Leading with Empathy
Theodore Roosevelt once stated, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” While you certainly need to demonstrate a threshold of competence in your field, it’s your capacity for caring that will set you apart from mediocre leaders. What’s the key? Leading with empathy. Imagine if you could reduce […]
The Overview Effect
The Overview Effect is a term coined by author Frank White more than 30 years ago. It refers to the cognitive shift in awareness that astronauts experience when they see Earth in its entirety for the first time. What he found was that this experience profoundly affects space traveler’s worldviews. What most of us know […]
Why I am Quick to Acknowledge My Failures
One of the hardest behaviours to overcome as a leader is the compulsion to “be right” or “save face”. Candidly and plainly admitting one has failed is probably the most humbling thing one has to do as a leader and teammate. So much seems to be riding on avoiding being witnessed failing, but the instinct […]
Learning not Losing
How do you adapt to a “learning” mindset instead of a “losing” one? From an early age, we are taught that losing is an undesirable outcome. As children, we never want to be the last to cross the finish line. This becomes detrimental to our development when the fear of losing causes us to not […]
What I Learned Getting Blown Up
During my six-month tour in Kandahar, I lost 6 of my 9 lives. Some brushes with death were closer than others—the closest was being blown up. In the immediate aftermath of major combat with the Taliban, my squadron was tasked to build a road linking two coalition forward operating bases in what was just an […]
Speak Less and Think More
I believe we should speak less and think more. Speaking less and thinking more demands vulnerability, which is perhaps why many of us fail in this regard. Instead of dialogue, we engage in duelling monologues. We eagerly wait for a break in the conversation so that we can insert our own brilliance—solicited or unsolicited. We […]
Experiential Vertigo
Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t tell which way was up? Now imagine having that same feeling submerged deep underwater with a depleting supply of oxygen. This feeling, known as alternobaric vertigo, can strike scuba divers during periods of transition from one pressure zone to another, temporarily rendering them unable to […]
Here be Dragons!
Here be dragons! When making maritime maps, ancient cartographers would use this phrase to describe the areas beyond the known world. Perhaps some actually believed that dragons inhabited these unexplored frontiers. Perhaps others were fearful of these uncharted waters and simply chose to represent them using the most dreadful metaphor they could muster. Like a […]