Our family loves March Madness — brackets, buzzer beaters, and a little friendly trash talk. But beyond the fun, this year’s tournament revealed something bigger: talent is global. The game is changing, and it’s not just because of NIL. Players — and professionals — are competing on a worldwide stage, and the smartest teams are thinking beyond borders. Want to build a championship-worthy team at work? Start by widening your recruiting lens. Discover the key lessons from March Madness that can transform how you build your team.
Context matters. When conflict erupts at work, it’s easy to focus on the outburst, not the circumstances that led to it. Take my friend’s brother—suspended without pay for lashing out after being undermined. What his boss didn’t consider? He had just lost his mother and had a child in the hospital.
As leaders, we must create space for employees to navigate stress, not just react to their missteps. Using an empowerment-based model like SBAR—situation, background, analysis, recommendations—can help de-escalate conflict and build stronger teams. How do you handle workplace conflict?
The terms manager and leader often get used interchangeably, but should they? “Leading versus managing” is a common search phrase. At HPC, we don’t really think it’s a “versus” situation. You can be a good manager without being a great leader, but you can’t be a great leader without strong management skills. So, what’s distinct about them, and why does it matter? Let’s break it down. You Manage Time and Tasks Management primarily involves managing things that largely impact people, but it does not seek to influence people like leadership does. It’s hard to lead others well if you can
After a year of “Open the Door” as our 2024 theme, we decided this year as a team that maybe we needed to simplify- our theme and our focus. As I discussed in my speech Taste and See, turning responsibility into obligation to open the door to anyone and anything brought about a state of too much in 2025. Like they say, there can be too much of a good thing. So in keeping with tasting and seeing what is good and letting that be the only obligation or responsibility to pursue, trusting that good things will flow naturally from
My boys love baseball. I tolerate it. Our little one started t-ball last year and has become obsessed, so naturally The Sandlot is now his favorite movie. He watches it on repeat now. Again, I tolerate it being on pretty much 24/7 at our house. But the other day it was playing in the background, and I sat down for a second to watch. “This Benny kid”, I thought, “this kid is a real leader”. Then I proceeded to watch the entire rest of the movie tuned in to this realization: there are powerful leadership lessons from The Sandlot. As