Books – Page 2 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

When Systems Scale Faster Than People: A Leadership Story About Holding the Line

June 8, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

A leadership story about scaling operations, and demonstrating how clear decision boundaries, accountability, and culture helps teams to adapt without losing trust.

Today’s post is by Dan Leiva, author of AMPLIFIED: The Operator’s Playbook for Scaling Human Potential in an AI World.

The alert came in just after 2:17am. This alert did not signal that there was a system outage, it showed something worse. Everything was working exactly as it was designed to. But that was the problem.

A product rollout of global scale had just gone live, and the systems had been optimized and automated – ready to go! They were fast. Faster in fact, than anything the company had deployed before.

However, it only took a few minutes for the customer complaints to start coming in. The complaints were not about bugs or failure. Instead, they were about the decisions that the system was making on their behalf.

Inconsistent discounts had been applied, and service prioritization felt arbitrary, especially when long-standing customers were suddenly being treated as if they were new ones.

When sunrise finally came, the executive team was looking for an answer to a simple question: Who owned the decision? They were met with silence.

The fact is that the engineers had worked hard to build what was asked of them, while the data team had ensured that models had been trained properly. In addition to this, the operations team had signed off on the workflows, but still nobody could clearly identify where human responsibility ended and system autonomy began.

These moments reinforce an important leadership lesson when it comes to scaling large-scale operations: efficiency is great – but without accountability, it is not progress. It is risk.

In essence, when organizations start to grow, there is a natural instinct to optimize, reduce problems, increase speed, and automate decisions.

While these steps are essential, scaling often fails to account for a critical reality: every system functions as a decision-making engine. Without clear governance, scaling simply amplifies ambiguity.

In fact, ambiguity does not happen when things are working. It happens then they aren’t, and unfortunately by then it is already too late.

This brings about an important and immediate lesson: before you scale a system, you must define its decision boundaries.

You can do this by asking three questions:

What decisions is this system allowed to make?
What decisions must remain human?
Who is accountable when outcomes don’t meet expectations?

Most organizations can answer the first question easily; however, they may take more time to answer the second question. The third? Few can answer clearly.

The early morning call had confirmed that it was not a technology failure, but a gap in leadership design. In fact, the system had been executing perfectly, even when conditions changed, and while it had been built for efficiency, it had not been built for adaptability.

This is where lesson number two comes in: resilient systems are not the ones that are faster. They are the ones that can adapt when under pressure.

Better code does not promote adaptability, instead it depends on how people interact with the system.

Can someone pause it? Can it be overridden? Can it be questioned without causing problems? If the answer is no, then what you’ve built is no longer a system, it is a constraint.

As the day continued, the team started to make an important change, and decided not to start by rewriting the technology, but instead by redefining its ownership.

This was done by assigning proper accountability for decision-making layers, and creating paths of escalation, where humans can step in quickly. Perhaps, more importantly, they made clear and visible intervention points within the organization.

The result was a system that didn’t slow down. Instead, the organization gained confidence in how they used it.

This leads to the third lesson: culture and governance are as important as technology itself.

Without a clear understanding of when to trust a system versus when to challenge it, even the most sophisticated infrastructure remains dangerously fragile.

People either disengage and think “the system knows best,” or they often overcorrect “we can’t trust this at all.” Unfortunately, neither is sustainable.

Strong leadership encourages teams to stay engaged with the system and not become subordinate to it. This creates a middle ground.

In other words, organizations need to build habits, and not just tools. In addition to this, it is crucial that automated decisions are regularly reviewed, so that there is space for feedback from frontline teams. It is ultimately about rewarding people not just for being efficient, but for practicing sound judgment.

The system was still in place at the end of the week, and while the automation did not disappear, it did start to operate differently. Boundaries were clearer. Oversight was stronger, and there was a renewed sense of ownership, as the technology had not changed nearly as much as the leadership approach had.

Now for the final takeaway. The future of scaling is not about replacing human decision making. It is about amplifying it.

An organization that gets this right won’t only move faster, they will move with intention, and understand when to trust their systems, and when to trust their people.

In AMPLIFIED: The Operator’s Playbook for Scaling Human Potential in an AI World, veteran technology executive Dan Leiva delivers a practical leadership framework for navigating the hybrid future of work, where humans and intelligent machines operate side by side. AMPLIFIED published by Beyond Publishing in Dallas, Texas, and featured in Kirkus Reviews, provides the playbook.

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Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers But People Do

June 1, 2026/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger /by Trevor Jones

Self-awareness is a huge perk of being human. Unfortunately, it can also lead to chronic illness.

Today’s post is by Steve Adams, CEO of Tiger Performance Institute and author of Unleash the Peak Performer Within You.

Zebras are horse-like creatures with beautifully striped coats that fascinate children and adults alike. Zebras have a distinct advantage over humans in one particularly important area of life: how they manage stress. To understand this phenomenon, we need to begin with the concept of interference. In my book, Unleash the Peak Performer Within You, I share the Performance Formula. Simply stated, it reads:

Performance = Skill – Interference

What is Interference?

Interference is a term representing anything that prevents your skills from taking over to produce a high level of productivity and performance. A short list of potential interference includes anxiety, ADD, emotional control problems, and poor sleep. There are many more sources of interference, and they all get in the way of good performance. Eliminating or reducing your interference represents a direct path to improved performance.

As you begin the journey of learning how to reduce interference and change your health trajectory, understanding and strengthening your autonomic nervous system is vital.

The Autonomic Nervous System

What is the autonomic nervous system (ANS)? The ANS is a branch of your nervous system that regulates involuntary functions and is constantly assessing the environment around you and sending information to the brain. This ongoing process keeps you healthy and safe and goes unnoticed as you go about your day. Its goal is to balance your body to its environment.

Functions such as heart rate, salivary secretions, eye dilation, digestion, and adrenaline release are governed by your ANS.

Your ANS has two branches, each at one extreme of functioning. These branches are called parasympathetic (rest and digest) and sympathetic (fright, fight, or flight).

An example from animals is in order…

Stress Responses: Humans vs. Animals

When a zebra is being chased by a lion, its blood flow concentrates to core life-sustaining organs. Digestion slows and heart rate increases. When you face a stressful situation, your body will do the same thing.

Once a zebra has eluded the lion, it returns to a “rest and digest” state or parasympathetic response. This is when the body returns to balance with its environment.

Animals are always one-to-one with their environment. This is where the difference between humans and animals becomes evident. Animals live on instinct. We are different; we are capable of conscious thought.

When you experience stress, your sympathetic branch of the ANS is activated. It’s what’s commonly referred to as a “fight-or-flight” response. It’s okay when a mortal danger presents itself. It’s not okay when you chronically respond to everyday life this way.

In fact, when you unproductively manage stress in this way, it leads to common and preventable disease such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure to name a few.

Because we are self-aware and have the power of creating theater of the mind, humans can and do ruminate about past events and worry about future concerns. We can literally invent stress in our minds by looking back or ahead.

The fascinating thing about this is that your body doesn’t differentiate between real events playing out in front of you, such as a stranger threatening you, and an event playing out in your mind. Either way, you end up with a stress response. When the conversations you are having with yourself are chronically stressful, you are putting yourself into chronic stress.

The research is settled: chronic stress and chronic debilitating disease are highly correlated. Learning to manage stress properly is one thing you can do to significantly improve your health today and tomorrow.

So now you know why zebras don’t get ulcers, but people do! Our habit of unwittingly placing ourselves in a state where our bodies think a lion is chasing us drives a cascade of reactions in our brains and bodies that make us physically and mentally sick. Our ability to perform at a high level is then severely compromised.

Chronic stress, and all its negative consequences, represents serious interference. Learning to manage stress well will reduce your interference and improve your performance.

How to Reduce Interference

Strategies to improve your autonomic nervous system balance include heart rate variability training, deep diaphragm breathing, optimizing sleep, daily movement, and practicing gratitude. Additionally, learning how to properly process thoughts and not hang onto them, leading to endless ruminations, is key.

The next best step is to assess imbalances in your autonomic nervous system, then seek training from a qualified organization and provider to help you regain control. The goal is to become your own best coach and learn to self-regulate your responses to life’s events. In doing so, your nervous system will then work for you rather than against you. When it does, you will live healthier and become a peak performer based on your definition of success and performance!

Steve L. Adams, MBA is the author of Unleash the Peak Performer Within You and founder and CEO of Tiger Performance Institute. His passion lies in helping high-achieving entrepreneurs, professionals, and CEOs achieve sustainable peak performance through his innovative, hyper-personalized, precision health optimization system and performance training. You can check out Adams here at www.steveladams.com, and learn more about his training programs at www.tigerpi.com.

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When Everything Is Important, Nothing Gets Done

May 18, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

When everything feels urgent, nothing gets done, and your team pays the price.

Today’s post is by Liane Davey, PhD, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author.

The following is an excerpt from the title Thoughtload: Manage The Madness and Free Your Team To Do Great Work by Liane Davey, PhD.

A leader I worked with, let’s call her Rebecca, was struggling profoundly with prioritization. She was smart and ambitious, but that made the task of winnowing down activities difficult because she could make a compelling case for why every investment mattered. As a result, her team was stretched across multiple priorities and working nonstop with no results to show for it. Everyone but Rebecca could see that they needed to do fewer things at once: to focus, get traction, work to completion, then move on to the next priority.

For months, this was the crux of our coaching conversations. But each time we made progress by deleting, delaying, or de-scoping an initiative, one of her team members would call me afterward to ask if I was aware that Rebecca had added multiple initiatives since our last session. I would broach the issue with Rebecca and remind her that her job was to help the team make the hard trade-offs and focus on a small set of the most valuable actions; doing one or two things at a time and then moving on to the next would be much more productive than trying to do everything at once. To her credit, she took the message to heart and stopped adding initiatives. Unfortunately, her compulsion to do more led her to start hiding three projects under one initiative heading, like a mom hiding vegetables in the lasagna. To be fair, I don’t think she even realized she was doing it.

At some point, the dilution of the team’s resources across so many activities meant nothing worked, and the situation reached a breaking point where Rebecca’s job was on the line. Only then did she switch into crisis mode and pick one initiative that would save the team. If they could resolve an urgent supply chain issue, they would solve a lot of problems for the company and rehabilitate their image. The supply chain project became the first and only priority. A couple of team members kept the lights on, but everyone else worked tirelessly to implement the project. It became nonnegotiable. Anything anyone needed to progress became top priority for everyone. I’ve never seen her team more productive, more ingenious, or more energized. What they accomplished in six weeks would have taken them at least a year in their former diluted and distracted state. Even two years later, when new challenges emerged, someone would often mention the supply chain project as an example of what was possible when they were all aligned on one clear priority. I won’t say that Rebecca is cured of her pernicious predilection for piling priorities, but now she knows that it’s an issue she needs to continually manage.

Being a manager is a big responsibility, at least if you care about being a good one. For your employees, you are the key connection to the organization and the primary source of intel on what belongs in their thoughtload: what is important, what is legitimately worrisome, and what is worth the effort. If you abdicate that role, your team members’ thoughtload will run rampant, as it did in Rebecca’s team. However, if you embrace your role in helping your employees direct their attention, process their emotions, and use their energy wisely, you have the opportunity to not only reduce their thoughtload but also increase their productivity and decrease their stress. Said more directly, you have the chance to transform the experience of work for your team.

Liane Davey has spent more than 25 years researching and advising teams on how to perform at their best. Known as the “teamwork doctor,” she works with teams from the frontlines to the boardroom, across industries and around the world, from Boston to Bangkok. Through her work with hundreds of teams, including 26 Global Fortune 500 companies (and counting), she has developed a practical, research-backed approach to solving the challenges that prevent teams from working effectively together. She is also the author of Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work, which tackles today’s most pressing management challenges: over-burdened systems, burned-out teams, and plateauing results.

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You’re Always Being Watched: A Simple Truth Many People Miss

May 4, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Your actions are always being watched. A leadership lesson on how small daily decisions shape trust, reputation, and future opportunities.

Today’s post is by Ryan A. Cherry, Colonel, USMC (Ret.), and author of READBACK: A Marine Aviator’s Manual For Navigating Life’s Hardest Lessons.

It’s easy to believe no one is paying attention, that you and your actions have faded into the background of daily life.

You go about your day, checking boxes, handling emails, moving from one task to the next. You assume that as long as nothing goes wrong, you’re doing just fine. Invisible, even.

Throughout my career, I learned that this assumption is completely wrong – both through my own experiences and by watching others.

Early in my career as a Marine aviator, I found myself in roles where I thought performance was judged only on the big moments. Flights. Missions. High-visibility tasks. I believed those were the moments that mattered most.

But that wasn’t true.

In reality, I was constantly being evaluated – long before I stepped up to the briefing podium or climbed into the cockpit.

My leaders were watching how I prepared. My peers were watching how I treated them. My subordinates were watching how I handled stress, frustration, and responsibility. What I thought were small, insignificant moments were actually shaping how people viewed me – and whether they trusted me.

The shift, my understanding, didn’t happen overnight. It came from a growing realization: opportunities weren’t random. They were quietly assigned based on patterns of behavior others observed every day.

Who gets the next leadership role?

Who is trusted with more responsibility?

Who is recommended for advancement?

Who will trust you in their most difficult moments?

It’s rarely decided in a single moment. It’s decided over time, by people watching more closely than you think.

And they’re not just watching what you do when things are going well.

They’re watching how you act when you’re frustrated. When you’re tired. When something doesn’t go your way. When no one is giving you direct credit.

Those moments define you, sometimes far more than the ones where you’re performing under a spotlight.

Your peers are watching to decide if they can rely on you. Not just professionally, but personally. Are you someone they trust when things get difficult? Are you someone they want on their team?

Your subordinates are watching to understand what kind of leader you are. Do you put the team first, or yourself? Do you take responsibility, or shift blame? Do you treat people with respect when there’s nothing to gain?

And your leaders are watching to answer one simple question: Can this person be trusted with more responsibility?

Here’s the part most people miss.

You don’t get to choose when you’re being evaluated.

You don’t get a warning before someone decides whether you’re ready for the next opportunity. There’s no announcement that says, “This moment matters.”

They all matter.

That doesn’t mean you need to live in fear of being watched. It means you should see it for what it really is – an opportunity.

Every interaction is a chance to build trust.

Every decision is a chance to reinforce your reputation.

Every small action is a vote for the kind of leader you are becoming.

The people who accelerate in any organization understand this. They don’t wait for big moments to perform. They treat the routine, the mundane, and the unnoticed tasks with the same level of discipline and professionalism as the high-stakes ones.

Because they know something others don’t.

Consistency is what people remember.

Not perfection. Not one standout performance. But a steady pattern of doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons.

If you want to apply this immediately, start with one simple shift.

Assume that everything you do is being observed – and more importantly, interpreted.

Before you act, ask yourself:

If someone used this moment as an example of who I am, would I be proud of it?

That question has a way of sharpening your decisions.

It changes how you respond to frustration.

It changes how you treat people when there’s no upside.

It changes how seriously you take the small things.

And over time, it changes how others see you.

Because whether you realize it or not, you are already being watched.

The only question is what they’re learning from you.

Ryan A. Cherry, USMC (Ret.) is author of READBACK: A Marine Aviator’s Manual For Navigating Life’s Hardest Lessons. He is an executive coach, speaker, and is widely known for building and mentoring high-performing teams. For more information, please visit RyanACherry.com.

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Be a Social-Media-Ready Leader

April 28, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Guest Blogger, Social Media, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

You can’t control every post, every image shared, every story that someone decides to tell the masses. But there are steps you can take to help limit the risk of opening your phone to a notifications jumpscare.

Today’s post is by Melissa Swift, founder and CEO of Anthrome Insight, and author of Effective: How to Do Great Work in a Fast-Changing World.

Today, there are so many places where people can go to talk about their jobs, workplaces, employers, and bosses. From LinkedIn and Reddit to Instagram and TikTok to Glassdoor and Blind, there is no shortage of discussion of work on social media.

And much of it’s pretty negative – which can have a range of impacts from hurt feelings to people getting fired to companies actually losing value or failing. I remember vividly getting called out on a consulting platform for perceived sins around some employee engagement awards. The poster didn’t quite have their facts right, but they weren’t entirely wrong about some of the underlying issues, either. And I went from feeling a bit awkward already to feeling downright terrible. Who wants to be that person getting complained about as hordes of people watch?

So what’s a leader to do? (other than avoiding Coldplay concerts, of course)

You can’t control every post, every image shared, every story that someone decides to tell the masses. But there are steps you can take to help limit the risk of opening your phone to a notifications jumpscare. You don’t need to have a perfect profile or an immense following yourself, but you do want to protect your own professional image (and your company’s) from unwanted shocks. Let’s look at some ways to do so.

A good place to start is how you communicate and operate at work. A number of executives have recently highlighted to me the role of coherence – being consistent and logical in what you say and do. This is a fantastic example of something that’s “simple but not easy.” Every day, a million imperatives push us in a million directions. Even the most focused leaders can find themselves all over the map on a bad day.

But coherence is critical in a world of pervasive social media. Think about what triggers someone to post…so often, it’s frustration. And frustration is frequently triggered by a moment of “I just don’t get it” – someone’s words don’t make sense checked against their actions, or their words don’t make sense in relation to their other words, or their actions to their other actions. Or maybe it’s all just a hot mess from the point of view of someone not inside that leader’s head at that particular moment. In any of these scenarios, frustration can very easily turn into a public statement.

So coherence is your friend. To the extent that what you say and do makes sense with all of the other things you say and do, you avoid triggering the co-workers in your vicinity and limit the risk of being publicly shamed for a perceived inconsistency. You may not always have this perfectly under control – many organizations are incoherent beyond what any one leader can impact – but it’s a worthwhile guiding aspiration.

It’s not just what you do and say, though: it’s how you do and say it. Emotional appropriateness is another key ingredient in staying out of the social media hot seat. Simply put, as experts on emotion in the workplace like UVA’s Jim Detert will tell you, conveying a type of and level of emotion that matches the situation you’re in helps put others in the conversation at ease. This doesn’t mean always damping down emotion: if something terrific or something terrible is happening, and you display a fairly flat way of communicating, that can cause further emotional arousal in your audience…just as if you started yelling or crying during an unremarkable meeting. That emotional arousal looks for an outlet – which could be a sympathetic spouse or a social media post seen by millions. You can’t always count on it to be the former. Particularly in trying moments, like layoffs, emotional appropriateness is particularly critical. Think of the number of posts you’ve seen on executives conveying job losses robotically vs empathically; when a leader displays emotions that match the moment, there’s less pithy fodder for a 30 second takedown.

Finally, be smart and measured about your own social media presence. Consider private accounts for political or otherwise sensitive content, as you cannot reasonably know what your co-workers’ most deeply held beliefs are. Be scrupulous about placing content on the right platform – no one on LinkedIn wants to see your bathing suit photos! And when in doubt, less is more. A measured quantity of social media content is far less likely to set someone off – and get them responding in ways that are damaging to you – than a wildly unpruned garden of random thoughts.

Social media at work can feel absolutely impossible to navigate. It’s not completely uncontrollable though – and much of what you can do to manage it, such as being coherent and emotionally appropriate, pays huge dividends far from just the social media realm.

It’s a highly transparent world, but you can show it a leader worth seeing.

Melissa Swift is a leading voice on how organizations, teams, and individuals can succeed in an ever-more challenging world of work. As founder and CEO of Anthrome Insight, she is a practicing consultant and keynote speaker. She has held consulting leadership roles at Capgemini, Mercer, Korn Ferry, and Deloitte. She is also the author of Work Here Now: Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse Workplace (Wiley, 2023).

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8 Elements that Differentiate Your Business and Make it Stand Out

April 20, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Sales, Social Media /by Trevor Jones

Differentiating your business and making it stand out isn’t about cosmetic external attributes. It’s about sharing the internal elements that make your business different.

Today’s post is from Winnie Brignac Hart, co-author of Stand Out.

Today, we’re bombarded with marketing messages from every side – the New York Times estimates over 5,000 messages every day. Marketers used to try to reach consumers at home watching TV or reading newspapers and magazines, but now advertisers reach consumers in real time, trying to catch their attention at every turn. It’s absolute sensory overload as companies press harder to make their brands stand out.

My sister, Lorrie, and I are identical twins. Because we are identical twins, we know a lot about the confusion and frustration that comes from a lack of clarity when things look the same. It has taught us a simple truth about differences.

We live in a world that appreciates and expects individual differences in appearance and behavior. So when we encounter two identical individuals, this experience challenges our beliefs about the way that the world works. Of course, identical twins are never exactly alike, and some differ in profound ways. Yet we can’t stop ourselves from comparing them and trying to find the differences that help us to tell them apart. By taking a closer look at twins, we can learn a great deal about the concept of differentiation. When I look at my twin, I can experience how others view me – and actually see myself from outside of myself.

I did not think about it much until I was almost 13. Around that time, I remember clearly that looking and being different from my twin sister was just about the most important thing in my world. I wanted to be seen as a separate and distinct person. I dressed as differently as I could. I cut my hair differently, I hung out with other people who were trying to be different, too – artists, musicians, and other experimental types who for one reason or another were trying to find their own identities. What I found was that most of what I did to be different was external. I was trading being part of one group (the twins) with being part of another, larger group (creative types).

When It Comes to Change, Are You a Cuddly Curmudgeon or Early Adopter?

April 13, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Training /by Trevor Jones

Individuals will always have different levels of hesitancy when it comes to change. Learn how to address skepticism in a way that makes change easier for everyone at your organization.

Today’s post is by Dr. Sarah Stebbins, author of From Fire to Water: Moving Through Change: Six Elements for Personal Resiliency.

A silly question, perhaps, but an important one to answer when experiencing or initiating a change. Let me explain.

In over 25 years of experience coaching individuals and providing change management consultation to diverse organizations, I have discovered that any change event can trigger three general responses in us and in those we lead. It is important for us to identify them in ourselves and in others. Read more

The Role Stress Plays in Stupidity

April 7, 2026/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Guest Blogger /by Trevor Jones

Prolonged, chronic stress often causes relative stupidity. Learn more about the connection between stress and cognitive performance.

Today’s post is by Nicole Lipkin, author of What Keeps Leaders Up at Night.

I wrote my most recent book, What Keeps Leaders Up At Night, on a barstool at my kitchen counter. The day I started chapter 3, a chapter about stress, my neighbor started construction on her house. When I say “construction,” I mean a complete demolition that started at 5 AM and continued well into the night. The contractors enjoyed screaming profanities as loud as they could, blasting music, and doing the loudest possible work either very early in the morning or really late at night. The screaming. The hammering. The noise!

After a week, I was living in a state of chronic agitation, “grrrr-ing” throughout the day, not sleeping well at night, anticipating being awoken by a jackhammer or drill that would feel like it was inside my brain. My concentration and thinking were so shot that I couldn’t think, let alone write. In hindsight, I probably should have gone elsewhere to work, but I couldn’t think clearly. I was stuck in a state of stress-induced stupidity and mired in rage. My state of existence became a stream of fragmented grunts and groans. I lacked the brainpower to change the situation, to think: “Go to a coffee shop or your office, Nicole.” The deadline for chapter 3 was fast approaching.

Prolonged, chronic stress often causes relative stupidity. Today’s business environment is saturated with “low-grade fevers:” financial problems, overwork, job dissatisfaction, jackhammers, drills, information overload and a host of other issues. Amazingly enough, though our brains are capable of dealing with sudden acute stress, they don’t fare so well with chronic stress, i.e., the endless little yipping Chihuahuas that prompt what psychologists call the long-term fight/flight response.

Our stress response triggers hormone secretion (especially mood-altering cortisol) and the perceptions of a given threat determine the type and amount of hormones the endocrine system will dispense. A steady bombardment of blinking lights, phone beeps, email alerts, and personal/professional obligations build up a chemical cocktail that keeps our bodies in a constant state of edginess, impairing memory, thinking and learning. Left unnoticed or ignored, this condition increases the odds that you will end up with serious mental and/or physical health problems, or in my case, pure stupidity.

Three Critical Perspective Shifts Every New Leader Must Make

March 30, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Learn three critical perspective shifts you must make when stepping into a new leadership role.

Today’s post is by M. Nora Bouchard, MA, PCC, author of Hidden Metrics: The Coach’s Secret to Success that Really Matters.

Congratulations on your promotion! That moment when you get the news is exhilarating. The recognition of your hard work, the validation of your skills, the excitement of new opportunities—it’s a professional milestone worth celebrating. But here’s what they don’t tell you in the congratulatory email: that feeling of success? It’s fleeting.

The Leadership Reality Gap

As you step into your new leadership role, whether it is your first promotion or your fifth, you’re entering territory filled with unspoken expectations. These aren’t typically outlined in your job description or discussed in your onboarding. Instead, most new leaders discover them through trial and error—sometimes painful, always enlightening. Why does this happen? Because leadership requires a fundamental shift in perspective. The lens through which you viewed your work as an individual contributor must now widen dramatically. Your focus needs to expand, and your thinking must evolve.

Three Critical Perspective Shifts Every New Leader Must Make

From Tactical to Strategic

One of the most challenging transitions for new leaders is moving beyond the day-to-day. While you may have excelled at executing tasks and meeting deadlines, leadership demands that you lift your gaze to the horizon. Strategic thinking means: – Understanding how your team’s work connects to broader organizational goals – Anticipating market changes and industry trends – Considering the long-term implications of today’s decisions – Balancing immediate needs with future opportunities Your organization isn’t promoting you to continue doing what you’ve always done—they’re investing in your ability to see the bigger picture and guide your team accordingly.

That’s not to say you won’t have tactical responsibilities, too. One of your new challenges will be to balance short and long-term commitments. To help, be rigorous about those tasks that you must own and those you can delegate to others.

Speaking of tasks…

From Tasks to Relationships

As an individual contributor, your success was measured by your personal output and accomplishments. Leadership success, however, is measured by what you achieve through others. Your value now lies in your ability to: – Build and nurture meaningful professional relationships – Inspire your team to perform at their best – Connect with peers across the organization – Develop networks that support your team’s objectives – Communicate effectively up, down, and across the organization The relationships you form as a leader will become your most valuable currency and the foundation of your effectiveness.

From Clarity to Ambiguity

Perhaps the most unsettling shift is the increasing ambiguity you’ll face. The higher you climb on the leadership ladder, the fewer clear-cut answers you’ll find. Leadership requires: – Getting comfortable with uncertainty – Making decisions with incomplete information – Continuous learning and adaptation – Creating clarity for your team amidst the fog While you navigate this ambiguity personally, your role is to translate it into clear direction and purpose for those who look to you for guidance.

Setting Yourself Up for Leadership Success

Imagine how much smoother your leadership journey could be if you approached it with awareness of these hidden expectations! Instead of stumbling through these perspective shifts, you could intentionally develop the mindset and skills needed to thrive in your new role. Leadership growth doesn’t happen overnight, but understanding these unspoken requirements gives you a significant advantage. It allows you to be deliberate about your development and to recognize the areas where you need to expand your capabilities.

M. Nora Bouchard, MA, PCC is an experienced leadership coach and author of Hidden Metrics: The Coach’s Secret to Success that Really Matters. Inspired by her clients’ desire to grow, Nora provides practical insights and intuitive questions to move them toward the goals that really matter. Nora specializes in helping leaders envision incredible futures, then she guides them to achieve that vision through their own values and strengths. Nora has invested 30 years in growing leaders through her workshops, coaching, and speaking engagements.

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Do You Make Changes the Hard Way?

March 17, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Leaders and managers are always changing something in their organizations, but they often make costly mistakes. Here’s how to make change the right way.

Today’s post is by Dr. Glenn Varney, co-author of Grasp the Situation.

You would think that leaders of organizations would understand a problem before they try to fix it. After all, they are leaders, and they are expected to know how to manage and make their organizations efficient and productive. The bad news is that many leaders make costly mistakes each day because they do not fully grasp the situation before they attempt to solve a problem.

It is estimated that 70% of all organizational changes fail because leaders do not take the time to understand what needs to be changed. Instead, they leap in and do a quick fix when the problem deserves a rigorous diagnostic process.

To illustrate the point, here is a true story about a plant manager, Mike, of a 500-employee automotive parts facility who really screwed up his organization because he leaped before he looked.

Mike’s administrative manager came to him one day recommending they acquire a new high-performance copy machine which would “meet increased workload” and improve production control timing. He pointed out that the other two copiers were “overloaded” and could not keep up with demand. Mike gave the go ahead, and they installed the new machine.

Several weeks after the machine was installed, Mike was walking by the new copier and observed a long line of people standing waiting to use the machine. Mike thought that this was a waste of time and assumed that employees just wanted to use the new machine instead of the other machines. He decided to swing by the two other copiers and found the same thing—people standing in line.

Feeling upset and angry, Mike went back to his office and sent out a memo that stated that there was to be no more standing in line and using the copy station as a “social center.”

Several days after the notice was posted, his ad manager came rushing in announcing that “everything was getting all jammed up” and “you have to let people go to the copier when they need to.” Mike was furious, and in a loud voice told his ad manager to “get that new machine out of here and go back to just two machines.” As a result, the machine was removed, and things only got worse. Mike never understood the underlying problem.

Miracle Minded Entrepreneur: How to Move Past Fear and Start Your Own Business

March 9, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

Fear keeps us from doing a lot of things in our life, but if you can move past that fear and get out of your head, the possibilities become massive.

Today’s post is by John Murphy, author of Agent of Change.

It was 1988 and I was suddenly unemployed. My position was being eliminated due to an acquisition. I was 28 years old and the sole breadwinner for my growing family. My wife was pregnant with our second child and we had very little savings. What should I do?

Logic suggested I polish up my resume and start interviewing for a similar job, head of human resources. Surely, with my credentials I could find something decent. I was also given a reasonable severance package, so I had a few months to figure things out. No need to panic.

That’s when creativity and innovation kicked in. Questions like What if, Why, and Why not started rolling around in my head, pushing logic aside. What if I do something different? What if I start my own consulting company? What if I figure out a way to be my own boss? Why do this? And, why not do it? Little did I know that these questions would spark a new, life-changing career for me.

Of course, fear kicked in too. I now think of these fears and doubts as the “Yeah, buts.” Yeah, but you don’t have any money to get started. Yeah, but you have a family to take care of. Yeah, but you don’t know anything about consulting. Yeah, but you don’t have any advanced degrees or credibility. Yeah, but you’re only 28 years old. Who is going to take you seriously as a consultant?

I gave these “Yeah, buts” a lot of thought. On the one hand, they seemed negative and restrictive. On the other hand, they served a useful purpose in identifying and mitigating risk. So, I used the “Yeah, buts” to come up with a business plan. Who knows? Maybe writing a business plan, with thorough research and analysis, will talk me out of my idea.

How Leaders Quench the Service Thirst of Customers

March 2, 2026/0 Comments/in Books, Customer Service, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Trevor Jones

We’ve all heard the idea of being customer-centric, but how you utilizing your leadership to best serve your customers.

Today’s post is by Chip R. Bell, author of Kaleidoscope.

The very thirsty crow came upon a pitcher of water. But, the water was deep and the neck of the pitcher narrow. Aesop’s Fables tells us the rest of the riddle. The crow picked up small pebbles and dropped them one by one in the pitcher causing the water to rise high enough for a drink.

I needed a prescription refilled for an eye ointment, and my usual pharmacy was unable to get it for a week. So, I called the pharmacy attached to the local grocery store. The “I’m having a horrible day” cashier-receptionist answered my phone call to fill the prescription. When I arrived at the pharmacy, she stood guard over the cash register with a scowl telegraphing the same attitude I had heard on the phone. Behind her were the pharmacy manager and two pharmacy assistants.

“Are you having a great day?” I asked cheerfully in a rather loud voice. “Not particularly,” she said.

“Well,” I announced, putting a pebble in the water pitcher so to speak, “I am here to help your day get a lot better.” She was unmoved. One of the pharmacy assistants nervously smiled at my way-too-obvious attempt to get her “happy water” to rise in the pitcher.

“How much would this ointment cost without insurance?” I asked her in my very best happy-go-lucky cheerleader voice. I had Googled the answer in advance. “Three hundred and fifty dollars,” she answered. “Gee whiz,” I teased. “How much would it cost just to get new eyes?” The other pharmacy assistant laughed to herself without looking up. But the cashier was not joining in the fun. “I know you are going to fix me right up!” I added, still trying to alter the mood!

My last attempt at a bit of happy talk: “Is your day getting a little bit better?” I asked. “Not really,” she said, flatly.

The expressionless pharmacy manager standing six feet from her finally looked up from his work. His countenance clearly conveyed his condemnation. He was not amused at my attempts to elevate the attitude of his front-line ambassador. This pitcher of customer delight remained out of my reach as I vowed to go back to my old pharmacy where I didn’t have to work so hard to get a fraction of positive service.