Category: Life Lessons
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3 Life and Leadership Lessons from my Father
My father is by all accounts a successful leader. There are 3 “superpowers” that he has that I think have helped him have such a positive effect in each of these environments. My father has had a long and successful career in business leading to a decade as the Chairman of the Board of Accenture, […]
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The $5 Challenge – A Stanford Strategy Story…
Back in 2009, Stanford prof Tina Seelig split students in the school of engineering into teams and gave them an envelope containing $5. Teams had only two hours to generate as much money as possible. Each team would get three minutes to present their project to the entire class. Here is Tina’s own article explaining the experience: The $5 […]
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Build Strong Foundations
Build Strong Foundations before you grow higher. Are you investing in your own Foundations – or are you building the house of your life on sand? Leadership coach Luis Soares shared the story in the video below a few years ago on a leadership retreat for Vistage Spain. There are two metaphors in the video: […]
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Be careful of Lazy thinking
We have a wonderful capacity to mess up our lives through lazy or fantasy thinking. We make blanket black and white statements… rather than seeking the shades of grey. “I hate my job” -> what parts exactly? Life is richer than black and white. You don’t hate every single part, activity, person in your job… […]
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Days vs Years
Our emotional experience of life can depend on the time horizon we choose to look at our lives. If you look at the progress of your life each day, there are many wild swings. If you look at the progress of your life over longer time horizons, the wild swings blur into the background and […]
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Serendipity
Definition: finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for Last weekend, I asked my family a question: “what is your favourite word?” My wife had 3 favourites. One of those words is “serendipity”. Side note: My 6 year old had one favourite word. “Love”. She is a genius IMHO. This week several events occurred where […]
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The Tyranny of Convenience
Convenience makes things easy… but what is easy is not always whats most important, valuable or effective. We choose between the options we see, not all the options… we’ve got to be increasingly careful that we don’t choose the path that is just easiest to see. Convenience food… is not health food. Tech companies work […]
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Freedom is not an Empty Calendar
What is freedom? What is it to achieve freedom in life? I spent many years thinking that “an empty calendar is freedom”. Recently a coach had me rethink this perspective… an empty calendar is dangerous… it puts my life in the hands of my “lizard brain” 😉 What are you aiming at? Are you working […]
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Redefining Failure
“Living Safely is Dangerous” Nietzsche What is your relationship to success and failure? I have been reflecting these recent weeks about how I respond to “failure” – when things do not turn out as I hoped or wished. The video below shares my thinking about a better way of approaching failure in our lives. How […]
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Choose to Take Responsibility
Welcome to 2022. A couple of weeks back I shared something that my father said to me over and over again when I was young. “It might be their fault, but its your problem”. His point was always to take responsibility for what you yourself can actually control in any situation. Robbie van Persie shared […]