Weekly Posts and Insights
The Leadership Shift: Renew Yourself, Raise Your Altitude
This past week, I returned to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Organization Management as a faculty member at the Northeast Institute. Across the courses, I had the opportunity to work with more than 90 chamber, association, and nonprofit leaders, and I learned as much from your questions, stories, and experiences as I hope you learned from me.
We covered delegation, empowerment, organizational relevance, and innovation. Yet two ideas seemed to resonate most deeply with you all:What is the personal cost of leadership for you? Are you still working as an operator when your organization now needs you to become a strategist?
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.
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.
Lead Within: The Art of Changing Systems Without Losing People
Most leaders eventually face the same tension: Do I spend my energy attacking the system from the outside, or changing it from the inside? This week’s Brief is about that difficult middle space, the space between idealism and pragmatism. The strongest leaders do not confuse patience with passivity, nor conviction with chaos. They learn the system they are in, understand its pressure points, and steadily move people toward a better future without losing the trust of those still living in the present one.
Accountability Makes People Uncomfortable
HB Weekly Leadership Brief
Week of March 9, 2026
Every organization eventually reaches a moment where the systems are in place, the plans are written, and the resources have been invested — yet progress still stalls. At that point, the issue is rarely about strategy. It is leadership.
Lead at the Right Altitude (Stop proving. Start scaling.)
What am I still doing because it makes me feel valuable, but actually limits our growth and my effectiveness as a leader?
Most executives don’t struggle with effort. We struggle with identity. For many of us, our early career success came from outworking others, doing it ourselves, being detail obsessed and fixing what others couldn’t (or didn’t want to). Gold Star! That’s how we got here. But that same identity becomes dangerous at scale.
Leading in a Loud World
A week or so ago, my wife sent me an Instagram clip featuring Sharon McMahon, #1 New York Times bestselling author, civics educator, and creator of The Preamble newsletter, in conversation with Dylan Michael White of @dadchats. As parents, coaches, friends, neighbors, and leaders, I think many of us are carrying a similar quiet belief: I’m not doing enough right now. We’re not present enough. Not mindful enough. Not showing up the way we think we should. And what we’re missing is context.
A Privilege to Lead
Leadership is a privilege, but it can also be a drain. Not because it’s wrong or misaligned, but because leadership requires presence, judgment, emotional regulation, and decision-making long after others have clocked out. Over time, even meaningful leadership can leave us running on fumes. That doesn’t mean you’re failing; it means you’re human. One of the quiet responsibilities of leadership is knowing when it’s time to refuel.
Tough Minds, Tender Hearts: Why High Standards Require High Support
If the expectation is excellence, then the work required to get there usually involves risk: trying a new approach, initiating hard conversations, innovating, confronting conflict, stretching beyond comfort, and showing up daily with discipline. That’s not a small ask. So a reasonable person will quietly assess one thing before committing to that level of effort: Do I believe my leadership (manager, boss, board, etc.) has my back?
Trust and Credibility and Why They Still Matter
When we talk about what makes communities and organizations truly successful, the first place we should look isn’t strategy documents, technology stacks, or growth plans. It’s our people — and more specifically, how we lead them. Organizations that thrive don’t do so because they’re well-funded, have better technology, or are lucky; they do so because they have the right leaders in the right positions, leaders who are able to capitalize on talents, communicate a clear and compelling vision, rally support — and build trust. This was true yesterday. It’s true today. It will be true tomorrow.