If you are in favor of being kind whenever kindness is a viable option, you are already well on your way to being a world-class wokester, and you should feel good about that! People don’t hate wokeness so much as they hate being told by someone else that they personally are not woke (enough) and […]
The story of transformation is mostly one of trying, failing, reflecting, learning and trying again
I recently read an editorial by clinical psychologist Jenny Taitz in which she suggested chain analysis as a key pillar of a strategy for making successful transformations. As I was reading her article, I immediately recalled that Andrea Konuma and I had integrated many of the elements she recommends into the performance and well-being programs […]
Your RAFT can help keep you flowing toward TOMORROW by helping you to remember to take action TODAY
We all know that if we don’t take new actions, we cannot get new results and if we don’t create new habits, we can’t sustain those results. RAFT makes it easier to do both. In our experiments helping clients drive personal and organizational change Andrea Konuma and I noticed that there didn’t seem to be […]
CIAO helps you build a bridge from exploration to execution
One of the challenges of leadership (and life) is knowing whether you should be executing on what you already know, exploring what you may not know or some combination of the two. If you devote your time and energy to exploring possibilities and risks under conditions in which you already have sufficient information, expertise and […]
Make ongoing exploration a part of your success story
EDIT: Explore – Define – Iterate – Transform/Transfer/Transition/Translate/Thrive EDIT is a formula you can use to put learning at the center of life and work, enabling you to convert change (変化) into transformation (変革) by writing stories of agency, purpose, growth, connection, contribution and meaning. Andrea Konuma and I came up with the Community Action […]
DEI is about affinities as well as diversity
The rise and fall of DEI initiatives in recent years can be attributed at least partially to the challenge of finding the right balance between treating people as members of groups versus treating them as unique individuals. In the 1990s and 2000s I did a lot of work with corporations in Japan to reduce misunderstandings, […]
Doing the right thing doesn’t have to be a sacrifice
“If the future of our planet depends on a few people willing to make personal sacrifices, we’re not going to make it.” – behavioral scientist Jiaying Zhao Longer version of quote: “When most people think about climate action, they immediately default to things they have to give up for the planet. This mindset is so […]
WOOP is no magic bullet, but it can help you realize the small wishes that might get you closer to achieving your moonshot dreams
Gabriele Oettingen’s WOOP (Wish – Outcome – Obstacle – Plan) is a model you can use to increase the likelihood that you will take the actions required to realize your wishes. Just be careful not to wish for too much too quickly or easily;) The whole point of WOOP is that realizing a wish takes […]
Shifting your internal voices from chaos to chorus
Being clear, effective and influential with others starts with internal clarity and equanimity. Rather than ignoring internal ambivalence, it can be useful to lend an ear to those dissenting inner voices. A recent Life Kit podcast (link at the bottom of this post) explored IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy, an intervention in which a therapist […]
Leaning into a life of possibilities requires a combination of mindset, skill and process
“Thinking in terms of possibilities sounds simple but it is in fact a complex skill. Possibility thinking requires both imagining what is not there and creating paths to it, so that it can become a reality.” – Constance de Saint Laurent (lecturer in psychology at Maynooth University) and Vlad Glăveanuis (professor of psychology at Dublin City University) in article […]