Open the Door to New Experiences

3,098.0 miles away Traveling 3,098.0 miles away from my home to live with the Ward family and shadow Mary Ila and HPC surely is a completely new experience for me. Since February and until May, I have been in the United States. This is the longest time I have ever been away from home and family. In one of the training sessions I got to shadow Horizon Point, we did an exercise where we selected two things that motivated us at work, and two others that did the complete opposite. The two that least motivated me from the list were

 Open the Door to New Perspectives

The President of ATD Birmingham (and my friend) recently shared insights on The Leadership Pipeline with a room full of talent development professionals. I’m sure he said many, many great things, but the one thing I remember (and have talked about nonstop since then) was the idea that the first rung on the ladder of leadership is the hardest to climb.  The first time you shift from being an individual contributor to being a manager is like putting on a pair of glasses that no longer work. We know an upward move in our careers means upgraded responsibilities, but we

Effective Delegation: Closed Doors Lead to Open Ones

As we begin our series on the theme for the year, “Open the Door”, we realized it was important to also consider that in order to open doors, you also need to know how to close them.  The first step in effective delegation is to identify where closing a door for one person or organization is opening one for another.  As we sat around a table brainstorming our 2024 theme at our annual company retreat, we realized we were all in somewhat of a state of transition and so were many of our clients.   We often work with people, organizations,

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble! (Embrace the Suck)

Lorrie kicked off our series on Daring Leadership with her post Braving Trust and Vulnerability. Last week, Jillian discussed How to Be Perfect (Or Not) and the effect it has on Armored vs. Daring Leadership. This week I have the pleasure of presenting the topic of rumbling with vulnerability. I am going to need you to take a pause, a deep breath and embrace the suck. Wait, did she just say embrace the suck? Why yes, she did. How else can you describe the feeling of being naked in a room full of people while you bare your soul? In

Braving Trust and Vulnerability

As we just celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I found myself thinking of what made him a good leader. He led with his values always in the forefront of his actions, his values drove everything he did. He was a servant leader, who believed in developing and empowering others, and he was a transformational leader, who had a big vision, shared that vision and challenged others to see the potential of that vision, and fought hard for change.  He was a successful leader because he built trust and followed through with action. Brené Brown says that “trust isn’t built