And you know what happens? When politics enters the workplace, trust exits. Because people can tell. They always can. No matter how polished the performance, people sense when their leader isn't being real. And once they sense it, everything that leader says gets filtered through that lens of skepticism. That's why authenticity isn't just a nice to have quality in leadership. It's essential. Not because being real makes you likable, though it might. But because leading

I worked with a team once whose leader had a habit of taking credit for their work. Not in obvious ways. It was subtle. In meetings with upper management, the leader would present ideas the team had developed without mentioning where they came from. When projects succeeded, the leader's name was front and center. When things went wrong, suddenly it was a team effort and everyone shared the blame. The team noticed. Of course they noticed. And once they did, everything changed.

A few years ago at a leadership conference, someone pulled me aside during a break. They needed to vent about their boss. What they described stayed with me because it wasn't just frustrating. It was a masterclass in how leadership falls apart when one fundamental skill is missing. Their team had been dealing with project timeline issues. Instead of explaining the actual resource constraints they were facing, their leader told stakeholders the organization had implemented

If I had to point to the most significant overall change in my leadership, it would be this: capping my emotions. The faucet is off, or at least on a slow drip. I can't react emotionally and build respect or relationships. I can be authentic without spewing my emotions all over the place. That shift has changed everything. It's changed how people experience me. It's changed what I'm able to accomplish. It's changed the quality of my relationships and my effectiveness as a l

But that change required brutal honesty with myself. Reflecting on situations and really thinking about my role in the status of the relationship. Understanding what I'd done to cause the problems and then owning it. Hindsight is said to be 20/20, and it certainly can be if you have your eyes open. You just have to be willing to open your eyes. I had to look at relationships that weren't working and ask myself hard questions. What did I do to contribute to this? How did my

It builds directly on self-awareness. You can't manage emotions you don't recognize. But awareness alone isn't enough. You also need the ability to do something productive with what you're feeling. Self-management doesn't mean suppressing your emotions or pretending you don't feel things. It means feeling them without letting them control you. It means responding thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively.

Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what's really going on in social situations. It's reading body language, noticing tone shifts, picking up on group dynamics, and understanding the unspoken undercurrents that affect every interaction. It's not mind reading. It's observation. Attention. Tuning into the people around you instead of being so focused on yourself that you miss everything else.

Self-awareness isn't just knowing you exist or being able to list your strengths and weaknesses on a resume. Honestly, it’s hardly any of that. It's the ability to understand how you're showing up in real time, how others are experiencing you, and how your internal state is affecting your external impact. It's reading the room. It's catching yourself mid-sentence. It's recognizing when your approach isn't working and adjusting before you lose the room entirely.

I think the most interesting story about emotional intelligence I can think of involves a person who told me they didn't need any training on emotional intelligence because they were "a professional at it." At the same time, members of their team spent most of their time working around this person and rolling their eyes at them.

So, you set your New Year's resolutions. You did the work. You made them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. You broke them down into steps. You felt motivated and ready. And now here we are in mid-January, and the momentum is already starting to fade. Sound familiar? Here's the uncomfortable truth: I have set more goals and forgotten about them than I can even remember. And I'm someone who TEACHES this stuff. I write blog posts about it. I help org

Tracking the wrong leadership metrics? Here's how to measure what actually matters for team health and effectiveness, not just what's easy to count. Here's a confession: I'm a finance person. Numbers are my language. I love data, spreadsheets, metrics, all of it. I can get genuinely excited about a well-constructed dashboard. (Yes, I know that makes me weird. I've made peace with it.) But here's what I've learned after two decades in leadership: most of the metrics we obses

The things I've gained from other leaders include learning everything I can to make smart decisions, collecting data and taking time to dive into a situation before making a knee jerk reaction, the art of storytelling and making real life situations interesting to help people learn and grow, and true compassion for others. But I've also learned what NOT to do. The things I've observed that I don't want to emulate include overconfidence, leading from ego, making decisions bas

Here's what nobody tells you about leadership: you can't fight every battle. You literally do not have the energy. Every time you engage in something, whether it's a conflict, a debate, a correction, or a defense, you're spending energy. And that energy is finite. When you spend your energy on the wrong battles, you don't have it for the right ones. You don't have it for your team. You don't have it for strategic thinking. You don't have it for the work that actually matter

There's something about January that makes us all lose our minds a little bit. We convince ourselves that this is THE month. The fresh start. The clean slate. The moment when everything changes. So we create these elaborate plans. We set impossible standards. We try to overhaul our entire lives all at once while still, you know, living our actual lives. And then reality hits.

I apologize when I have to bother someone to get details about a personnel matter. Even when that matter is as important (or more important) to the person I'm "bothering" as it is to the employee involved. Even when it's literally part of their job to provide me that information. Then on the flip side, I apologize when I have to deliver news that isn't what someone wanted to hear. When a project didn't make the priority list. When the outcome of a situation isn't exactly wha

Let me be clear about something right up front. The number changing from 2025 to 2026 doesn't magically transform anything. January 1st is just another day. The sun will come up the same way it did on December 31st. You'll wake up as the same person with the same life and the same challenges. The calendar switching doesn't create a fresh start. YOU create the fresh start. The calendar just gives us the kick in the pants to do it.

It's the last Monday of the year, and if you're on social media at all, you've seen them. The posts about New Year's resolutions. The ambitious lists. The grand declarations of transformation.

As we head into this Christmas, my wish for you is simple: I hope you feel valued, because you are. I hope you feel proud of what you've accomplished this year, even the small things that nobody else noticed. I hope you get a moment of pure, uncomplicated happiness. I hope you feel the love of the people around you, and I hope you let it in. I hope you rest, really rest, without the weight of everything you think you should be doing. And I hope you know that the work yo

Here's the thing about December: the Christmas chaos at home is just one part of the equation. If you work in government like I do, you know that December brings its own special brand of workplace insanity.

That Sunday evening pit in your stomach about Monday? You're not alone. Here's the 3-step system that helped me eliminate Sunday night work anxiety for good. It's 7 PM on Sunday. You should be relaxing, maybe watching a movie or reading a book. Instead, you're mentally cataloging everything waiting for you Monday morning.