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 →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.
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…
Read →Accountability Without Surveillance
Accountability is constructed at the beginning, not assembled after a failure. Asking why afterward, having named no standard beforehand, is blame allocation wearing the word.
Read →Upward Delegation and How to Refuse It
Nobody intends it. A problem arrives in your office belonging to someone else and leaves belonging to you, and the transfer happens in a single sentence…
Read →Supervising Without Taking It Back
Most intervention happens on the axis of difference while the leader believes it is happening on the axis of risk. The threshold has to be set…
Read →The Four Levels of Delegation
Both parties assume a level, neither states it, and they assume in opposite directions. Naming the number out loud removes most delegation failure at no cost.
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