What Your Unsolicited Qualifiers Are Telling You
A counselor called me ‘the king of unsolicited denials.’ Turns out, the things we deny and rationalize before anyone asks point to what we’re protecting.
From Rigid to Real: An Engineer's Decade-Long Lesson in Feedback and Leading People with Derek Stake
Derek Stake, VP of Operations and Engineering at The Cleveland Vibrator Company, joins the Leaders Rising Podcast to talk about moving from managing process to leading people. In this episode Derek Stake came up as an engineer, and for years he ran his teams the way he ran a production line: manage the variation, follow
Why Leaders Still Avoid Hard Conversations (Even When They Know Better)
The leaders who avoid hard conversations usually know exactly how to have them. What stops them is a quieter calculation, and courageous humility is the way through it.
There’s a Nap for That: Leading From First Gear
Capable leaders keep hunting for more minutes in the day. Tom Nebel makes the case for First Gear: the rest that buys back not just hours, but years.
What a Real Leadership Development System Looks Like
Most leadership training is run like a fire drill: one room, one day, gone by Friday. A real system has four phases, and skipping any one of them is why nothing changes.
How to Stop Being a Bottleneck: The 4Ds Framework for Leaders Who Want to Scale
Capable, committed leaders become the bottleneck without ever choosing to. The 4Ds (Drop, Delegate, Develop, Do) is the map back to the work that is genuinely yours.
Unlocking Influence: The Leadership Skill Most Leaders Are Missing
A VP with the vision, the credentials, and the results still felt like he was leading from an island. What he was missing was influence, and influence is built on four ingredients of trust.
Why Most Leader Development Programs Don’t Work (And What Does)
A high-potential leader attends a training, comes back energized, and then nothing changes. Why most programs stop at the surface, and the four-part rhythm (B-SPOKE) that moved the numbers.
Calibrating High-Drive Leadership Without Losing Your Edge
Your drive built the company. Left uncalibrated, it can quietly silence the team you need most. Here is how to pair high challenge with high support and get your people talking again.
How the Best Owners Create a Culture of Growth
The founder who becomes the default decision-maker caps the company’s growth and loses their own time. Here is the shift from hero to hero-maker, and the five-stage loop that gets you there.