Weekly Posts and Insights
When Burnout and Aversion to Challenges Become the Culture
Because change is not slowing down. The organizations that survive will not be the ones with the most sophisticated complaints. They will be the ones that can still look at a challenge, gather the right people, test a better way, and move forward.
Leadership in the Age of Sarcasm, Irony, and Snark
In a culture that rewards “hot takes” and cheap certainty, leaders have to widen the room for complexity again. Not by sounding smarter, but by staying steadier. By being willing to say, calmly, “This is more complicated than it appears. We need to listen longer. Both things may partially be true. We can disagree without dehumanizing.” That kind of leadership probably won’t win the comment section. But it will build real trust in the real rooms that matter.
Leadership in an Age of Uber Feedback, Cynicism, and Overreaction
Providing feedback has become a badge of honor worn by professionals, thought leaders, roundtable participants, doctors, community members, internet trolls and the like. While critique certainly has an important role in healthy organizations and healthy democracies, something changes when commentary itself becomes the product. In many ways, we are no longer participating in conversations. We are participating in performances.
The Hidden Chain Behind Innovation and Conflict
Innovation, by its very nature, requires disagreement. It requires uncertainty. It requires people saying things out loud that may not work, may not be popular, or may challenge the status quo. And the moment human beings begin challenging assumptions, introducing new perspectives, or pushing against old ways of thinking, something naturally appears: conflict.
The thinking extrovert needs a break too
Thinking-oriented extroverts often engage externally while processing internally. They may love presenting ideas publicly, debating concepts, facilitating teams, or leading organizations, but afterward they frequently need significant solitude to mentally recover. Not because they dislike people, but because thinking itself requires space.
Why Roundtables Build Better Leaders
That’s why the leadership roundtable model has become one of the most powerful tools we use at Harrington Brands. It blends short-form training, peer coaching, facilitated discussion, journaling, reflection, accountability work, practical experiments, and real-world leadership application into one integrated experience. The result? Leadership development that actually sticks.
Taking the temperature of your organization this Spring
A good organizational assessment is not about catching people. It is about listening to the system. It helps leaders move beyond assumptions, anecdotes, and the loudest voices (or deepest pockets, influence, charm) in the room. It gives shape to what people are feeling, where alignment is breaking down, and where energy is either being created or drained. Done well, it can take the temperature, release some of the pressure, and create a healthier path forward.
Not Every Door Opens With the Same Key
One of the quiet frustrations of growth is assuming that one breakthrough person, one hard conversation, one book, or one season of insight should unlock everything in us. It rarely works that way. More often, growth happens like walking through an old house with a ring of partial keys. One key opens the door to better boundaries. Another opens emotional regulation. Another reveals grief, agency, confidence, or the courage to stop becoming someone you were never meant to be.
Tyranny of the Urgent
The Tyranny of the Urgent is not simply a time-management problem, it is a leadership problem. It shows up when visible, noisy, emotionally loaded, short-horizon demands consistently displace slower, less dramatic, but more consequential work: strategy, talent development, culture, thinking, renewal, and the future. The tyranny of the urgent is the repeated surrender of mission-critical work to short-term pressures that feel immediate but do not deserve disproportionate control over attention, energy, and decision-making.
Don’t Empower Too Early
Real empowerment is not the first move of leadership development. It is the earned result of a process. First, we include people in meaningful spaces. Then we engage them in real work with support. Then, over time, we empower them to own it. That is how mature workers are formed. That is how confidence becomes competency. And that is how leaders stop mistaking exposure for readiness.