Leadership is explored through culture, organizational behavior, decision making, ethics, human relations, and everyday realities of work. These essays draw from practical experience and interdisciplinary thinking to examine leadership beyond titles, authority, and management practices.
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Leadership Among Mangroves
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to spend an evening among the mangroves. It was an outdoor experience of kayaking, camping, sharing dinner and, as a reflection, it makes me think about leadership from time to time. We left the main road behind and travelled through the dunes, eventually reaching the water, exchanging vehicles…
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How Organizations Design HR Systems
Before we begin, I wrote this after noticing something at a restaurant I visited some years ago. An F&B outlet supervisor remembered what I usually ordered, and reserved the last portion for me the day it sold out. It was a small thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how many decisions had to be…
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Performance Management Across The Employee Life Cycle
David had never heard the phrase performance management when he applied for a job as a food and beverage attendant at a hotel restaurant. At the interview, he was feeling nervous but hopeful, fidgeting with his fingers while wondering if he would make a good impression and whether, by the end of the day, he…
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A Different Way To Think About Job Descriptions
A Different Way to Think About Job Descriptions Most of us think of a job description as a document that lists duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and reporting relationships. If you look a little closer, you will notice that it actually connects an organization’s purpose to a specific role by defining which parts of a person’s capabilities…
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Only A Bystander?
There are people in this world who say very little but seem to understand much more than we realize, and they do not feel the need to draw attention to themselves or announce their presence. I had a colleague who used to arrive at work without drawing attention to himself, complete assignments with care, listen…
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What Alaska Taught Me About Leadership
Nothing prepared me for Alaska. We drove through Seward, Homer, Valdez, and Anchorage, camped under open skies, hiked on a glacier, kayaked between walls of blue ice, and took a boat deep into the fjords where humpback whales surfaced beside us close enough to hear the towering walls of the blue ice crack before huge…
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The A Frame
Years ago, I joined a dragon boat team. It was a wonderful group of people. One of the first things our instructor taught us was how to create an A frame. It is the basic paddling stance that provides balance, stability, and leverage. It is the foundation from which every stroke begins. Without it, power…
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Understanding The Employee Investigation Process
It is natural for people to gather in the same room, listen to the same conversation, witness the same events, and depart with entirely different understandings of what took place as each person experiences events through different perspectives, levels of involvement and circumstances. This reality is fundamental to every employee investigation. Typically, when we hear…
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The Question Before The Question
I once heard a story about an interviewer who asked a candidate why the same side of the moon always faces the Earth. It was an opportunity to explore whether the candidate possessed the curiosity to look beyond immediate responsibilities and remained open to learning from the world beyond their existing frame of reference. We…
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What Effective Managers Hear First
When someone on your team raises a concern or questions a decision, what captures your attention first? Does your attention move first to the concern itself, or does it move first to the way it is expressed? Let’s say a team member speaks with you about an issue that has been building for some time,…
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Leading Yourself With A Purpose
The early days of our career are usually absorbed by task-driven activities. We get busy learning the ropes of finite and infinite tasks and we tend to gauge our abilities and measure our worth based on the technical demands of our work. Commitment and responsibility take a place in our hearts and expresses itself in…
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Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is the extent of care and emotional commitment an employee has for the success of an organization. Engaged employees willingly go above and beyond the call of duty and contribute to an organization’s achievement of its goals. Employee engagement is closely linked to organizational productivity and profitability. Many organizations embrace employee engagement in…
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Self Awareness And Three Spoonful Of Water
At birth, we each come with a set of behaviors which form the foundation of all our human interactions. Over time, some of these behaviors flourish; some remain dormant; and some are shaped by our environment and our experiences. Our behaviors spring from our beliefs, values and attitudes. Behaviors can be changed by changing our…
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The Willingness To Change
One of my childhood memories is of having large piles of newspapers, magazines, electronics, clothes, etc. scattered around our house. Those piles would grow and grow until it became difficult to navigate the house. Even our wardrobes were packed full of clothing. There was basically no room to move! Many things, despite being old or…
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Authentic Leadership
The Himalayas are majestic, serene, and sacrosanct. Seasons change, friends become foes, families disintegrate, and hundreds of generations have passed away, but these mightiest of mountains have remained stubborn, stout, and immortal for years, decades, and centuries. The stories of the courageous mountaineers who inspired the world with their camaraderie, altruism, and spirit of quest…
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When To Listen. When To Lead.
In 1914, Ernest Shackleton led a voyage to cross Antarctica. His ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice for months before being crushed and sinking. The mission turned from exploration to survival. Shackleton guided his men across drifting ice, reached remote land after a perilous open-boat journey, and his leadership ultimately secured rescue for all.…
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Curiosity in Moments That Matter
In the early 1700s, Johann Jacob Diesbach, a paint maker, was trying to produce red paint but the mixture had an impurity in one of the ingredients, that caused the color to change to a deep blue. Diesbach did not understand what had happened but kept the spoiled paint. After examining and making adjustments, he discovered…
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Holding The Door For The New Hire
A new hire’s understanding of their role begins well before the first day at work, developing through their aspirations to succeed. People generally form early assumptions about work and the workplace through previous experience, education, family influences, and the job interview process among other factors. Many arrive with only a partial understanding of the work,…
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Beyond Sisyphus
The story of Sisyphus from Greek mythology is about a figure who is assigned a task to push a heavy stone up a steep hill. Each time he reaches closer to the summit, the stone slips from his hand and rolls back down to the plain. He would then go down and push the stone…
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The Leadership Corridor in Hospitality
In hospitality, leadership operates within a narrow corridor. Demands shift frequently, and teams cannot always keep pace. Performance expectations and team capacity do not always move together. Some days being heavy workloads, demanding guests, and numerous tasks that need to be completed within tight timeframes. It is both challenging and rewarding to resolve issues and…
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Navigating Interdependence Without Disappearing Inside It
Teamwork begins with people working toward the same goal while relying on each other through communication, coordination, and small adjustments made along the way, regardless of their formal roles. Consider driving on a highway. Nobody is following a script, yet somehow it works. Each driver is making individual decisions while constantly reading and responding to…
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The Overlooked Role of Organizational Culture
When we talk about organizational culture, we usually think about things like purpose, leadership, psychological safety, learning, and management practices. People learn skills, follow procedures, develop expected behaviors, and become more effective in their roles. For many organizations, this is what good looks like. There is another role culture plays that is easier to overlook.…
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The Unseen Grammar of Leadership
Many leadership failures begin with a simple oversight which is paying close attention to tasks, metrics, deadlines, and outcomes but failing to pay enough attention to the people who are responsible for achieving those outcomes. Human beings do not simply execute tasks. They think, adapt, and respond to their environment. Sentience and sapience are fundamental…
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Understanding Career Progression
Most professionals hope to make progress in their careers. Organizations are one of the primary places where this development occurs. Access to experience, exposure, relationships, and opportunities is usually available in organizations, and these resources play an important role throughout one’s career. Many professionals view hard work as the primary driver of career success but…
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The Human Experience of Work
Work touches many parts of human life. It is a place where capabilities develop, relationships form, and a sense of contribution is felt. The Changing Expectation Of Work The meaning of work has continued to evolve. Work has traditionally been viewed as a means of earning a living and creating economic value. Today, in addition…
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The Practice Of Hospitality
Generations ago, a traveler arriving in a village at dusk could knock on the door of a stranger and be received as a guest. A family would welcome the traveler into their home, offer a place to sleep in the attic or on the veranda, and share whatever they had. They might even prepare the…
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What Desire Paths Can Teach Us About Work and Life
You may have heard of the desire path, a trail that emerges when people repeatedly travel a route different from the one originally intended. You might see it on a university campus, as a worn track across a lawn. In a forest or on a hillside, it may take the shape of several trails winding…
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What’s Your Geodesic
If you have worked long enough in an organization, you have probably noticed that some leaders respond to situations and people’s behavior in remarkably consistent ways. They focus on seeking more information and understanding causes. Other leaders tend to move quickly toward action and solutions. People develop their own ways of responding to situations through…
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Four Ways Leadership Teaches People To Think
Leadership is experienced through countless interactions between managers and the people they lead. A coaching session after a failed project, a discussion during a performance review, a response to an employee survey, or a question raised in a team meeting all begin with a primary concern, and by the end of the meeting, the team…
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The Man Before The Palace
I arrived at the palace of Versailles just before six on a chilly morning. The moon still hung above the palace as daylight slowly reached the courtyard and the grounds remained nearly empty. A restaurant worker stood outside smoking a cigarette before the day began, the silent palace rising behind him. He prepared for another…