Learning Culture: Help Your Team Grow and Improve

A learning culture encourages a growth mindset and psychological safety. It is the best way to help your employees learn what they need to succeed.

A team building good leadership relationships

The Relationship Layer Most Capable Leaders Undervalue

February 6, 2026

Alignment and Effective 1:1s

Many leadership challenges that appear strategic or operational actually have their roots in leadership relationships. At senior levels, leadership stops being primarily about execution and starts being about relationships. Not relationships in the social sense.Not networking.Not politics. But the quality of working relationships that determine whether influence flows, trust holds under pressure, and decisions actually move groups forward. Many capable leaders underestimate this layer—not because they don’t value people, but because earlier success rarely depended on it. Key Takeaways: Why…

A smoking tire as a symbol of leadership friction

The Hidden Cost of Leadership Friction (And Why It Rarely Shows Up in Metrics)

January 28, 2026

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

Leadership friction is the hidden drag created when leadership systems, signals, and habits make it harder for people to do their best work — even when they’re capable, committed, and trying. If leadership friction were obvious, most organizations would have fixed it by now. But it’s not. Low performance becomes normalized when leaders emphasize values that crowd out quality. Priorities like speed, meeting deadlines, office politics, or surface-level agreement can quietly shift attention from excellence to compliance. The impacts become…

woman contemplating feedback signals leaders miss

The Feedback Signals You’re Missing as a Leader (And Why They Matter More at Senior Levels)

January 23, 2026

Decision Making Under Pressure

If you’re missing feedback signals as a leader, it’s a sign of your own growth. Learn to listen differently to grow more. At some point, nearly every leader misses a feedback sgnal. There was a moment when I, too, found myself missing feedback signals as a leader. Here’s a story of how I missed a signal and made a decision that nearly cost me my company—and what I learned that helped me grow further. I remember announcing the decision and…

Six Leadership Styles—and How They Affect Team Performance

January 20, 2026

Trust and Building Teams

Strong leaders rely on a variety of leadership styles, adapting how they lead based on context, people, and stakes. Key Takeaways about Leadership Styles Decades of leadership style research—including Daniel Goleman’s work on leadership styles and performance—show that how you lead directly affects results. Some leadership styles consistently improve engagement and outcomes. Others quietly undermine them, even when intentions are good. Think of leadership as a toolkit. Leaders with limited tools tend to overuse the same approach—often at the expense…

employee engagement vs employee satisfaction at work

Employee Engagement vs Employee Satisfaction: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters for Your Business

December 5, 2025

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

When comparing employee engagement vs employee satisfaction, which should you measure? If your company is still relying on employee satisfaction surveys, it may be time to shift toward measuring employee engagement — the metric most strongly linked to performance, retention, and profitability. For more than a century, researchers have tried to understand what helps employees thrive and what drives productivity. Today, most organizations focus on employee engagement, not satisfaction, because engagement is what truly predicts effort, innovation, and long-term value.…

manager giving effective feedback in the moment

Effective Feedback: How Great Managers Help Their Teams Grow

December 3, 2025

Motivation and a Culture of Performance

If you want to give your team effective feedback that actually helps them grow, focus on making it future-forward, specific, and frequent. Most of us have negative experiences with feedback—criticism that felt harsh, vague, or demotivating. No wonder so many managers hesitate to offer it. But here’s the good news: research shows that when people receive meaningful employee feedback, they learn faster, perform better, and stay more engaged. So, the question becomes: How can we make giving feedback a positive,…