A New York Times story (the most emailed article for much of today and yesterday) reports on the positive impact school recess has on academic performance. Here’s how it begins: “The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.” The paradoxical lesson of this story is Read More

Too often I hear the word “leader” misused. It’s a sad fact that many business professionals don’t see themselves as leaders, mainly because “leader” is a term typically linked to people in positions of formal authority. This is a fallacy that undermines performance, in all aspects of life. Someone said to me recently, “I don’t Read More

In a recent blog post I wrote: An economic world turned upside down makes it easier to take a fresh look. This can open the door to making changes that will benefit you and the most important people in your life, now and in the long run….The crisis, in other words, can make it easier to Read More

I had the privilege of conducting a workshop on Total Leadership a few days ago at Teach For America’s headquarters in New York.  When you exit the elevator on TFA’s main floor in this modest office building on an industrial Midtown street, you see a blue wall on which these words appear in white:   Read More

A few days ago, while on a break from leading a workshop at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for members of its management team (including director and former astronaut Mike Coats), I had the special privilege of touring the cavernous Building 9, which houses a mock space station, space vehicles, and other amazing things. In addition Read More

President-Elect Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, recently said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Emanuel–using a phrase of which Tom Friedman (no relation) is also fond (he heard it from economist Read More

One of the many reasons why President-Elect Obama inspires hope around the world is because of what he’s shown us so far of his abilities to be a profoundly effective leader of change.  A few thoughts here on some of the critically important principles he demonstrated to awesome effect in his victorious campaign, as evidenced Read More

As a new political era dawns, what lessons about leadership can we grasp from Obama’s triumph? So much has been said already about the man who called his last book The Audacity of Hope. I’ll focus here on one factor that stands out, and it’s the thing about him that worked political magic–Obama’s authenticity, as Read More

I just returned from London, where I spoke to a gathering of European business leaders focused on creating healthier workplaces at the annual Enterprise for Health conference. I won’t tell you here how much fun it was, as the pre-dinner keynote speaker, to try to keep the attention of 125 ravenously hungry people while we Read More