Author: Rachel Hanson

Trust (and thus leadership) is like a bank account - you're constantly crediting or debiting (thanks for the analogy, Andy). Either making a deposit by building trust through your reliability, care, communication, etc., or debiting by commission or omission - failure to be reliable, making an unnecessarily harsh critique because you're in a bad mood, … Continue reading Trust accounts

A client of mine is true polymath by nature. Loves to understand and pursue mastery in a wide variety of domains. AND...everything comes with a tradeoff. Overcooked, that same impulse leads to news scanning, fractured attention, and going down random rabbit holes to understand things that aren't actually important, interesting, or relevant to this client's … Continue reading Overcooked

Gandhi had it right - be the change you want to see. I've got a client who came to me frustrated - he got dinged on a performance review with anonymous feedback that the system has not given him directly. That's a problem. A healthy functioning system doesn't wait for performance reviews, they give truth … Continue reading Be the change

Competence matters more than confidence. We know this. Does competence in and of itself lead to belief? There's certainly a high degree of correlation. The and, I believe, is this. Belief is rooted both in what I've done and in a clear and strong identity. If I put in the work and I still tell … Continue reading Belief

High performers fuel the engine of success. You must have the talent. Facts. AND culture matters immensely. Far too many leaders sacrifice their culture on the altar of talent. How you treat your high performers, and the standard you hold them too, matter both to the high performers and to their teammates. If you want … Continue reading High performers

Anxiety and depression tend to be birds of a feather, and are often characterized by the same mental habits - overly tuned to self. They're marked by a turning inward and a heightened awareness of self. Some versions of it need clinical and medicinal help, no doubt. Not so for all, or perhaps even most. … Continue reading Take action

"Trust your instincts" is not a panacea for all your struggles. In fact it can be pretty terrible advice. There are times, however, where you absolutely should trust your instincts. So how to know the difference? Captain Sully, when making an emergency landing on the Hudson River, trusted his instincts. If you listen to the … Continue reading Trust your instincts

Make sure your communication reflects your intent. If you're communicating four items of importance to your team, as a leader recently was planning to do, make sure you're clear on what's actually important. After I asked some curious questions and he did some writing, it was clear there was a 1a and a 1B. Number … Continue reading Clarity and communication