An evergreen list of leadership and culture beliefs that inform my work.

• Human-focused leadership is the highest order of leadership.

• Leading humans is an enormous privilege which can have a profound positive or negative impact. Not everyone has to, or should lead.

• It isn’t leadership without a noble, ethical purpose behind it. Leaders do good things. Lead with character.

• Leadership and building healthy organizational cultures is an art form.

• Leaders of healthy, high-performance teams optimize challenge and support. (Burgess)

• Leading well requires courage and discomfort from time to time.

• Know what you stand for, have values - performance values and leadership values. Well-defined, used intentionally, informing decisions and actions.

• Lead yourself well.

• Leadership and org. culture development are never-ending duties.

• When selecting or developing leaders: leadership character > competencies. (attributes > skills)

• Freedom in the workplace is neither hierarchy nor anarchy - it’s well-ordered liberty. (Getz)

• Improving leadership and culture starts with increasing feedback and awareness.

• Build and maintain psychological safety as a top priority.

• Relentlessly respect people’s time and core roles.

• Lead people. Never manage people. There is a big difference here.

• Healthy onboarding accelerates high performance - building belonging > admin stuff

• Increased health=increased performance

• Leaders shouldn't have to guess much...your team and your ecosystem have the answers or can help.

• Behind most friction between humans there is a necessary conversation waiting to be had.

• If it involves them, include them. "We are more likely to carry out decisions we have helped make." - Kurt Lewin

• Autonomy and independence > dependency and control. Default to fully trusting well-selected, trained adults.

• Default to maximal transparency and sharing.

• Frequent recognition and gratitude > infrequent praise and reward.

• The market, org. culture, and intra-team accountability should drive performance standards far more than leaders from above.

• In hierarchies, fixing any problem starts with the leader acknowledging their responsibility.

• If you find yourself in a bureaucracy or hierarchy, do everything you can to lead differently.

• Be relentless about choosing the right people.

• Words matter. Our team > my team.
  Teammate|Colleague > Follower|Subordinate.

• Sensing and responding > predicting and controlling (Laloux)

• Leaders don't motivate adults - they create an environment where they might feel motivated.

• Anyone can lead regardless of rank, position, time/place, or authority.

• In the best cultures, everyone thinks and acts like a leader.

• Teaming (forming, relationships, trust) > tooling (systems, collaborative software).

• Great leadership starts with brilliance with the human basics.
  “Good Morning” > HR plans.

• Principles > rules - “Principles honor human agency” (Howard)

• Humans > Hardware

• Great followership is an entry-level skill for great leaders.

• Addressing root causes > fixing symptoms

• Immediate micro adjustments > periodical macro interventions

• Having a spectrum of flexible leadership skills > rigid style

• Decentralized > centralized

• Diversity > conformity