Blog

What do you stand for?

You know that feeling when you meet someone and within the first few minutes you just "click"? You share the same values and outlook on life, and you can't help but be drawn to them? Well, that's what authentic relationships are all about. When your core values are in alignment with those of the people around you, it creates a powerful connection.

Recently I conducted a strategic planning retreat with a board of directors for hospice. Working with community members who serve on a board is an insightful and meaningful experience. With this group, I knew from the start that we “clicked” thanks to our shared values.

My style is to always begin any engagement with a touchstone of mission and values. Being reminded of why your organization exists and the core values that lead the organization is crucial to every strategy and decision.

When you take a pause and ask, “what do we stand for?”, “what are our core...

What comes to mind when you hear someone described as a “revolutionary”?  An angry bomb-hurling renegade, overturning the established order and setting fire to it? History has plenty of those to show us, some successful and others less so; some with genuinely lofty goals, and others whose stated ideology didn’t match their actions once in power. It’s often hard to know who’s right or wrong in the heat of the moment.  Yet we need revolutionaries to point the way forward. It’s not our nature as humans to embrace change eagerly, and ideas that would have seemed outrageous a hundred or even just twenty years ago took their time becoming mainstream. It takes someone with a vision – and a will – to step up and champion those uncomfortably novel ideas, to stand up to power and most of all, to lead.

Our nation was founded by what might seem an unlikely group of revolutionaries; people who were already blessed for the most...

High performance; everyone talks about it, but what does it really look like in practice?

            To me, high performance can’t just be an on again/off again thing where I hit that mark, then settle back down to where I was. I need to sustain that high-functioning vibrancy over time. It doesn’t come naturally – at least, not to most people, myself included – but it can be learned, in the same way Olympic athletes build high performance habits that sustain them through grueling competition. How do High Performers train to bring their best all day, every day, to whatever they’re doing? In other words, how do they stay in the zone?

            My training with my coach Brendon Burchard taught me there are five keys to creating and maintaining high performance. In this piece, I’ll dig into the first two: Clarity and Energy.

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