When a leadership team is off track, the damage spreads. Strategy slows down. Decision-making gets muddy. Accountability weakens. Morale erodes. What looks like a people problem quickly becomes a performance problem.

My path started with music, juggling, and comedy. But it was the science of human performance improvement that taught me how to get results. On The Spark Konnect podcast with Kassy LaBorie, we dug into what artists who work in business have to learn: the showmanship gets their attention, but the science is what changes the organization.

When a team lacks the capacity to think through hard problems together, stable times can hide it. Volatile ones can't. Poor decisions compound. Team cohesion fractures under pressure. Founders become the bottleneck — not because they want to be, but because no one else has been developed to carry the weight.

When systems we believed in cause harm, something inside us gets injured. That injury often shows up as fatigue, cynicism, and disengagement. But underneath it is often moral sorrow: the pain of caring in environments that don’t always seem to value care.

We talk about attention as something to optimize, hack, or reclaim—but what if that’s the wrong idea?

Most of us spend our working lives influencing across boundaries—colleagues we don't manage, clients we don't control, partners we collaborate with but have no authority over. The question that comes up over and over: "Where do I start?" You don't have to master dozens of influence tactics. Five practical, high-leverage principles work even when you don't have authority. Here's what actually works.

Learn three practical moves to navigate hard conversations in the moment: signal receptiveness, balance inquiry and advocacy, and ask what matters most. Through David and Maya's story, you'll see how to stay grounded when emotions run high, reset when you slip, and transform adversarial exchanges into collaborative problem-solving. Small shifts, big impact.

When conflicts stall progress, skilled leaders look beneath surface positions to uncover the needs driving them—transforming tension into understanding and alignment.

Conflict isn’t failure. It’s what happens when smart, driven people work closely under pressure. The real test of leadership is noticing it early—and shifting into a productive mindset before it spirals.

Root cause analysis is just one part of collaborative problem-solving. The next time you see a recurring issue, ask: Have we taken enough time to understand what's really driving this? Or are we just mopping up oil without finding the leak?

A few weeks ago, I joined Jonathan Mahrt on his On The Flywheel  podcast. Jonathan has a knack for asking thoughtful questions that make...

Rushing to fix problems without good data leads to costly mistakes. Take a scientist's approach: "I don't know—let's find out!"

Life is difficult. Therapy can help. A mentor of mine once referred to therapy as a "legitimate shortcut to personal growth." Learn more about how to find a good therapist.

The key is to integrate winning and success, with a heightened emphasis on acting with integrity.

With the right leadership development, managers can learn to recognize and reduce accidental self-sabotage.

Leaders often feel trapped between two bad options, where both choices seem to sacrifice something vital. Welcome to the sucker's choice.

Effective leaders focus where they have a comparative advantage, delegate other tasks, and prioritize developing their future leaders.

Loneliness is a silent drain on your startup's most valuable resource: your people. It's costing your business more than you think.

Escaping the blame-game unleashes untapped potential. Improve problem-solving by shifting your focus from finger-pointing to accountability.

In this post, I explore how the "knower trap" hinders problem-solving and offer strategies for recognizing and getting out of it.