The Leadership Compass

Insights on Growth, Self-Discovery, and Thriving in Leadership

Thursday Thoughts on Thriving: Post Traumatic Growth

  In my last post, “Epiphanies & Shifting Habits” I referred to John Haidt’s book “The Happiness Hypothesis.” I am going back to his book again because I had it top of mind with the memorials of the 9/11 tragedy this week. There is a whole chapter called “The Uses of Adversity” that is full…
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Thursday Thoughts on Thriving: Epiphanies & Shifting Habits

In his book, “The Happiness Hypothesis” Jonatahan Haidt explains the challenge with an epiphany that shifts your outlook or even changes your life. After the light bulb goes off, you are often right back in your prior habits three months later. In order to make lasting change you need to retrain your emotional mind and…
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Thursday Thoughts On Thriving: Hearts & Minds

Our culture is full of “mind over matter” messages that lead you to believe that you can think and rationalize and use brute force or will power to make things happen. Contrary to this belief, there is a lot of interesting research supporting that you need the emotional side of your motivation even more than…
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Thursday Thoughts on Thriving: Going For Gold

“Don’t be a spectator on this trip. There’s no death worse than just waiting around. Set your heart on the hero’s gold … And, go.”   – Rumi  (5th century Persian Poet) What is my purpose or what is gold for me? I have had clients struggle with this question and I have had my own…
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Thursday Thoughts on Thriving: Rising Above Misfortune

“Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.” – Washington Irving The headlines are full of misfortunes, some bigger than others. The tragedy in Colorado is hard to comprehend when you hear the friends and family’s’ stories of coping after their losses. It will take time to heal from this…
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Thursday Thoughts On Thriving: Habits of Excellence

“Excellence is not an act, its a habit.” – Aristotle The summer Olympic games are in full swing and it is inspiring to see the athletes give their best.  It makes me think about the day after day discipline and training they put in to qualify for these elite games. They have the same amount…
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Thursday Thoughts on Thriving: Play

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” – Plato In the Team Advantage coaching process that I use with teams and have seen transform teams in just the short 2-day kick off meeting (that is only the start), we set it up for play…
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Thursday Thoughts on Thriving: Uncovering Your internalGPS

“We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released.” – Jean Huston A couple years ago, when I was facilitating a leadership program for young women at a University in China, it quickly became apparent that I had a lot of work to do to convince the students that they had many…
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Thursday Thoughts On Thriving: Connections

Thriving is all about connections; the more you cultivate connecting with the people around you the more you will thrive. I am writing this in Buffalo, NY, where I am reconnecting with people that I have not seen in years. Last night my sister and I had dinner with two women who we used to…
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Thursday Thoughts on Thriving: Ideas From Kindergarten

We can learn a lot from Kindergartners, I found this out a when I facilitated a fun team building game called “The Marshmallow Challenge.” (TED talk linked about this game) Teams of recent Kindergartner graduates are some of the best performers, they are only second to teams of Engineers/Architects when it comes to building the highest…
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