Executive Coaching, Professional Development, Training, and Career Advancement for Nonprofit Leaders in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Margaret and David recently discussed the topic of graceful (or not) endings. You know the ones: a project ends, a marriage dissolves, or a loved one passes. In this post I share my thoughts on the ending we all face – our death. We can approach that with grace or with dread. The choice is ours. [Read more…]
In a world where workplace mental health information is sourced from TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, it can be helpful to pause and sort fact from fiction (though to be fair, social media often provides more accurate information than other sources). Here are my top five workplace mental health myths—and what you can do about them.
Like many things in the zeitgeist, the mental health pendulum seems to have overcorrected. “Leave your feelings at the door” used to be the law of the land when it came to work. The idea that people could (and should) simply shrug off their humanity and grind robotically for 60 hours a week was largely an unquestioned expectation. Now, instead of “leave all of your feelings at the door,” the new ethos in the workplace seems to be “bring all your feelings to work.” While it is a beautiful ideal to imagine a workspace where everyone is skillful at both sharing and receiving difficult information, the trend of “trauma-dumping” at work is contraindicated.
Do you create detailed plans, set goals, and schedule your days to control every aspect of your life?
Do you also find that as much as you try to maintain a sense of predictability, life throws curveballs that can leave you frustrated and unfulfilled?
A better approach is to set plans and goals while keeping them loose to be flexible and spontaneous when circumstances do not unfold as you expect. [Read more…]
Some time ago, I met with a group of leaders from across North America to discuss the possibility of creating a series of weekend retreats that will travel from city to city across North America over the course of 2018.
[Read more…]
The year was 1959 and a young French anthropologist named Pierre Bourdieu was visiting his home in the foothills of the Pyrenees while on leave from the miliary. He had been focusing his research on far-flung locations in Algeria but he realized during this visit that his own childhood village was just as deserving of an anthropologist’s eye. Although he had known the small town of Bearn his entire life, he had never really seen it. Could he make the familiar feel strange and look at it with the eyes of an outsider?
An opportunity presented itself one day when he went out to visit one of his classmates from primary school who was then a low-ranking clerk in a neighboring town. His friend pulled out a photograph taken of their entire class when Bourdieu and he were children. There were dozens of sepia-toned faces of young boys all the same age and from the same small peasant community. The boys stood in lines wearing the same drab peasant shirts and slacks. The group looked remarkably homogenous, yet Bourdieu’s school friend cast his hand across the photo in dismissive scorn and pronounced half of these young boys “unmarriageable.” The children he was referring to, now grown men, were all the oldest sons in their families. In the agricultural world of Bearn—one that at the time revered primogeniture, the tradition of passing land down through the first-born son—the idea that eldest sons would be unmarriageable didn’t make any sense. More striking was the cruelty with which his friend tossed off the remark. Unmarriageable. He might just as easily have said: Worthless.
Contrary to popular belief, the Middle Ages were not dark and ignorant. This period saw remarkable advancements, including the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. During this time, Thomas à Kempis, a German-Dutch monk, wrote and published a renowned collection of essays called The Imitation of Christ.
Considered one of the most widely read Christian devotionals, the collection of essays has stood the test of time, captivating readers from all walks of life, including Eckhart Tolle who considers the collection one source of his spiritual inspiration.
After hearing one of Eckart’s talks, I embarked on a journey to explore the teachings of this medieval masterpiece. With a translation from 1874, I updated the English to resonate with modern readers, and I provided my interpretation and commentary on how these teachings can be applied in today’s fast-paced world.
Below is an excerpt from my new book: Wisdom from the Middle Ages for Living and Leading in Modern Times.
This excerpt was adapted from the bestselling book SENSITIVE: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World by Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo, the creators of Sensitive Refuge.
The year was 1903. Picasso danced at the Moulin Rouge, electric lights burned at all-night clubs, and Europe’s cities thundered into a new era. Streetcars rushed commuters down buggy-packed streets, telegraphs connected faraway places, and breaking news crossed continents in minutes. Technology charmed its way into people’s homes, too, with phonographs squawking out music on demand for parties. The songs may have been a prelude to an evening at the picture house—or they may have covered up the sound of streets being ripped up to install modern sewers. Even the countryside was abuzz, with farmers using mechanized equipment for the first time. Life was changing, and progress, it was believed, was good. [Read more…]
A few years ago, an ordinary event shook up my life.
I made a trip to the eye doctor.
One wintery Thursday morning, my eyes felt gummy and sandy when I got out of bed, but I paid no attention to them until I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. I was startled to see that the whites of my eyes had turned an angry pink, and my lashes were clumped together: the distinctive signs of pink eye. I ignored my condition for as long as I could, but eventually I found myself in my eye doctor’s exam room, trying not to touch my face. [Read more…]
—Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
Excerpt from Purposeful Empathy: Tapping Our Hidden Superpower for Personal, Organizational, and Social Change
Nestled in the Caucasus Mountains, at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, is a small country that punches above its weight. Inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic era, Georgia may have fewer than four million inhabitants but welcomed over seven million tourists in 2019. Archeological evidence reveals that the country has been producing wine since 6000 BC— long before Italy or France. And despite a tiny population, its national rugby team plays in the big leagues, living up to its country’s motto: “Strength in Unity.” [Read more…]
Let’s take stock. It’s good for us to be able to do the things that matter to us. We’re not always clear about what matters, or what matters most, or how it matters, and the experience of conflict pushes us to find clarity. We refine our system of values and goals by seeing clearly what they are, adjusting how we go about achieving them, getting rid of the bad stuff, and reinterpreting what our values mean so that we can pursue them together. What do we do when these strategies fail? What can we do about perpetual conflicts that we can’t reduce using any of these methods? Do these failures mean we aren’t on the right path? [Read more…]