I spent an afternoon last week cleaning out my closet. It was high time I did. I had shirts, pants, shoes, and hats that I had not worn in months—in some cases, years. When I thought about it after, the whole experience became a kind of a metaphor for improvement. It occurred to me that […]
4 Ways to Stay Positive in Work and Life
A Former Pessimist Shares His Secrets to Success
We often assume that people simply are a certain way. “She’s such a bright, sunny person.” “He’s always such a gloomy Gus.” Nature gives us optimists and pessimists, and that’s all there is to it. But according to Jon Gordon, that’s a myth, a limiting belief that may be holding you back. He says this […]
Why I Broke Up with Slack—And Went Back
The 3 Changes that Made It Work for Me and My Team Again
My team and I have been using Slack as our primary communication platform since June 2014. As we grew, email became unmanageable and other solutions like Basecamp weren’t a fit. After a full-immersion trial, we were sold! But then we unsold ourselves. It took three years. But, just as email didn’t scale with our growth, […]
4 Benefits of Meditating Every Day
My Team Took the Challenge, and Loved It
In June, some of the Michael Hyatt & Company team signed up for our first month-long mindfulness challenge. Folks meditated every day and reported back in a special Slack channel on what worked and didn’t work for them, and whether or not they found it worthwhile. You might wonder why we would do this as […]
One Simple Trick to Bring Out the Best in People
How Leading with Positive Expectations Can Work for You
Winston Lord is a former ambassador to China who once wrote speeches for Henry Kissinger. Looking back, he said he couldn’t “recommend that to anybody.” Why? “You’d have to go through about 20 drafts and many insults before you got to the final speech.” In one outrageous but true example, Lord took Kissinger a draft […]
When Delegation Becomes Abdication
3 Reasons Your Leadership Doesn’t Get the Results You Want
Tell me you’ve had this experience. You assign a task but then forget about it. I sure have. As a leader, I am not a micromanager. That’s good news for my team. But I have to be intentional that delegation doesn’t drift into abdication. It’s not always disastrous when this happens. If we’ve hired well, […]