Food for Thought
Welcome to the HardTalk Biz Coaching Blog.
When you nurture your intellectual curiosity through reading, when you seriously entertain someone else’s perspective, and when you seek out professional opinions, thought-provoking articles, and contrarian views, I believe it leaves you enriched and wiser. I wish you inspired reading and reflecting and I welcome your comments on my posts.
Additional Reading: Some of My Many Favorite Books
A good book for me is one that provides me with multiple perspectives, one that confronts me with thought-provoking questions, and one that offers contrarian narratives so I can reflect in new ways and multiply my options. Let me offer you ten of the many books I think are excellent vehicles to expand your mind:
- The Business of Belief, Tom Asacker
- Moments of Impact, Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon
- Transparency – How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor, Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman, and James O’Toole
- The Leadership Challenge and The Truth about Leadership, James Kouzes and Barry Posner
- Managing Transitions, William Bridges
- How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons, Albert Ellis and Arthur Lange
- The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle
- Humble Inquiry, Edgar H. Schein
- Beyond Blame – Learning from Failure and Success, Dave Zwieback
- Just Culture – Restoring Trust and Accountability in Your Organization, Sidney Dekker
Psychological Safety in the Workplace
We all know about ‘traditional safety’, whether we act on what we know or not; safety glasses, anti-slip footwear, protective gloves, seatbelts, and our family’s favorite: motorcycle helmets. Psychological safety serves the same purpose: protection from harm or the...
read moreLeadership Practice ‘Sharing’
Depending on what you believe and what you aspire as a leader you may already focus on leadership practices such as observing, asking, listening, coaching, and empowering. Let me add to that list one leadership practice that many of my executive coaching clients and...
read moreSwitching Mindsets to Increase your Professional Effectiveness
What’s good, you don’t want to change, so if your mindset is good, make optimal use of it and enjoy! Yet we don’t always find ourselves in the right state of mind for the day or for the occasion. So, you want to start and continue every day with the right mindset in...
read moreIncrease your Leadership effectiveness with Humble Inquiry
Leaders who practice ‘humble inquiry’ draw out staff’s thoughts and views, however supportive or contrarian, through mindful and non-leading questions, true listening, and actually learning from the response.
read moreQuestion
“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” This is one of my favorite quotes by French writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire. This past Thursday and Friday, Stephanie McGovern and I facilitated the two-day course ‘Fundamentals of Organization...
read moreTrust Building, Collaborative Phrases for Your Conversations
We all have those conversations and collaborations that seem challenging because intentions are misunderstood, parties rush to judgment, styles are clashing, or objectives are misaligned. Other relationships are strong and secure yet you may still experience an...
read morePlea for Not-Doing
We love to act, get on with things, and work on solutions. In school, in business, and in other contexts we are rewarded for being active and busy. Yet … have you ever heard of the expression ‘Too much of a good thing can turn into a bad thing?’ Our action bias is...
read morePeer-to-Peer Accountability – How to Conduct an Accountability Conversation
Peer-to-peer accountability is a challenging task. You may work in a cross-functional team, a virtual team, a matrix situation, or in a more traditional, stable team setting. In each of these situations, holding each other accountable to team goals and commitments is...
read moreNothing to Lose
Ever feeling busy? Tired? Unfocused? If not, please contact me so I can listen to you, mine your wisdom, and share it with family, friends, and clients. If your answer is ‘yes’, try the following four easy practices for 7 days straight and see what it does for you....
read moreCultivate Your Curiosity for Increased Professional Effectiveness
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from the old ones.” Economist Maynard Keynes One definition of curiosity is ‘A strong desire to know or learn something.’ Sounds good right, and sounds like something that most educational...
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