I’ve read a lot of leadership books over the years. Traditional ones by traditional authors like Warren Bennis and John Gardner. Textbooks specifically about leadership but also about organizational design and communication. Not-so traditional ones by poet David Whyte and Quaker teacher Parker Palmer. Books designed for business, education, and non-profit leaders. And perhaps the only…

For this last newsletter of the year, I had thought I might do some sort of retrospective about 2021, though honestly, I’m not sure what to say about this ‘interesting’ year. And then it got more interesting. On Sunday, I drove to Oklahoma planning to spend a week working with a client there. Monday morning things changed and…

It’s a joke in my family that I only cook between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. And it is true that is when I cook the most. Of course, there are the big food events like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes I’m responsible for all of a meal, sometimes just a dish. Then there are the cookies…

Technically, I’m not short. I’m average, but I’m shorter than my husband, my two daughters, niece, nephew, both grandsons, and I’m sure, I will be shorter than my great-niece and -nephew in a very few years. And in our kitchen, pantry and closet, I’m definitely short. It means I often need help reaching things. A…

I may have written about my gratitude practice before, but as we head toward the end of another rocky calendar year and a complicated fall semester, it felt like it was a good idea to remember to find time to be grateful. Now, I fully admit my journaling practices (yes, that plural is correct) could…

While preparing for a workshop I’m facilitating this week, I pulled an oldie but a goodie from my bookshelf. In 1987 James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner published The Leadership Challenge in which they named the five practices of exemplary leadership. In 1999, they published a book focusing on one of those five practices, Encouraging the Heart:…

Unsure what to write about, I decided to play Newsletter Tarot this week. I have a deck of notecards and on each one is a lesson learned, an idea, or a story. Someday I might figure out a way to string them together into a book, but for now they sit in my desk drawer. Twice…

This week I went to a family reunion. At least that’s what it feels like to me. Officially, the event was a professional conference for TACUSPA (Texas Association of College and University Student Personnel Administrators). There are many reasons it feels like a reunion to me. There’s longevity – I first attended this conference thirty-nine years…

Many summers ago, I was working in the only real legal job I ever had. I was serving as a law clerk with a small outpost of a large legal firm. The lawyers were part of the labor and employment law of this firm. I hadn’t yet taken those courses though they proved to be…