Dictionary defines it as: mean or ungenerous in small or trifling things a petty person "If you describe someone's behavior as petty, you mean that they care too much about small, unimportant things and perhaps that they are unnecessarily unkind." (collinsdictionary.com) Schadenfreude — Taking Joy or Finding Pleasure in Other People’s Misfortune According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "schadenfreude" is the emotional experience of pleasure in response to another's misfortune. Schadenfreude is a German word that combines Schaden, which means “da ..read more

Photo: Jocko Willink (left) and Leif Babin (right) I've written before about "extreme ownership" and how passing the buck (i.e., blaming others), making excuses, and not taking responsibility can derail a leader. In this post, I'd like to delve deeper and talk about what exactly it means when a leader takes on an "extreme ownership" mindset and practice. Here's an example of a courageous leader (at the time, Jocko Willink was the Task Unit Commander of SEAL Team Three's Task Unit Bruiser; he's now a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer) who accepted responsibility for his team's mistakes and offere ..read more

In this book review of The Leadership Challenge (7th ed.) by James (Jim) Kouzes and Barry Posner, I'll compare the 7th edition (2023) to the 6th edition (2017) and highlight areas of improvements and point out what's new in the 7th edition. I'll provide an overview of The Five Practices framework (Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart) via the use of direct quotes* from the book. Finally, I'll share some leadership themes and lessons that Kouzes and Posner have learned. * The direct quotations and citing of passages from T ..read more

Hi Workplace Psychology Blog "Subscribers," Despite my best efforts to send email notices to all "subscribers" of the Workplace Psychology Blog, there continues to be challenges related to what's known as "bounced email." An email is "bounced" when that email is returned to sender (in this case to me) because it could not be delivered for some reason. There are various reasons why this might have occurred. Your email mailbox was full. Your email server was down. You were out or on vacation and had set up an auto reply. You work for an organization with strict email filtering. For example, so ..read more