The SHRM Lawsuit Reminds Us: Psychological Safety Does Not Protect You From “No”
Psychological safety has undergone a strange transformation. What began as the belief that people should be able to speak candidly, ask questions, admit mistakes, challenge authority, and raise concerns without fear of humiliation or retaliation has increasingly become something else: the belief that discomfort itself is evidence of dysfunction. A questioned request becomes invalidation. A […]
The Experience Audit
At the SPS Connected Workplace Experience conference, one idea kept resurfacing in different forms: What have your employees experienced that led them to believe what they believe? And what results are those beliefs producing? That’s a different question than asking what they believe. At Culture Partners, we spend a great deal of time helping leaders shift beliefs because […]
What Messi Understood About Leadership That Ronaldo Didn’t
As the World Cup reaches its final stages(yes, as I’m writing this Spain has a 2-0 lead over France…WOW), the familiar debate has returned: What separates a truly great player from a truly great team? That question sits at the heart of the opening chapter of Surrender to Lead. I wrote about Lionel Messi and […]
Employees Aren’t As Afraid of AI as You Think
If you listened only to the headlines about AI, you’d assume employees are terrified. The headlines focus on replacement. Every panel asks which jobs will disappear. Executive conversations eventually turn into a debate about how much work AI will automate. But employees don’t seem to be having that conversation. SHRM recently found that while 46% […]
Who Owns the Hours Your Employees Create Through Efficiency?
Imagine your highest performer consistently delivered exceptional results in just three hours each day. They exceeded every expectation, their colleagues loved working with them, and the business was better because of their contributions. Would your first instinct be to celebrate the efficiency? Or would you wonder why you hadn’t asked more of them? Or both? There are only two coherent […]
ChatGPT Is My Brain’s External Hard Drive. And I Think I Like It.
The most significant impact AI has had on my life is not that it makes me more productive. It’s that it lowers the psychological cost of action. That may sound like productivity by another name, but I think it’s something quite different. Productivity is about getting more done. What I’ve noticed is that AI changes how I feel before I […]
Leadership Presence Is a Myth
Few ideas have had a greater influence on leadership development than leadership presence. The phrase appears everywhere: executive coaching, succession planning, performance reviews, and leadership assessments. We’re taught that effective leadership looks a certain way. It commands attention, projects confidence, and creates followership through charisma, energy, and gravitas. I taught leadership presence myself for years, so I […]
The Four Things Leaders Should Say Before Any Major Change
There is a common narrative today that suggests that people are stubborn, inflexible, and unwilling to adapt. There is no shortage of experts willing to argue that people naturally resist change. That is why change is hard. But if that were true, human history would look very different than it does. Human beings change constantly. People become […]
What I Learned From Other TEDx Speakers
Today my TEDx talk went live and I had the great honor of having it featured on TED.com. But rather than write about my talk, I want to write about the talks I heard that day that have stuck with me. As I listened throughout the day, I found myself having the same reaction over […]
What Gets Measured Gets… Confused with Progress
“What gets measured gets done” may be one of the most influential management ideas of the modern era. It may also be one of the most counterproductive when misunderstood. Organizations today have become extraordinarily sophisticated at measuring performance while simultaneously losing visibility into whether performance is actually improving. There is a difference between a measurable objective and an […]
The Stories We Inherit vs. The Stories We Create
I took my daughter to Washington, D.C. recently, and we spent an afternoon learning about history. We watched the “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and then headed over to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. At one point in the history gallery, we stopped in […]
AI as a Cost Cutter vs. a Growth Engine
Executives are being sold two stories about AI right now. One is that it will magically transform the business overnight. The other is that it is too disruptive, too risky, or too controversial to touch. Both stories can become expensive distractions. On a recent episode of CEO Daily Brief, I spoke with Nicole Mangarella from SPS about […]