leadership skills Archives -

What skills come easily and effortlessly to you? Are you currently getting paid to use them? These questions don’t only matter to consultants like me who choose what services to offer and how to price them. They are also relevant to people within organizations. Indeed, the strengths-based movement in talent development (Gallup, Marcus Buckingham, etc.) is based precisely on this premise.

Below is a post I wrote earlier this year for my personal blog. It describes my discovery of what may be my greatest strength and my astonishment that I hadn’t thought of it during a two month period of trying to identify my greatest strengths. Go figure!

May this story entice you to explore your deepest strengths, particularly those you may be overlooking precisely because they involve so little effort. [Read more…] about Skills that are easy and effortless

This post is a first. I’ve decided to tear down the walls between my identity as an executive coach and my commitment to self-experimentation in lifestyle design, health, and well being. Over the past two years, I’ve written 155 posts about these adventures exclusively for a couple handfuls of close family and friends. Starting today, I will be sharing new insights and provocations in these areas with my clients, professional colleagues, and broader readership.

Here is why: I’m learning truckloads from my own life about some of the very things I get paid to help others learn. How do you maintain physical and emotional energy throughout the day? How do you manage commitments to yourself and others? What are innovative ways of scheduling your time? How can you squeeze important reflection and preparation into a busy life of action? And, perhaps most importantly, what is it like to be outrageously ambitious about the impact you will have on the world and astoundingly humble about your own path of learning?

Unlike bloggers who focus on entrepreneurship and the path out of corporate life, I will continue to write primarily for managers in large organizations, executives in smaller organizations, and the consultants and coaches who serve them. I’m not interested in teaching anyone how to be like me. In fact, I only have enough energy to help one person be fully me, and that’s a lifetime occupation. I do hope that my own explorations will be useful and relevant to you.