Meeting Mistakes

As the CEO of a large organization, I find myself in more meetings than you can imagine. Throughout my career, whatever my position, I’ve noticed what works and what falls flat. Here are 16 mistakes to avoid when you find yourself running a meeting:

“Actions speak louder than meetings.” –Lee Clow

Don’t update latecomers.

Have you ever been in a meeting, in-person or on the phone, when this happens? The meeting leader starts, goes through the agenda, gives an update and then someone else walks in the room or joins the call. The leader proceeds to repeat everything that was just said. Then, it happens again. And yet again. This is my personal rant. You are penalizing those who are on time by subjecting them to this and wasting everyone’s time. If you ever feel compelled to do this, do it quick and in a summary fashion.

Meeting Tip: Don’t update every newcomer and late attendee.

Don’t allow informational briefings.

The last few years have seen a new idea in higher education that is very appealing to me: the flipped classroom. That’s where the professor lectures and gives information before class. Students watch the lecture and then come prepared to discuss and apply the information. Companies can learn from this. Distribute materials in advance, have everyone prepared, then the speaker can do a quick summary, ask for clarifying questions, and you can move into a more productive meeting. Otherwise, you are wasting valuable time sharing information instead of problem-solving.

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” –Thomas Sowell

Don’t ever have a meeting without an agenda.

Standing meetings, be gone! If you don’t have enough on the agenda, cancel the meeting. Preparing an agenda allows you to utilize one of Stephen Covey’s habits: Begin with end in mind. The agenda allows the meeting organizer to see whether it makes sense to hold the meeting, how much time to allot each topic, and the outcomes expected.

Don’t do a clever build-up.

I’ve seen this too often. The speaker wants to lecture, bringing the audience through each and every detail and experience that has occurred. Only after going through all of the laborious process and detail does the speaker “get to the punchline.” They act as if they are revealing some mysterious ending to a novel. Perhaps we should all be amazed at the clever conclusion. Instead, start with the headlines and your conclusion. That immediately helps everyone see where you are going. Then, build your case. Let me give you an example as a lawyer. Imagine walking into the courtroom and hearing the evidence, slowly over months, but not having any context. Doesn’t work. That’s why it starts with, “Not guilty, your honor.” That’s why the prosecution starts with, “We will show that the defendant did not…” That’s the conclusion. After this, you can build your case. Meeting leaders should start in the same manner.

Don’t ever leave a meeting without milestones, dates, and owners.

Make it actionable. You may assume that someone else is acting. They may think you are. The only way to know is to make it clear and agree. Important question: Who is doing what by when? This is what makes the meeting worth its time. This is the key to achieving outcomes.

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” –John Kenneth Galbraith

Don’t take minutes.

Controversial, I know, and not applicable in certain types of meetings where it is required. My point is that each person should take their own notes. Take actions down. Most of the time it is a waste of time for someone else to take minutes. You may read them and think, “What meeting was that?” or the person taking the minutes has a slanted view. Most of the time I’ve noticed that no one even reads the minutes that are distributed after the meeting. I’d much rather have a short list of actions, owners, and dates distributed. That is read.

Meeting Tip: Surprising, but here’s why you don’t want to take minutes in a meeting.

Don’t wander too far or get distracted.

One boss could never get enough of the meeting. Every random subject that was brought up, most not on the agenda, had the whole group moving in a new direction. It went on and on. Meetings scheduled for one hour lasted four. Regularly. He even ignored the collective groaning. I suggested a “parking lot” and would go to the board and write down a subject and say, “Let’s agree to get back to this.” He would agree, but then continue with “just one more question” until we were all bleary-eyed.

Don’t sacrifice candor.

Don’t let politeness kill a team and destroy a meeting. I’m all for a civilized meeting, yes, but I’ve seen too many meetings where the real issues aren’t tackled because the meeting leader doesn’t want to offend someone. As a result, it fuels the water cooler talk. The real issues aren’t addressed. It’s much better to be direct and put the issue on the table. Do it politely; do it kindly; do it with skill, but do it.

“The only summit meeting that can succeed is the one that does not take place.” –Barry Goldwater

Don’t forget to have a time watcher.

You need someone to manage the logistics of the meeting. It may be the meeting leader, but it may not be. This is the person charged with keeping the meeting on track, putting items on the “parking lot” and keeping the conversation moving in a positive direction. This person may even stop the meeting for an unscheduled break if it is needed.

Don’t allow attendees who aren’t needed in the meeting.

So many people complain about useless meetings, but those people don’t seem to voluntarily stay away. Because they feel that they are important? Because they want to be in the know? There are many reasons people want to be in the meeting, even when they aren’t needed. It can slow things down; it can stop the flow of information; it can make others less candid. Limit the people in the room to those who need to be there.

Don’t waste half the meeting time on technology.

Video calls immediately come to mind. I’ve seen thirty minutes of a one hour meeting spent trying to get someone on the screen. Yes, it’s nice to see the person. No, wasting everyone’s time for this is not worthwhile. Remember that old fashioned device called the phone? Technology issues need to be handled before the meeting starts, if at all possible.

Don’t delve into too much detail if it isn’t warranted.

Some people are wired for detail at a level that eludes me. Others want to demonstrate competence by sharing what they know. I get it. The test: Does this add to the attendees’ ability to make a decision? In other words, if it is important to the meeting outcome, share it. Otherwise, put it in the appendix or pre-reading if you feel you need to do so.

Don’t meet the needs of one at the expense of the group.

Not a hard and fast rule, but a general one. Better to take the one person aside or spend time in advance or after the meeting than to sideline the whole meeting. There are times when you want to have everyone on the same page, so use this judiciously.

“Meetings are at the heart of an effective organization.” -Paul Axtell

Don’t avoid confrontation.

Avoiding confrontation comes at a cost. If there are deeper issues, like a lack of trust, work on the team and not just the problem. Many times, the confrontation is not about a single issue but about trust, about honesty, about something else. Get to that, too.

Don’t allow rude, condescending, unprofessional, or unethical behavior.

Ever. It’s not okay to go along to get along.

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”  –Thomas Sewell

Don’t follow every meeting guideline.

Even those from this list! There are times to break them – just break them occasionally, not usually. There are few rules and many guidelines to making your meeting a success. Here’s one thing I promise: If you learn, at any position, to lead meetings well, you will likely find yourself promoted because the world craves people who are able to advance an agenda, hold others accountable (even who don’t report to you), adhere to decorum and civility, deliver meeting outcomes, and hold productive discussions. These skills are important to learn as soon as possible whether you’re still in college or a seasoned pro.

Here’s to your successful meeting!

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The post 16 Things the Best Leaders Avoid When Running a Meeting first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

Leadership That Matters

I remember standing outside a church on an overcast afternoon. I flipped up my collar to fight the chill, waiting for a funeral service to begin. The weather had that peculiar quality of being simultaneously dreary and comforting…you know the kind of gray day that seems to soften the edges of grief just enough to make it bearable. As mourners arrived, trickling in in small clusters, I watched them greet each other with quiet nods and brief embraces.

Though this was a funeral for a business leader, there was something remarkable about these exchanges: no one asked about quarterly forecasts or mentioned how many meetings were stacked on their calendar that week. No one shared their latest achievement or dropped the name of someone important they’d had lunch with the day before. In that space between the ordinary world and the threshold of remembrance, all of that simply fell away. None of it held any weight at all.

When we finally moved inside and the service began, I noticed something else. The stories people shared weren’t about grand achievements or impressive titles. They weren’t about the numbers someone hit or the metrics they exceeded. There was barely a mention of the LinkedIn titles that spanned an incredible career. Instead, they spoke about the small moments that revealed who this person truly was…the time they showed up when no one expected them to, the advice they gave when someone was struggling to find their way, the quiet example they set when doing the right thing was harder than taking the easy path. One woman stood at the podium, her voice steady despite her emotions and then she said something I’ve never forgotten: “He believed in me during all those years when I couldn’t yet believe in myself.”

That’s where truth lives. It isn’t in the highlight reel we curate for public consumption. It’s in those intimate moments when someone’s presence changed the trajectory of another person’s life.

“Leadership is remembered in moments, not metrics.” -Skip Prichard

The Depth that Matters

Funerals have a peculiar way of stripping existence down to what actually mattered. They reveal the small circle of people who were genuinely changed by knowing someone, who felt seen and understood in their presence. These are the people who showed up not because of obligation or social currency, but because someone invested time, attention, and care in them when it counted. The gathering itself becomes a testament.

I think of it this way. We seem to celebrate everything these days in reach. How many followers? How many likes? How many views? It’s all about huge numbers. Social media has altered the view for all of us.

But at a funeral what really matters isn’t any of that. It’s all about depth. To impact that can’t be quantified but is felt nonetheless. Few people perhaps, but the depth is what gets them there to a memorial service.

People will never forget how you made them feel.
— Maya Angelou

Flip your reality

Social media and our modern culture of visibility push us relentlessly in the opposite direction. They reward volume over substance and reach over resonance. The algorithms favor those who post most frequently, who generate the most engagement, who accumulate the most followers. We’re conditioned to believe that attention equals impact, that visibility is the same as value, that if something isn’t witnessed and validated by thousands, it somehow matters less.

But here’s what that system conveniently ignores: none of this shows up in the room when it counts. No one measures a life in likes. No one stands at a memorial service and reads out someone’s follower count or calculates their average engagement rate. They talk about presence…not pageviews. They remember the conversations that changed them, not the content that went viral.

I thought all of this while sitting in a pew remembering someone who had touched lives. How the coin of the realm people chase is a false currency that buys nothing.

Leadership, real leadership, operates in a fundamentally different register.

Yes, leadership requires results and that much is true and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. We are accountable for outcomes, responsible for the progress we drive and the decisions that move organizations and people forward. Avoiding difficult decisions isn’t noble; it’s neglectful. Ducking hard conversations isn’t kind; it’s a failure of courage. Results matter because they represent our commitment to the people who depend on us and the mission we’ve been entrusted with. But here’s the crucial distinction: results are the foundation, not the ceiling. They’re what you build on and not what you arrive at.

What separates leaders who leave a mark from those who simply leave is what they remember when the pressure is on. It’s whether they could face the truth even when spinning it would have been so much easier, so much more comfortable. It’s whether they noticed when someone in their orbit was struggling and chose to step in rather than step past. It’s about whether they built something that could stand without them constantly propping it up.

I’ve watched leaders chase recognition and slowly lose trust along the way. They become preoccupied with managing their image, curating their personal brand, ensuring they’re visible in the right rooms and associated with the right successes. And I’ve seen that it works for a while…the invitations come, the profile rises, the accolades accumulate. Then, almost inevitably, it collapses under its own weight. Image is fragile and demanding; it requires constant maintenance and protection. Trust, by contrast, is resilient. It’s built in moments when no one is watching and proven when everyone is.

Results matter. Impact lasts.

The leaders who leave a lasting mark…the ones people remember not just for what they accomplished but for who they were…understand something essential about the small circle. They recognize that their real work isn’t to influence the masses but to invest deeply in the people who may never amplify their name, who won’t add to their reputation capital, but who will carry forward the values and approaches they modeled. These leaders don’t confuse attention with influence. They understand that depth of impact can’t be measured in spreadsheets or analytics dashboards. They’re willing to spend their time on things that may never appear in their highlight reel because they know that’s where transformation actually happens.

The small circle is your team. It’s the colleagues who sit across the table from you week after week, watching not just what you say but how you say it, noticing what you prioritize when resources are scarce and what you compromise on when the pressure intensifies. They observe the tone you take when someone disappoints you, the grace you extend when mistakes are made, the courage you summon when telling the truth would cost you something. They learn to lead not primarily from your presentations or your strategic memos, but from the accumulated weight of those observations. They notice, consciously or not, what kind of leader you become when no one important is watching.

“The ultimate test of a leader is what happens after you’re gone.”
Peter Drucker

Your legacy isn’t being written in the moments you think it is. It’s not being composed in the big presentations or the all-hands meetings or the carefully crafted communications you labor over. It’s being written in the ordinary moments. The hallway conversation where you could have brushed someone off but chose to listen instead, the decision you made when no one would have questioned you for taking the easier path, the person you developed even though they might not stay, the truth you told even though it cost you political capital.

When your own funeral comes—and it will come for all of us eventually—the question won’t be how many people knew your name. It will be how many people you truly knew, how many lives you changed by seeing them clearly and investing in their growth, how many people stood a little taller and believed a little more in themselves because you believed in them first.

The small circle that tells the truth isn’t a limitation. It frees you from the exhausting performance of visibility and returns you to the meaningful work of presence. It reminds you that leadership isn’t measured in reach but in transformation.

The small circle is where real influence lives.

That’s where truth lives. In the small circle. It lives in the choice to build something real rather than something visible. And when the people who matter most gather to remember what you built and who you were, that will be enough. More than enough.

It will be everything.

Image credit: eli solitas, adrianna geo

The post What Funerals Teach Us About Leadership That Matters first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

(And What Actually Causes Them)

Imagine you’re on a ship at sea. The weather is rough. The captain seems oblivious, the crew is confused, and the unease is starting to look like panic. Some of the crew are already lowering boats. Others are bailing. The rest are hoping the storm passes.

Most people who have worked somewhere long enough recognize that ship.

In many workplaces the storm is emotional rather than literal. It drains energy and enthusiasm until getting through Thursday takes everything you have. Recognizing what you’re looking at is the first step, whether you plan to steer the ship or get off it.

I know that articles like this one usually read as a catalog of complaints about people. We think of the manager who micromanages. Maybe the colleague who gossips. Another favorite is the leader who plays favorites. Nearly every sign below is real, and nearly none of them are caused by the person you’d name if someone asked.

Toxic environments get built. Rarely on purpose, usually one reasonable decision at a time, and they keep producing the same behavior long after the people who built them have moved on.

Which changes the question worth asking, from who is doing this to which part of the environment keeps producing it.

The seventeen signs sort into three places. Where a problem lives determines what works on it.

Signs in what people believe

1. Blame culture. When something goes wrong, the first question is who. People learn quickly that the safest move is to have an explanation ready before anyone asks for one.
2. Gossip and rumors. Information travels sideways because the official channels stopped being reliable.

“Gossip is a symptom of an information vacuum.” —Skip Prichard

3. Nobody feels recognized. Work goes out and nothing comes back. Over time people stop offering the extra, and the extra is where most of the value was.
4. Favoritism. Certain people appear to operate under different rules. Whether that’s true matters less than the fact that everyone believes it.
5. Low morale. The tone in the room drops. Meetings get shorter, quieter, and nobody argues anymore.

Signs in how people treat each other

6. Communication breaks down. People stop saying the thing in the room and start saying it afterward, in twos.
7. Micromanagement. Every decision travels up a level.
8. Punishment as the default. Mistakes get consequences and good work gets silence. People start optimizing to avoid being noticed at all.
9. Discrimination. Any form of it is unacceptable and needs addressing the day you see it. This one is not a diagnostic exercise.
10. Leadership sets the weather. What the senior person tolerates becomes the standard, faster than any policy ever will.

Signs built into the system

11. High turnover. People leaving in numbers is the clearest signal you’ll get. It’s also the one most often explained away, one resignation at a time.
12. Expectations nobody could meet. Goals set without reference to capacity. People respond by quietly deciding which work to let fail.
13. Hours that never end. Long hours stop being a season and become the design.
14. No path forward. When nobody can describe what happens next in their career, ambition leaves well before the person does.
15. Unclear roles. Two people own the same thing and neither owns it.
16. Change gets absorbed and nothing happens. The organization has learned that initiatives pass. So it waits.
17. The physical environment. Bad light, bad air, no quiet, no privacy. It moves mood more than most leaders credit.

Count them

Go back and count what you recognized in each of the three sections. The section with the most is where your problem actually lives.

It is almost never the section people talk about. Most conversations about a difficult workplace stay in the second one, because that’s where the behavior is visible. The cause is usually sitting in the third.

What to do, depending on where yours landed

Mostly in the first section, what people believe. The behavior is downstream of a conclusion people already reached, so arguing with the behavior won’t move it. Find out what people believe about how decisions get made here, and whether they’re right. Often they are.

Mostly in the second section, how people treat each other. This is the one place a single person can change the temperature without any authority at all. Pick one recurring meeting and change what happens in it.

Mostly in the third section, the system. Speaking up won’t fix it.

“The advice to be braver is the reason some problems last for years.” —Skip Prichard

A structural problem needs a structural change, which means a decision by someone with authority over the structure. Your job is narrower and more achievable: make the pattern visible to that person, in writing, with three examples and a date on each. Patterns get acted on. Complaints get absorbed.

Most of these seventeen are not fixable by you if you don’t own the structure. Any article implying otherwise is selling effort as a substitute for authority.

And some environments aren’t a diagnostic problem. If you’re being discriminated against, or the cost has started showing up in your health, the pattern is already clear. The only useful question left is how quickly you can leave well.

Back to the ship

The reason the crew is bailing is rarely the storm, and rarely the captain. Nobody designed the vessel for this weather, and everyone aboard is treating a design problem as a character problem.

If you lead the ship, all seventeen signs are a description of decisions that were made. Most of them can be unmade.

Image credit: bernd dittrich

The post 17 warning signs of a toxic work environment first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

Critics, Criticism & Critique

If you do anything meaningful, if you stand out, if you’re different, you’re likely to face more of it than others.

Every person who has ever attempted something meaningful, who has dared to build a business or write a book or lead a team through uncertainty, has felt the particular sting that comes from a critic who watches from a comfortable distance while others do the hard and vulnerable work of creation. Criticism arrives in many forms, sometimes as a whispered doubt from someone who claims to wish you well, sometimes as a public declaration from a stranger who has decided your efforts are worth dissecting. The way you receive it, process it, and ultimately decide what to do with it will shape not only your work but the entire trajectory of your life.

The instinct is to sort the people, to decide quickly which ones mean well and which ones are only diminishing you, and that sorting is where most of us lose the useful part.

Most critics have no genuine understanding of what you are actually dealing with, no awareness of the sleepless nights or the sacrifices made or the invisible weight you carry, and rather than seeking to understand your journey before passing judgment, they simply attack what they cannot fully see.

A better question than who is speaking is what the criticism is about. Some of it concerns the work itself, and that is the criticism worth mining no matter what tone it arrives in. Some of it concerns the relationship between you and the person delivering it, and what it is really reporting is the state of that relationship. Some of it has nothing to do with you at all, and is a person describing their own week in the only language available to them. Sorting the criticism is far more useful than sorting the critics, and it is the step almost nobody takes.

The wisest people throughout history have understood that criticism, when offered with genuine care and received with honest reflection, carries within it the seeds of extraordinary growth, but they have also understood that much of what passes for criticism in our world is simply noise generated by those who have chosen judgment over action. Occasionally, I have found criticism to be genuinely helpful, even clarifying, but only when it comes from someone who truly knows the terrain, someone who cares deeply about your success, someone who has skin in the game and is personally invested.

There is one more question worth asking before you decide what to do with any of it.

What am I looking through right now?

Criticism arrives filtered through whatever you were already carrying. A sentence that would have been useful on a good day can land as an indictment on a hard one, and the difference is rarely in the sentence. Stress narrows what you are able to take in, and fatigue makes an ordinary observation sound like something else. Before you accept a criticism or dismiss it, it is worth knowing which version of you is doing the reading.

As you read through the collection of perspectives gathered here, from philosophers and presidents, from artists and coaches, from quiet thinkers and public leaders, consider which voices in your own life are genuinely invested in your flourishing and which are simply filling the silence with their own insecurities dressed up as advice.

When the next zinger or critic heads your way, read these quotes about criticism to give you perspective.

When the criticism is about the work

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary.” –Winston Churchill

“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” –Johannes Kepler

“The trouble with most of us is that we’d rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” –Norman Vincent Peale

“A wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” –Baltasar Gracian

“To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession.” –Henry James

“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.” –Oscar Wilde

“Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible.” –George Jean Nathan

“The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.” –Edgar Allan Poe

“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend an acquaintance, or a stranger.” –Franklin Jones

When it is about the relationship

“He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.” –Abraham Lincoln

“Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.” –Frank Clark

“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.” –John Wooden

“If you are going to be critical of somebody, be critical to their face.” –Condoleezza Rice

“Criticism should be a casual conversation.” –W.H. Auden

“Sandwich every bit of criticism between two layers of praise.” –Mary Kay Ash

“It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing their imperfections.” –Daisaku Ikeda

“We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.” –Joyce Meyer

“Who do you spend time with? Criticizers or encouragers? Surround yourself with those who believe in you. Your life is too important for anything less.” –Steve Goodier

“Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.” –Stephen R. Covey

“Young people need models, not critics.” –John Wooden

“Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.” –Native American Proverb

When it is only about the critic

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.” –Theodore Roosevelt

“A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.” –Kenneth Tynan

“Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn, and most fools do.” –Dale Carnegie

“You’ll never be criticized by someone who is doing more than you. You’ll always be criticized by someone doing less. Remember that.” –Denzel Washington

“Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember: the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.” –Zig Ziglar

“Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.” –Emmet Fox

“Often those that criticize others reveal what he himself lacks.” –Shannon Alder

“The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.” –G.K. Chesterton

“Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honor of a critic.” –Jean Sibelius

“The cynics may be the loudest voices but I promise you, they will accomplish the least.” –Barack Obama

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” –Albert Einstein

“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.” –Dita Von Teese

“One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.” –Mark Twain

“Clean up your own mess before you start pointing out someone else’s.” –Unknown

“Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.” –Unknown

What you do with it

“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” –Elbert Hubbard

“If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.” –Donald Rumsfeld

“If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success.” –Malcolm Forbes

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” –Winston Churchill

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.” –Eleanor Roosevelt

“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.” –John Wooden

“When people praise you, don’t let it go to your head. When they criticize you, don’t let it go to your heart.” –Cecil Rhodes

“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” –Georgia O’Keeffe

“Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” –Laozi

“Silence is the most eloquent answer to our critics.” –Aiden Wilson Tozer

“The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have time to read reviews.” –William Faulkner

“Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions. Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” –Tina Fey

“Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl.” –Nellie McClung

“Never let their criticism diminish your conviction.” –Brendon Burchard

“Don’t let criticism destroy your dreams.” –Albert Einstein

“When someone tells me no, it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.” –Karen E. Quinones Miller

“If you wouldn’t seek someone’s counsel, then ignore their advice.” –Skip Prichard

Two questions are worth putting between the words and your reaction. What is this criticism actually about: the work, the relationship, or the person delivering it? And what am I looking through as I read it? Almost all of the damage criticism does gets done in the two or three seconds before either question gets asked, which is also the only part of the exchange you control.

The post 50+ Quotes on Criticism, Critics & Critiques first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

Dean Foster on Leading Beyond Borders

In a global meeting, the words are rarely the whole message. A pause can mean disagreement, respect, confusion, or resistance. A quick yes can be a commitment, a courtesy, or a way to keep the conversation moving until the real decision happens somewhere else. Leaders who have worked across borders learn this through experience, sometimes the hard way.

Dean Foster has spent more than three decades inside that reality, working in more than 100 cultures and advising organizations that operate at scale. His perspective is practical, earned in real conversations where the stakes were high. He has also watched the world change. Leaders once navigated cultures one at a time. Today they engage many simultaneously, sometimes in the same team, the same meeting, even the same sentence.

What I appreciated most in my first interaction with Dean was his humility. He does not present cross-cultural work as a checklist of do’s and don’ts. He treats it as leadership. Pay attention. Stay curious. Assume you might be missing something. Judge your own behavior before judging someone else’s. That mindset alone can save months of frustration and more than a few relationships.

His new book, Business Beyond Borders : Stories, Tales and Lessons Learned from Working in 100 Cultures Around the World, brings those lessons to life through stories that are as entertaining as they are instructive. You will find yourself smiling at the small moments, then realizing those moments are the point. Culture shows up in the details, in how people signal disagreement, how they handle hierarchy, how they share bad news, and how they define what “progress” looks like.

I asked Dean about the missteps that shaped his thinking, the patterns he sees leaders repeat, and the practical adjustments that help teams work better across differences. Here is our conversation.

“Judge your own behavior before judging the behavior of others.”
— Dean Foster

You make the case that culture is the primary driver of human behavior. What changed your thinking from seeing culture as one factor to seeing it as the factor?

My background and academic training is sociology and cultural anthropology, so the “hammer sees a nail” means for me that I tend to see culture as the prime mover in human behavior. But precisely because of my soc/anthro perspective (OK, maybe it’s an intellectual bias), I am also always very aware of the need to always “test” this cultural perspective against possible other interpretations, which my work has enabled me to do, and time after time, experience after experience, culture trumps any other explanation for “what’s going on” and why.

Working mainly with business organizations, I’ve seen time and again, how the organization reflects the culture in which it was created more profoundly than that of any one individual, political decision or economic or social policy. Sure economic, political and social policy decisions – along with the personalities of powerful individuals – have an effect on how a business organization behaves, but these decisions more fundamentally reflect the cultures in which they were created, rather than the other way around. This is why business, political and social policy decisions can be so different, society by society. Our DNA is powerful, but it need not be our destiny, and the social institutions of the many varied societies we create reflect the various ways we can make and define the realities we choose to live in. I guess that’s why I am essentially an optimist: we are, as social beings, in control of creating our destiny. The problem is not in our DNA…it’s in our choices.

Early in your career, what was a moment where you realized you had misread a culture in a way that mattered?

Oh, boy! I really mis-read Russian culture back in the 90’s during the “glasnost” post-Soviet period when I had the opportunity to work with several US and (Western) European businesses doing work with Russia. Despite what I knew about Russian culture, I’d never personally experienced how it manifested in work situations, specifically in business negotiations, team-work, decision-making, etc., and I was on the receiving end – along with my clients – of many “classic” Russian cultural behaviors at the business table. Most importantly, this included the carefully Russian-crafted impression that Russians share similar goals when they actually do not, which then allows them to blame any negotiation failures on the other.

“Judge your own behavior before judging the behavior of others.”
— Dean Foster

Many leaders still think of culture as country-based. You argue we’ve moved beyond that. What replaced it?

We’ve moved from being in a world that was “becoming global” to a world that “is global”, so individual cultures – and the people living there – have still retained their own inherent cultural identities, but there is now an added layer of “globalization” that influences the behaviors of these cultures. Ahmed in Saudi Arabia, for example, knows everything about how to do business in Riyadh as a Saudi, but he also, as an individual and a globalized Saudi today, has been influenced by the rest of the world. He – just like all of us – now works with people from many different cultures every day, and knowing how to work with his Saudi colleagues in Riyadh is not enough: he must also know how to work with many other cultures on the same global team, and to always factor in the possibility that they do not necessarily know how to work with him or each other. Through globalization, the world has gotten more complicated, not less so.

You describe the shift from doing business across cultures to doing business beyond cultures. What does that mean in practical terms for a CEO?

Today’s CEO must realize that their fundamental role is to identify and broker the best practices of getting things done that exist in all parts of their global organization to the rest of the organization. There is no one best way, and the way it worked in the past at headquarters may not be the best way for the rest of the organization to get things done in their part of the world. Or that there may be real advantages to the way they get things done in Singapore that can benefit us here in Milwaukee. And in the Paris office. And at headquarters in New York. Doing business across cultures meant understanding the way they got things done in Delhi. Doing business beyond cultures means being able to bring the best practices of the rest of the organization to Delhi, and the best practices in Delhi to the rest of the organization.

Your stories often start with small moments. Why are those moments more revealing than big strategic decisions?

Big strategic decisions often requiring synthesizing many factors in complex ways, and it’s been my experience that recognizing – sometimes even just seeing – the cultural influence on what is going on is often missed under the weight of many of these other considerations; it’s often simply easier to see culture’s influence in small, one-on-one human-scale interactions: the influence is always the same, but the change in scale makes it visible and comprehensible. The implications, the cultural lesson we can learn, however, whether buried under the weight of big strategic issues or more visibly in your face in the small, human-scale interactions, are almost always the same. So, the lesson is simply more easily understood in the small moments.

In your experience, what is the most common mistake Western executives make when working globally?

Thinking and acting like they have all the answers already. They don’t. Nobody does. Think and act instead as if the answers lie somewhere between “us” and “them”, and that your job is to find them.

You highlight indirect communication in some cultures. How should leaders adjust without losing clarity or accountability?

Be culturally prepared: know whether the culture you are working with is a “high-context” (facts – especially problematic ones – are revealed slowly and indirectly) or “low-context” (facts – especially problematic ones – are revealed immediately and directly), and the specific non-verbal clues in that culture that may imply more than words can say. Once prepared, you’ll avoid misunderstanding their intent, and you can adjust your style more or less to avoid them misunderstanding you.

“Culture shows up in the details.”
— Dean Foster

The Bhopal example is sobering. What does that case teach about the cost of cultural misunderstanding at scale?

The lesson: you cannot ignore, overcome or minimize the impact of cultural differences: they exist in the smallest of human interactions, and in the biggest strategic global business decision, and in the case of Bhopal, the cultural facts (Indian and Western differences in how people of different rank are supposed to communicate with one another) are the same, but the outcome can be devastatingly different.

How do you advise leaders to balance speed with the need to understand cultural context?

Distinguish the difference between “efficiency” and “effectiveness”. In “speed” focused cultures, fixing things after decisions are made, for example, is often acceptable; in other cultures, it represents a failure in effective planning. Stay focused on what it takes to be effective at the end of the day in the culture in which you are working, for in many cultures, it does not require speed but instead requires careful planning. In such cultures, you can often arrive at being effective faster by taking things a bit more slowly.

Many organizations invest in cultural training but see limited impact. What are they getting wrong?

The focus of any good training – cultural or otherwise – should always be on its impact: how well can the individuals being trained apply the information learned? This requires a focus not just on facts and information provided, but on the development of SKILLS. This means being able to quantitatively measure the intercultural effectiveness of individuals being trained against benchmarks that represent intercultural excellence. Organizations delivering the training need to provide data on how well individuals interculturally perform after being trained. Most do not, unfortunately. Most training organizations rate fair to great on the cultural information they provide, but most are poor on how well-trained individuals can apply the information in their daily work. Intercultural skills require much more than just knowledge, for individuals need to be able to adapt their own behaviors authentically to the intercultural differences they are learning about, and this skill is often overlooked.

You’ve worked with Fortune 500 companies for decades. Are they improving in cultural competence, or repeating the same mistakes?

I do see an overall improvement in intercultural competence, probably a result of many factors, including more uptake of better intercultural training, and more awareness of the need for intercultural competency development in order for the organization to globally succeed. Interestingly, while Gen Z and beyond come to the workforce for the most part with an awareness of cultural diversity and its benefits, they are often as unaware of what those specific differences are and what to do about them when they encounter them in their work (compared to previous generations who often did not come to the workforce anticipating cultural differences in the first place). At the end of the day, the need for cultural competency training for all groups remains the same.

What role does hierarchy play across cultures, and how should leaders adapt their style without losing authority?

There are many cultural “dimensions” that all leaders need to understand that affect how we work with each other. Like the “indirect and direct communication” issue of the earlier question, there are also “hierarchical” and “egalitarian” cultures, with the different orientations affecting everything from decision-making (who is authorized to make the decision?) to who can speak at a meeting, when and how we speak to each other, how we share or information (or don’t), how much information is required, different protocols around interactions between age, gender and rank differences, etc. As with any cultural dimensional differences, this one around hierarchy also requires that leaders be culturally prepared: know ahead of time where the culture lies on this dimension, and develop the tactics and strategies required for adapting your style to the expectations of the leader in that culture. This takes proper intercultural preparation or experience. (Ideally both!)

How should leaders handle situations where cultural norms conflict with organizational values?

You cannot change a culture. (Well, maybe with enough time and resources one can, but that is usually not what a leader is paid to do, and it is a long, hard slough). You’re there to do your job successfully, and in some cases, that means figuring out a way to achieve your company’s goals even in a culture where the cultural norms conflict with organizational values. So, the first step is to understand that this is a possibility and make a pre-emptive decision about it: since you cannot change the culture or their values, you need to decide ahead of time whether your organization will nevertheless continue to do business there, or whether this is a deal-breaker. If you decide to stay, you must accept your organization’s role as complicit with their values or as a passive or active agent of change; if the difference is a deal-breaker, you must change your decision to work there.

You talk about individuals behaving differently than their culture might predict. What drives that variation?

Global experience, which in today’s world, occurs from birth, from exposure to global media, education (almost all school children today most anywhere in the world, learn English as a second or third language), advantage (Ahmed, our Saudi friend in an earlier question, may have spent his summer at his father’s flat in London, and gotten his degree from UCLA), previous job working on a global project, etc. In all cases, these individuals know the cultural expectations of their formative culture, but in addition, know a bit more about working with other cultures as well. Don’t assume Ahmed will act like a “stereotypical” Saudi. He likely will not.

What is one signal leaders should watch for that tells them a cross-cultural interaction is off track?

Look at the quantitative data: if a project involving global work is taking too long, or costing too much, when compared with similar NON-GLOBAL projects, it is probably going off-track due to cultural disconnects. Look at qualitative information, as well: if you know there is discomfort and frustration on the global team, generally due to lack of progress, often revealed in “blaming”, where individuals express their discontent as the result of someone else’s behavior, this generally indicates the interaction is going off-track due to cultural problems.

If you had to simplify your advice into one principle for leaders working globally, what would it be?

Judge your own behavior before judging the behavior of others. What might YOU be bringing to the table that is advancing and accelerating success…or making problems? Stay humble.

What surprised you most while writing this book compared to your previous work?

How easily I found my voice as a storyteller. I was excited to write a book that required me to open up to my own mistakes, what I learned, and what I didn’t know, rather than a book (like my earlier five books) that were much more “how-to”, written in a voice that was more the “authority” or the “professor”. I was excited, but unsure, if I could be honest enough as an autobiographical storyteller, but I really relished the opportunity to do so. It felt freeing, and I hope my stories of what happened to me carry important lessons for the reader.

For someone early in their career, what is the fastest way to build real cross-cultural competence?

Get over yourself. The center of the universe is everywhere else. You’re just journeying through, so listen deeply, avoid judging, and take responsibility for not knowing when you realize (congratulations!) you don’t (that means, seek people who can explain things to you).

You’ve spent a career studying how people misunderstand each other. What gives you optimism that we can get better at it?

It’s not all that hard, but it requires a choice to get over ourselves, our ego, our authority, and recognize that our experience as a cultural being is limited. Instead of seeing differences we’ve been programmed to see as challenges, we can see them instead as the gifts they are that can help us see the world differently, and which might contain solutions to problems that our own limited experience cannot provide.

Global leadership begins with humility, curiosity, and the discipline to see culture as one of the forces shaping every conversation. For leaders who want to build that discipline, Business Beyond Borders : Stories, Tales and Lessons Learned from Working in 100 Cultures Around the World is a practical and memorable guide to seeing what is really happening across cultures, before the cost of misunderstanding becomes too high.

Image Credit: nikhilesh boppana

The post Cultural Competence for Global Leaders first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

Lessons that built iconic brands

Some opportunities look like luck from the outside. Inside the story, they usually look like attention, preparation, and the courage to act when the moment arrives.

Ron Rubin has built a career around that kind of practical optimism, first in his family’s liquor distribution business, then as the leader behind The Republic of Tea, and later as the owner of River Road Family Vineyards and Winery. What stands out to me is how grounded his lessons are. Ron talks about mentors, reading, risk, innovation, and culture in ways that feel lived, tested, and refined over time.

His new book, Gold in Your Backyard: Lessons in Life, Leadership and the Power of a Dream, is built around a simple idea that many leaders forget when they are chasing the next big thing. The most valuable lessons and opportunities often sit closer than we think, sometimes in the people who shaped us, the customers right in front of us, or the habits we practice every day.

I asked Ron about debt, instinct, customer trust, crisis planning, innovation, learning, and the long view of leadership. Here is our conversation.

“Often the real gold is right in your own backyard.” — Ron Rubin

Ron, your dad built Central Wholesale Liquor on a single governing principle Dave Ramsey would love: no debt. And yet when you bought The Republic of Tea you went into heavy debt to do it. How did you reconcile that with everything your father had taught you?

Ron Rubin: I stayed true to my father’s principle, because our first goal at The Republic of Tea was to pay off the debt. I reconciled borrowing money to buy the company with my father’s no debt philosophy by not thinking about how big a company we could grow. Instead I thought about how quickly could we pay off the debt. I worked with my team to create a step-by-step plan with clear goals. It took me six years, three months, and fifteen days to become debt free.

Leadership lesson: Debt is a clock. Build a payoff plan before you build a growth plan.

Uncle Julian’s advice was simple but profound: “You do know, Brother. You do know.” You’ve carried that for decades now. What is it about that particular message that never loses its power for you?

Ron Rubin: Uncle Julian showed me that my first impression, my gut impression was usually right. But he always reminded me that I should take twenty-four hours to think about the problem or situation. That gives me time to look at the pros and cons and have a creative mindset, before making a decision. That concept never loses its power.

You describe Frank Fourez Jr. as the finest salesman anywhere and you spent decades learning from him. What did Frank understand about selling that most miss?

Ron Rubin: Frank understood that building a deep and trusting relationship with the customer is essential. Frank knew each customer’s name, their children’s names. He knew about their families. In other words, he got to know everything about the customer on a personal basis. Then, when he was on a sales call, he always asked about their needs. He wasn’t just selling. He was trying to fill a need. I learned from him that you must first build a relationship and then discover what the customer’s needs are.

Leadership lesson: Trust your gut, then give yourself 24 hours to test it.

You were reading a book about how the Ziegler’s built The Republic of Tea and you decided to buy the company. Tell me more about this because it is a massive leap from reader to owner.

Ron Rubn: When I read their book, I saw that they wrote that they had designed a glass bottle for tea. But more than that, they wanted to partner with a company in the bottled water business to help distribute the tea. I was already in the bottled water business, and I thought, wow, they are talking to me. I was very interested in developing an all-natural tea in a glass bottle and I knew we could create a licensing deal with them. The point is that I felt right away that they were talking about me in their book.

The heart scare changed everything. You were lying in the hospital facing what you thought might be the end. How does a leader avoid waiting for that kind of wake-up call?

Ron Rubin: In a certain sense, there’s nothing a leader can do to avoid that kind of personal wake-up call. How do you prepare for a heart attack? But a leader can prepare for a crisis. They need to have an in-depth company crisis plan that their people can follow in case of emergency. They should also have a personal crisis plan and even one for their family. We have developed a very detailed crisis book at The Republic of Tea.

You paid Al Ries $25,000 a day which seemed insane to you at the time. And yet you say without him your companies would not be the successes they are today. What specifically did he see in your brands that you were too close to see yourself?

Ron Rubin: The major thing that Al saw was that The Republic of Tea had no tag line. That was one of the most important lessons he taught me. He helped us develop our tag line – Leading Purveyor of Premium Teas. So now if you look at any of our packaging, at our design or our website, you’ll see our tag line: Leading Purveyor of Premium Teas. That started me off in a wonderful direction and it was well worth the $25,000.

Tripp brought his 14-year-old son Richie to critique your speech, and Richie told you to ditch the suit. That’s a remarkable way to learn about knowing your audience. How has that lesson shaped the way you approach every room you walk into?

Ron Rubin: I try to do my Five P’s – Pre. Plan. Prevents. Poor Performance – which is Lesson 26 in GOLD IN YOUR BACKYARD. I do the research and learn the background of the audience I am going to speak to. I have done a lot of speaking to the Young Presidents Organization and they’re mostly in the 35 to 45-year-old range. They are just beginning parts of their leadership journeys. So that’s what I think about: what value can I bring to these young entrepreneurs. It’s the same when I speak at Culver Academies. The students are ages 14 to 18 and I have to talk about the things they know and understand. By the way, I did ditch the suit. My wife didn’t like that, but I did it anyway.

The Ginger Peach Tea Jam collaboration with Stonewall Kitchen came from an instinct that something was possible. How do you create the conditions for that kind of open-ended creative thinking inside a company?

Ron Rubin: At The Republic of Tea, we have a Sip Tank. It’s composed of three employees who are excited about innovation. They like to study new trends; go to trade events; develop creative ideas. Ideas for products like Ginger Peach Tea Jam comes from our Sip Tank. I recommend that leaders look for a few really innovative members of their team to start a small group. The group then shares their ideas with the marketing and sales teams. If you don’t have anyone like that in your company, you can hire a consultant who specializes in innovation. That’s Lesson 11 in GOLD IN YOUR BACKYARD. Consultants can be an invaluable aid to running and growing your business.

You write that in personality tests measuring risk tolerance you score about a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10. How do you personally know when you’ve crossed the line to recklessness?

Ron Rubin: The fastest way for me to know that I’ve crossed the line is when I lose a lot of money.

Your son Todd has taken The Republic of Tea into collaborations with Sony, Paramount, Disney, and even Star Wars. When you watch him lead, what do you see that tells you the culture you built is working?

Ron Rubin: I’ve worked with Todd and the team to recognize the importance of strategic planning. That’s a core part of our business. We create a strategic plan every three years. I then use the strategic plan to see where they’re going for the next three years. I can monitor their progress and whether they’re achieving their goals. That’s how I know the culture is working. In addition, we have advisory board meetings once a quarter. So we’re always reviewing our strategic planning. We ask ourselves where are we on our strategic plan. Did we accomplish it? Reviewing the strategic plan is part of every advisory board meeting.

You set a goal of reading 52 business books a year and you always read with a yellow highlighter in hand. What does that physical act of highlighting do for the way you actually retain and apply what you read? (And I am with you on this practice 100%).

Ron Rubin: The highlighter allows me to underline the critical parts of a book. That’s important because I like to reread books. So if I go back to a book years later, instead of having to read the entire book, I can read what I’ve highlighted. That saves a lot of time and helps me remember what stood out to me when I first read it. I can also see whether I used an idea or forgot about it. I like to think about what lessons I learned from reading that book. Highlighting is valuable for rereading in a quick manner.

Leadership lesson: Read with intent. Capture what matters so you can return to it.

You created The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur at Culver Academies specifically for high school students, not MBA candidates. Why that age, and what do you believe gets lost if young people wait until graduate school to learn?

Ron Rubin: We’re trying to teach them financial literacy. Show them how to handle money so that when they go to college, they can set up their budget; understand what a credit card is all; why interest rates matter. Things like that.

Also, I’ve help set up a business on campus. It’s called the Rubin Café. It’s kind of the Starbucks of the campus and is run by seniors at the high school. That’s where they learn to hire or fire employees. They need to order supplies and know when they are making a profit. In other words, they handle everything in a business. It’s great training that few teenagers ever have the chance to experience.

The title of the book, Gold in Your Backyard, comes from a deeply personal moment of reckoning. You write that the truest gold is found in the hearts you’ve touched. When did that realization fully land for you, and how did it change your definition of success?

Ron Rubin: Actually, the title of the book comes from something my father used to say to me. Although he encouraged me to go out and explore, he believed that what you need to learn and the people you need are not off in some distant land. Often the real gold is right in your own backyard. And he was so right.

You’ve now distilled more than 50 years of business life into these lessons. If you could go back and hand this book to the 22-year-old version of yourself walking into the family business for the first time, which single lesson do you think would have saved you the most pain?

Ron Rubin: Lesson 9 is the most important one for me. It’s about strategic planning. If I had created a road map for the business earlier, I could have followed it, right from the start. It would have saved me a lot of time and pain.

Beyond this book, you’ve built a remarkable body of work across your career and your writing. How does Gold in Your Backyard fit into everything else you’ve written and built, and what do you hope it adds to the conversation that wasn’t there before?

Ron Rubin: I wrote GOLD IN YTOUR BACKYARD to inspire others, to touch hearts and light fires. I wanted to share the many lesson I have learned during my 70-plus years on this planet. I hope that my own experiences might inspire others to follow their hearts, build their dreams, and hold deep inside themselves the magical words: We can do it! Yes we can!

Life lesson: The opportunity you’re chasing may be closer than you think.

Conclusion

Leadership has a way of pulling our attention toward what is distant, urgent, and loud. Ron keeps bringing it back to what is close, steady, and within reach. Pay down the debt. Take the extra day to think. Learn your customer’s world. Prepare for the crisis before it arrives. Build a plan you can review, not a dream you only talk about.

That is why Gold in Your Backyard: Lessons in Life, Leadership and the Power of a Dream resonates. It reminds us that lasting success is rarely built on one dramatic move. It is built on the decisions you repeat, the people you invest in, and the values you are willing to live out when no one is watching.

The post What if you discovered gold in your backyard? first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

Performance Under Pressure

Pressure does something to people. It focuses the mind, speeds up the story we tell ourselves, and makes the next moment feel heavier than it needs to be. In sports, that pressure is public and immediate. In leadership, it can be quieter, but it is no less real. A tough meeting, a big presentation, a setback you did not expect, a team looking to you for steadiness. Those are your ninth innings.

Joshua Lifrak spent years helping elite athletes strengthen their mental game, including players in the Chicago Cubs organization during their 2016 championship season. What interests me most about Joshua’s work is that he does not talk about mindset as a slogan or a pep talk. He treats it as training. Something you can practice, repeat, and build, especially when the day is not going your way.

His book, Win Today: Six Steps to Mental Resilience, Peak Performance, and a Thriving Life, is built around a simple idea that many of us forget when we are under stress. The next play matters more than the last one. You can reset. You can choose your focus. You can decide how you want to show up, even when circumstances are messy.

I asked Joshua what he learned from the Cubs, how he helps people handle negativity without pretending it is not there, and which practices translate best from the field to the boardroom and home. Here is our conversation.

“When you take control of deciding who you want to be, you are starting the process of defining your life.” — Joshua Lifrak

You have spent your career working with some of the most elite athletes in the world, including players in the Chicago Cubs organization during their historic 2016 World Series run. What did that experience teach you about mental resilience that you couldn’t have learned anywhere else?

The biggest lesson I learned during that time, which I describe in WIN TODAY, is that the support of your teammates and your connection with others is paramount to taking resiliency to the next levels. There is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, “There are things that count that cannot be counted,” that comes to mind when I think about that time.

There was a cumulative cultural belief that we all had. There was a feeling of destiny that drove us, and there was an extreme lack of negativity when things got tough. We never wavered, and the players and staff—while they may have gotten stressed—never allowed the tension or pressure to overwhelm their sense of self and their sense of purpose.

The lesson I learned is that you need to trust others to achieve amazing things and if you are working toward a historic event, there is no room for negativity. The other lesson I learned is that a small group of dedicated, focused, and connected people can truly change the world. There are now five million Chicago Cubs fans that know that the impossible is now possible.

“The most effective self-talk will increase belief, drive clear focus, and help you get to optimal energy states.” — Joshua Lifrak

Your book is called Win Today and the title carries a specific intentionality. Why today versus longer-term?

There are a couple reasons for looking at today versus longer term.

I thought a lot about the book title. Here’s why I decided to call it WIN TODAY. The first reason is that today is all we really have. It is here and now. That is where true performance and greatness reveals itself in the present moment. So why not win right here and right now. That is today.

The other reason is that if you want to achieve great things in the future you must take care of what is in front of you repeatedly. I call it the aggregate of marginal gains…in other words, little by little becomes a lot. The overnight success is usually created by 20 years of hard work, right?

The last reason for the WIN TODAY book title is that I heard the phrase “win the day” years ago when Chip Kelly was coaching the University of Oregon football team. I liked the idea, but I thought it was not specific enough. I mean what day are we trying to win? Christmas, three weeks from now? The day was too vague. I find that the more specific and clear you are, the more purpose and velocity people work with. WIN TODAY is clear. We are competing in the here and now and when we win that, we reset and we go again. Consistency over intensity.

“I cannot think of one amazing thing that humans have done in the world alone…We need each other to achieve.” — Joshua Lifrak

You write about The Negativity Shot Clock and our minds default to negativity. Talk about this tool and how you use it.

The Negativity Shot Clock is a tool of control. I found when working with athletes who perform in a world where there is a plethora of things that they have no control over and affect the outcomes of their work, that anything the athletes can control will help them.
We all get emotional when we care about the outcome of our labors. The thing is that we do not want to fight against the emotions—we will lose that battle. Instead, what we want to do is accept the feelings and then work to move past them if they do not serve us. So, when an athlete is frustrated, angry, or negative I don’t say “get positive.” That athlete would then just get angrier. Never in the history of saying “hey, calm down” or “be positive” has that worked. So, the better step is to give the athlete the permission to be emotional and then take control of it. Most athletes understand what a shot clock is. The key is they get to set their own shot clock, and then they get to decide to move past the emotion. Instead of being a victim to feelings, they are now a victor of their own choices. They take back control of their attitude and focus. Control what you can control, influence what you can influence, and then let the chips fall where they may.

Most people understand that mindset matters but struggle to do anything practical with that knowledge. What is the most common mistake people make when they try to develop mental resilience on their own?

The most common mistake is that they believe that resilience cannot be trained. I have seen first-hand people who develop the ability to bounce back, to overcome, and to thrive.

Positive mindset is trained through specific exercises that help strengthen the neural pathways that are responsible for resiliency. If you do the work, then the work will work on you.

The second thing is that, the more often you do these exercises, the stronger your adversity tolerance and resiliency will become.

The other mistake people make is that they think resiliency is mental magic. It is not. It is consistency of work that creates transformation. Transformation starts quickly with the choice to do the work and the choice to grow. As my mentor Trevor Moawad used to say, “Change is inevitable, but growth is optional.”

If you do the work, then the work will work on you.

Let’s talk about “in blue, out red.’ You help players retrain their minds to focus on breath by visualizing a cool color such as blue when they inhale and then a warm color leaving the body. Tell me more about this and how it works.

This exercise allows for control. I have witnessed coaches reminding players to breathe in moments of stress and tension and then watch the player inhale and exhale like they were preparing to attempt a world record dead lift. They would be adding tension instead of releasing. What dawned on me was that athletes had not been trained on how to breathe to take control of emotions and stress.
In addition, if you have ever sat in a meditation where you are instructed to focus on your breathing and then left in silence for five minutes, you can relate to how fast the mind starts jumping all over the place. “How much time do I have?” “I have an itch.” “Did I shut the oven off?” “Did I put that appointment in my calendar?” “I have to call my wife after this, etc.”

So I wanted to help athletes have an anchor to attach to and come back to when they noticed they had gotten distracted. By coloring the breath, they were bringing their focus to mentally seeing the inhale and exhale, thus focusing on breathing and breathing with control. Our coaches could now simply say “In blue, out red,” and the players knew to breathe slow and deep and thus begin the process of releasing tension and gaining control of their emotions. “In blue, out red” works for everyone in a stressful situation, whether at work, home, or play.

You added something to your thinking after a conversation with Tim Tebow on connections, and you surprisingly linked it to sardines. I found that concept fascinating and would love you to share more.

It’s all about strength and safety in numbers. In the natural world, vulnerable species group together to protect themselves from predators.
Connection and being a part of a large group is a survival instinct. Our brains have the job of keeping us alive as its primary task. Survival is not thriving. So it is interesting that Tim brought up that he felt like connection was also a part of the brain’s major functions. If you step back and note survival is that major function, then it makes complete sense we would desire connection. I also think about greatness in the world and amazing accomplishments. For the life of me, I cannot think of one amazing thing that humans have done in the world alone. Even summiting Mt. Everest or running the 4-minute mile involved others who were there to support or witness or time, etc. We need each other to achieve.

“Transformation starts quickly with the choice to do the work and the choice to grow.” — Joshua Lifrak

The six steps in your framework build on each other in a specific sequence. Was that sequence something you discovered through your work with athletes or did it emerge from other research?

The six steps outlined in WIN Today do not need to be completed in order. You can do them in any order, and if you do at least four of them a day, then you win. If you do four, you get a 4-2 victory.
I have found, however, that “defining your story” is a good place to start your day and “Mile Zero” is a good place to end your day. Again, though, they can happen in any order.
I look at the sequence as more of a developmental path. In other words, I start with some of the easier concepts to activate. “Defining Your Story” is simply choosing an intention which can take about five seconds to do. “Stopping the Storm” and “Defeating Negativity” can take a little more focus, energy, and awareness, and are thus a little more complex. While there is a sense of building upon each other, once you understand the steps, you can do them anytime, anywhere.

You focus on athletes, but the concepts clearly apply to anyone seeking peak performance. How have you seen these ideas applied outside of sports?

In WIN TODAY, I write about applying the tools to everyday life. What I saw time and time again in professional sports is that those who used the tools were more grounded. They were able to respond quicker to setbacks and move forward faster. They were also able to stay in the moment longer, notice when they were not in the moment, and adjust rapidly. In addition, while they had emotional reactions to events, they were able to get to neutral and logic more seamlessly and thus get back to performance.

Executives who use these concepts are affected in a similar way. They become more empathetic, better listeners, and clearer about vision and mission. I have also seen people’s relationships with their families improve as they are less reactive and more thoughtful. They become more curious rather than judgmental.

Lastly, I have noticed that outside of sports people are able to live life the way they want —energized, focused, creative, caring and engaged. They live with more purpose and live their lives on their own terms by design, rather than living by default.
While the tools are designed to help people perform better in performance environments, they also have a residual effect on their day to day lives as well.

“What we want to do is accept the feelings and then work to move past them if they do not serve us.” — Joshua Lifrak

You work extensively in baseball, a sport defined by failure where even the best hitters fail seven out of ten times. What has baseball specifically taught you about building a resilient mindset that other sports haven’t?

The wins are everywhere. In baseball sometimes even when you do not get a hit you can win at bat. Sometimes when you get out, you can win at bat. Sometimes when you walk a player, it helps the team and is a bit of a win.

I think what baseball taught me is that, when you get into the process of winning rather than the outcomes of winning, it can increase your ability to deal with “failure.” There are so many little wins in the game that the key is to do those little winning things repeatedly, and then there is a better chance of winning the game.

The other thing that baseball taught me is that you could do everything right and have an outcome categorized as a “failure.” Resilience is strengthened by examining with logic the execution of a process, rather than the results. By examining with logic, the ability to step into a situation optimistically and with belief that is stacked against the player increases. Thus, resilience—the ability to face failure and keep coming back—is strengthened.

There is a concept in your work around the idea of controlling what you can control, which sounds simple until you actually try to do it under pressure. What does that practice really look like in the moment when everything feels like its falling apart? What is important now?

There is a classic sport psychology acronym—WIN: What’s important now? When athletes focus on what they can control, they also focus on what is important.
They just had a turnover, they sprint back on defense in basketball. They just made an error, they reset and position themselves for the next pitch. They got beat on defense, their job now is to set a great pick and roll off it. These are just some examples from basketball and baseball, but in any performance, there are a number of key focal points and things to focus on that will increase the chances of success. That is what “controlling the controllables” is all about. Where do I put my focus? Where is my energy level? What am I saying to myself? We dominate those aspects and typically the physical preparation will allow us to perform at our highest in the most pressure.

Self talk is a thread that runs through everything you teach. What does healthy self talk actually sound like and how is it different from positive affirmations?

There are different types of self-talk. There is execution focus talk, such as “keep your elbow in or stay low, or eyes up.” They are physical reminders of what to do. There is energy and belief self-talk. “Today is my day. I belong here. Be aggressive.”

Affirmations tend to be about confidence and identity more than the process of execution. So “I am a winner or I am a great scorer” are outcome based but also identity based. The best self-talk is what Rhyne Sandberg once told me. The key to the mental game is “getting ready to be ready.”

What we want to do is take a process that has been thought out and is more of a response and turn it into immediate reactions. I consulted for an Indy Car racing team. These drivers go 240 mph on a razor thin wire above a pool of chaos, so they do not have time to think through stuff. They are in full reaction mode in races. They plan their responses and play out their scenarios in the mind prior to strapping on their helmets. Their self-talk is more of a trigger for reactions. They might say, “eyes up get inside” and then their bodies will take over. The most effective self-talk will increase belief, drive clear focus, and help athletes get to optimal energy states.

If someone reads Win Today and can only take one of the six steps and apply it starting today, which one would you point them toward and why?

I would point them toward “Define Your Story.” This step is the first in the book and it is about defining who you are in this world. It is about setting an intention and deciding what you want from life instead of living life in a default victim mode. This is happening for me instead of this is happening to me mindset. When you take control of deciding who you want to be, you are starting the process of defining your life. In addition, this is a very easy tool to use.

You simply decide when and where you will create an intention for the day. Then write it down or say it out loud to yourself. The entire process of setting an intention takes maybe five seconds. For example, I decided today to be focused, joyful and productive.

Now I have a picture of what that looks like in my mind and I also have a lighthouse to come back to if I get away from that being. It gives me an anchor for the day instead of chasing the day. I am determining how I will respond to my day.

You have dedicated your career to helping people perform at their best when it matters most. What has doing this work done to your own understanding of what it means to live well, not just perform well (since Thriving Life is the last part of the subtitle)?

Being around exceptional human beings has been humbling and awe inspiring at the same time. It has taught me that the impossible is possible and that people, no matter what they are doing and who they are doing it in front of, are people. They cry. They have fear.

They wilt and then they bounce back.

Being around elite athletes has shown me it is never about not having negativity, or lack of focus, or lack of belief. It is about catching yourself thinking bad or being too emotional quickly and adjusting that mindset. It is about the power of noticing and the agility to adapt when you do notice and that is all. The best athletes simply notice and adapt quicker than the average great athlete. Thriving is about having the grace to accept emotions and then taking control and adjusting to logic. It’s finally about deciding to look for things to be grateful for. The best athletes truly appreciate where they are and what they are doing. They love the process and actively note that.

Thriving is about having the grace to accept emotions and then taking control and adjusting to logic.

Joshua’s ideas land because they are practical. They give you something to do in the moment, and something to practice before the moment arrives. I also appreciate that his work keeps pointing back to the same quiet truth. You do not need a perfect day to show up well. You need a reset, an intention, and the willingness to return to what matters.

If you are carrying pressure right now, take one small step from this conversation and try it in the next ordinary moment. Those are the moments that shape you. Little by little becomes a lot, and the way you respond today has a way of becoming the way you respond tomorrow.

For more information, see Win Today: Six Steps to Mental Resilience, Peak Performance, and a Thriving Life.

Image Credit: nghia-le

The post 6 Steps to Peak Performance first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

250 years

Two hundred and fifty years is a long time for anything to survive.

Nations fall. Companies collapse. Movements fade. Ideas that once seemed world-changing get swallowed by time and forgotten. Yet here we are, watching a country born from an idea many thought impossible approach its quarter millennium.

That is worth more than fireworks.

It is worth asking what leaders can learn from it: a story of imperfect people making consequential decisions under pressure.

Five lessons stand out:

They committed before they were ready

Few would have called them ready in 1776. The evidence was against them.

The Continental Army was undertrained and undersupplied. The colonies were divided. A third of the population remained loyal to Britain. The most powerful military force in the world was preparing to crush a rebellion that most observers thought would be over in months.

And yet, on July 4th, 1776, the ink scratched across parchment as fifty-six men signed their names to a document that was, in the most literal sense, an act of treason. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to something that had no guarantee of success.

That took courage more than certainty.

They understood that waiting for perfect conditions meant waiting forever. They understood that commitment itself creates momentum. Once independence was declared in writing and their names were attached to it, retreat became far less likely.

Leaders often wait too long. We study the situation one more time. We gather one more round of data. We wait for the market to stabilize, for the team to align, for the timing to feel right.

The founders remind us that timing is rarely perfect and that commitment often has to come before perfect clarity.

What decision are you delaying because you are calling fear prudence?

And the story was not a straight line. New York was lost. Philadelphia fell. The winter at Valley Forge nearly broke the army. Later, even after independence was won, the Articles of Confederation proved too weak to hold the young nation together. Failure was not outside the founding story. It was part of it. Great leadership rarely moves cleanly from vision to victory. It learns, adjusts, absorbs defeat, and keeps going.

Leadership rarely begins with certainty. Commitment often comes before clarity.

They built something designed to outlast them

Here’s what strikes me about the constitutional framers. In the heat of a Philadelphia summer, with the windows shut to keep the arguments secret, they were not designing a government merely for themselves.

They were creating a structure for people they would never meet, for circumstances they couldn’t predict, for a country that would grow beyond anything they could imagine. They knew this. They talked about it openly.

Jefferson, writing from France during the convention, argued that each generation should have the freedom to shape its own future rather than remain permanently bound by the decisions of the previous one. Madison designed the constitutional system with the assumption that human nature was flawed and that future leaders would be no different. Franklin, walking out of the Constitutional Convention, was asked what kind of government they had created. His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

That phrase carries weight. It’s not triumphant. It’s a warning and a challenge passed forward through time.

Most leaders plan for the quarter, the year, sometimes the decade. The founders aimed for centuries. They thought about incentive structures, checks on power, mechanisms for peaceful transition, and ways to prevent any single person or faction from accumulating too much control.

When you think about your organization, your team, your culture, what will endure after you leave? What systems are you putting in place that assume the next leader might not share your values? What guardrails exist that don’t depend on any one person being good?

That is stewardship.

They disagreed fiercely and kept going anyway

The founders were not a harmonious group. This is perhaps the most sanitized part of the story we tell.

Hamilton and Jefferson despised each other, though Jefferson was not present at the Constitutional Convention. Adams and Jefferson had a falling out so profound that they didn’t speak for over a decade. In Philadelphia, delegates argued for months behind closed doors and sealed windows while the summer heat settled over the room. Patrick Henry refused to attend the Constitutional Convention because he said he “smelt a rat.”

These were not people who agreed. They were people who disagreed intensely and kept working anyway.

There’s a leadership lesson buried in that tension. We’ve somehow developed a culture that treats conflict as a sign of dysfunction, where a room with anyone who pushes back is labeled difficult. The founders would find that alarming.

They understood that rigorous disagreement, when channeled properly, produces better outcomes. The tension between Hamilton’s vision of a strong federal government and Jefferson’s insistence on individual liberty didn’t break the country. It shaped it in ways that a single unchallenged voice never could have.

Seek out the person on your team who sees it differently. Create room for genuine dissent. The goal isn’t consensus for its own sake. The goal is the best possible decision, and you rarely get there without someone in the room willing to say “I think you’re wrong.”

Who is absent from the room because they make the conversation harder?

Healthy organizations do not fear disagreement. They use it to make better decisions.

They understood that character was the foundation

Washington could have been king. This is not an exaggeration.

After the Revolution, some influential voices floated the idea of making Washington a monarch.  He was beloved. He had the military loyalty. He had the public trust. The path was there if he wanted it.

He didn’t want it.

He stepped down. Then, after two terms as president, he stepped down again, at a time when no precedent required him to. He rode away to Mount Vernon. He gave power back.

John Adams lost his reelection bid to Jefferson in 1800. That election was bitter and contested. Yet there was a peaceful transfer of power, the first of its kind in the modern world. Adams left. Jefferson took office. The republic held.

These moments weren’t inevitable. They happened because of the character of the people involved, because men who had every opportunity to consolidate power chose restraint instead.

Character is not what leaders talk about after the real work is done. It is what determines whether the real work survives pressure. You can have brilliant strategy, exceptional talent, and abundant resources, and still watch everything collapse when the people at the top protect themselves more than the mission.

The question worth asking yourself regularly is simple.

Where are you benefiting from a system that gives you too much unchecked authority? And when you had the opportunity to take more than your share of credit, power, or control, what did you do?

The answer reveals more about your leadership than any strategy document ever could.

They worked for a promise they would not finish

Most of the founders knew they wouldn’t see the full realization of what they had set in motion.

The abolition of slavery, an awful contradiction they left unresolved, would take nearly another century and a civil war. Full voting rights for women took even longer. The promise written into that founding document, that all men are created equal, is still being worked out in real time, 250 years later.

Think of it this way: they planted seeds for trees they would never sit under, even as they left some of the hardest ground for others to break.

The best leaders I know carry that orientation. They invest in people who may one day surpass them. They make decisions that may never be traced back to them. They accept that some of their most important work will mature after they are gone.

What future are you serving that will not pay you back personally?

The best leaders do not build only for today. They build for people they will never meet.

Two hundred and fifty years of an experiment in self-governance. Two hundred and fifty years of imperfect people trying to hold together an imperfect but remarkable idea, often after they had misjudged, lost, compromised, and started again.

The founders weren’t heroes. They were complicated, flawed, brilliant, and deeply human. What they did right, they did right enough that we’re still here.

Commit before you’re ready. Learn through failure. Build for the future. Embrace productive conflict. Lead with character. Work for something larger than yourself.

Two hundred and fifty years from now, no one will remember most of today’s quarterly results, product launches, or presentations. They will remember what endured, what character shaped it, and whether the leaders of this moment built only for themselves or for those who came next.

Every leader leaves a legacy. The only question is what kind.

Every leader leaves a legacy. The only question is what kind.

Great leadership learns, adjusts, absorbs defeat, and keeps going.

Image Credit: Ryan Wallace

The post 5 Leadership Lessons Hidden in America’s Founding first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

It’s The Small Stuff

Many success seminars will focus you on the big stuff. You know what I mean by the big stuff? The lifelong goals that you want to achieve. The person you want to become. That’s the big stuff, and it’s super important or we wouldn’t call it big.

Today I want to focus a bit more micro—on something that seems small, but when you do it every day, it compounds, and the results become big.

Have you given thought to how to start your day?

Many of us have routines. The question I want you to think about is, do your routines work for you? Are they taking you where you want to go? Or are you just doing what you’ve always done, hoping it all works out?

9 Practices You Can Start Today

Here are nine different practices that successful people employ to get the day started. Why not try a new one out this week and see what happens?

Praying and Meditating. Yes, you just woke up, so why the need to be still? Because taking even a few minutes to organize your thoughts, calm your spirit, and increase your focus will improve everything from your blood pressure to your creativity. Take 10 minutes in the morning and try it out.

Massaging. Long ago, a yoga instructor taught me this one. When you first wake up, gently rub your feet, then legs, then hands and arms. Finally, rub your neck and face. Do this before you jump out of bed to increase the oxygen in your blood and boost your energy.

Reading something uplifting. Don’t jump up and start reading email and looking at your Facebook and Twitter feeds. Don’t jump right into the news cycle. Just a few minutes of reading something positive will orient your mindset. Read a positive blog or read scripture.

Exercising. This is not my practice, but many successful people automatically put on their running shoes and go immediately out the door with little thought. Physical activity will stimulate your system and flood your body with endorphins.

Savoring. Be mindful of the littlest things: the sounds that you hear, the birds chirping, the way food feels in your mouth. Especially first thing in the morning, increase your mindfulness to boost your awareness.

Visualizing and rehearsing. Spend five minutes visualizing your day. See yourself as successful, confident, and powerful.

Breathing. Try deep breathing for five minutes, breathing in through your nose, allowing your lungs to completely fill and then exhaling out your mouth.

Journaling. Wake up and start writing. Whatever is in your head, whatever ideas your dreams brought you.

Singing. Or Jamming. Basically, put on some upbeat, uplifting music that speaks to you. Go for it in the car and belt it out and dance a bit. Who cares what the other drivers think? Watch your mood soar before you hit the office or start your day.

The post 9 Practices to Start Your Day Off Right first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.

Ann Patchett

I have been friends with Ann Patchett for years. We have shared stages, talked books, and laughed about the state of the world. I’ve watched her hold rooms of hundreds of people completely still just by talking about reading. She is as extraordinary a speaker as she is a writer, and that is saying something.

“You are always someone’s favorite unfolding story.” — Ann Patchett

She also owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, one of the great independent bookstores in America, which she opened when everyone told her she was out of her mind. She proved them wrong so thoroughly that she became a national voice for independent bookstores, for libraries, for literacy, and for the physical book itself, the object you hold, the pages you turn, the thing you keep on your shelf and give to someone you love.

And through all of it, first and always, she is a novelist.

Her new book, Whistler, is a must-read this summer. It is the story of Daphne Fuller, who at fifty-three unexpectedly reunites with Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather from a brief but consequential chapter of her childhood. What unfolds is an examination of memory and love, of the small moments that shape us in ways we don’t understand until much later, and of what it means to be truly known by another person. Ann writes about time the way very few writers can. Her character development is something you need to experience in her novels.

Watch our conversation below. We talked about the book, about what fiction can do that nothing else can, about why bookstores matter, about the power of libraries and literacy and the fight to keep reading central in our lives.

A few things she said stayed with me long after we stopped talking.

I naturally love her passion for libraries. Libraries are not relics. They are one of the most democratic institutions we have, places where access is not determined by what you can afford, where a kid from any background can walk in and find a world waiting.

Whistler arrives at exactly the right moment, a novel about impermanence and connection, about how the people who know us, even briefly, leave something permanent behind. In a distracted world, Ann Patchett writes books that make you want to slow down and pay attention.

“It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.” — Ann Patchett

That is no small thing. That is everything.

Get a signed copy of Whister here.

“Did you ever want to be a writer?” “No,” she said, and she would have told him. “I only wanted to be a reader.” — Ann Patchett

Image credit: susan q yin

The post Ann Patchett on books, libraries, and why stories still matter first appeared on Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights.