courage

Courageous Conversation Practices

“A difficult conversation is anything you find it hard to talk about…difficult conversations are a part of life.” —Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen in “Difficult Conversations” What difficult conversations do you typically avoid? How do you talk yourself out of speaking up? What makes difficult conversations difficult for you? During our annual Cascadia Center for Leadership program, we ask the 28 participants how they respond to these questions. Over the 20 years we … Read more…

Courageous Communication

Picture about seventy people crowded into a dimly lit room with a creaking, wooden floor of an old building at the edge of San Francisco Bay. It was the home of the Dolphin Club, a legendary swim club founded in 1877, and their board of directors called a meeting to propose a series of upgrades to its aging facilities. I was standing at the back of the room with a swim buddy listening to two … Read more…

Being Open To Outcomes

Roger James and I rose before dawn to drive 30 minutes to a favorite hiking trail before it became too hot to hike. It was a cool and colorful dawn with pink contrails criss-crossing the sky. (We are taking a break from the cold rains of Northern California in the deserts of the south.) As we approached the trailhead we noticed that the palm trees were leaning over in wind that had been predicted to … Read more…

Patience Is a Virtue*

Imagine you are a four-year-old and a man places a marshmallow on a plate in front of you. He tells you that if you wait 15 minutes before eating that marshmallow you will be given one more. The man leaves and there you are, alone, with that marshmallow and 15 minutes of time. What do you do? If you waited 15 minutes not only did you get to eat two marshmallows, later in life you … Read more…