Blind Spot Leadership
All Leaders have Blind Spots! Learning to detect and avoid problems caused by leadership blind spots is every leader’s responsibility.
Arrogance versus Confidence
I am convinced that many leaders have a huge blind spot when it comes to determining the difference between arrogance and confidence. When I was 29 years old I started working as a senior pastor in an amazing church in Minnesota. As a 29-year old with 6 years of...
Vitamins or Poison
A couple days ago I ran across this quote in an email from Jon Acuff: "The friends you give your calendar to are vitamins or poisons. The best bring out the best in you, the worst tell you that your worst is best." It made me hesitate for an instant, and then it made...
Language Learning and Leadership
In July, 2012, my family left rural Minnesota to move to Berlin, Germany. There were a lot of things I expected to learn and process, but I did not expect that I would discover a connection between language learning and leadership. Language Learning and Leadership?...
Leadership and Sleep
Leadership and Sleep Did you know that there is a connection between leadership and sleep? Last week Huffington Post reporter Sarah DiGuilo posted an article about how sleep makes you a better boss. In it she cites a new study in the Journal of Applied Psychology...
Running the Leadership Mountain
Last week I was in Turkey for a conference, and I ran a couple of times with Jason Nelson (our speaker) and Blind-Spot cofounder Don Jones. One morning we decided to run up the "mountain" outside of our resort near Izmir. Total distance run - a little over 4k. 4...
Hobbies, Creativity, and Surviving through Major Change.
Beenish Kahn, an engineer at Help Scout wrote a great article recently entitled, Why Having Hobbies Can Make You More Creative in Your Work. When I moved to Germany in July of 2012, I had developed a specific set of hobbies that fit my American lifestyle. We had a...
Review of Creativity, Inc.
I have recently picked up the habit of listening to audio books while I do some of my normal tasks in the kitchen. I found Ed Catmull's book, Creativity, Inc while I was searching through a list of best-sellers. Buzz Lightyear is on the...
Jahari’s Window
I was first introduced to Johari's window in a leadership class I took from Crown College. It slipped into the dark recesses of my mind until I saw it again at a team building workshop led by Matt Boda. What are the basics of Johari's window? For all of us, there...