Setting a Standard and Holding It
Your standard is the worst behaviour you have permitted, not the best you have praised. Everything above that line is aspiration, and the organization worked out…
Read →Idaho leadership
Leadership Lessons
Practical leadership lessons from experienced Idahoans across the state's industries, institutions, and communities — guidance you can apply in your own work.
Conflicts of Interest You Do Not Notice
Disclosure frameworks catch money and miss almost everything else. In a small state the bidder is your neighbour, no financial interest exists, and your judgment is…
Read →Humility and Self-Doubt Are Not the Same Thing
Humility includes knowing what you are good at. A leader who will not assert competence they actually hold is not being modest; they are buying their…
Read →Owning a Mistake in Public
The partial admission does more damage than silence, because it establishes that you know and are managing. The gap between what you conceded and what everyone…
Read →Courage Is Situational, Not Dispositional
Nobody is brave in general. The moments that actually require it are few, recurring, and describable in advance, which means they can be prepared for rather…
Read →Composure Under Provocation
The cost of losing your temper is not that people think less of you. It is that they now know what triggers you, and they will…
Read →Predictability Is an Asset
A reliably strict leader and a reliably lenient one are both workable. One who alternates without a discernible rule is worse than either, because people optimise…
Read →Integrity as a Practical Constraint
The value comes from certain moves being genuinely unavailable, not from their being usually declined. Partial integrity returns nothing, because the whole benefit is that others…
Read →Delegating Without Authority
When you cannot compel anyone, the instinct is to soften the ask. Softening produces ambiguity, and in a discretionary setting an ambiguous request loses to every…
Read →Delegating to Someone Who Will Do It Worse Than You
The comparison that matters is not your version against theirs on this occasion. It is the whole stream of future occasions, and who will be available…
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