Creativity doesn’t happen in the five minutes between meetings or between reading our emails. If we want to get in the right mood to be creative, we need to create a specific time and identify a specific place where we will focus only on being creative. John Cleese, the famous British actor, of Monty Python… Continue Reading Getting in the Mood
READ MOREBrands are made, not born. A brand is also not a first impression; it is built over time. Leadership brands are built around what is real and authentic about the leaders they represent. In 1997, Fast Company magazine featured a cover story called “The Brand Called You”. This story encouraged individual leaders to find a… Continue Reading Building a Brand
READ MOREWhen developing new habits, it is helpful to understand the four distinct phases of the learning process. Most of us, at any given time, can be said to be “unconsciously incompetent” about a number of skills. These are skills we are not even aware we are performing in a suboptimal way. Hence, this is a… Continue Reading Unconscious Competence
READ MOREAs a regular subscriber to The Fit Leader blog, you know that I am an avid reader, and often make references to books in my posts. As we near the end of 2018, I’m happy to share my favorite reads for the year. The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves by The Arbinger Institute Mistakes Were Made… Continue Reading My Favorite Reads in 2018
READ MOREPerhaps you’ve heard of the confirmation bias. This is our tendency to look for only confirming evidence of what we already believe. The Lancet, a respected medical journal, reported in 1998 that a positive correlation had been found between autism and childhood vaccines. As a result, many parents stopped vaccinating their children, at great risk… Continue Reading Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)
READ MOREImagine a SWAT team busting into a home to arrest two drug dealers. The home is filled with mothers and their infant children. While the arrests are being made, the babies are screaming, not sure what is going on all around them. In the kitchen, one of the SWAT officers is looking for baby formula… Continue Reading The Outward Mindset
READ MOREIn the mid-1950s, psychologist Abraham Maslow published his famous Hierarchy of Needs. This pyramid comprised five levels, with Physiological Needs at the base and Self-Actualization at the top of his model. According to Maslow, all five of these levels were capable of motivating people, in the order he laid them out in his hierarchy. Maslow… Continue Reading Motivational Theories Revisited
READ MOREBack in 1975, an engineer at Kodak invented the world’s first digital camera. When this engineer, Steve Sasson, went to his management to present his new idea, the response he received was “that’s cute”. While that response ultimately led to the demise of Kodak, we shouldn’t be surprised with the reaction by the company’s management… Continue Reading That's Cute
READ MOREMost of us avoid wasting money. Fewer of us avoid wasting time. The Roman philosopher Seneca wisely taught that “life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested”. The life each of us receives… Continue Reading Now or Later
READ MOREThere is a saying that our greatest achievements often are attained by standing on the shoulders of giants. It is often hard to know who deserves the credit when each of us is surrounded by ideas that have circulated for centuries. In How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery,… Continue Reading On the Shoulders of Giants
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