Five Community Building Lessons from Trees
There are a lot of community building lessons from trees that we can (and should) apply to our worklife. Here is an example of how trees take care of each other: It’s been said that the measure of a community…
Joyful Resilience
Hard things reveal character and unlock potential. Also, hard things to align in our worklife are joy and resilience (we don’t often experience elation when we’re bouncing back from setbacks or reflecting on failure), even if we want to work…
Four Leadership Lessons from our Reconciliation Journey
As a member of Vancity’s leadership development program I am on a journey to become a better leader. Engaging in deep self-reflection, peer-mentoring and self-directed learning with the intention of creating new habits that help me to be more present,…
Stop killing it
Describing how we kill stuff like exams, exercise routines, and/or big meals, reflects a shortcoming of creativity in North America (where such phrases are used most often). I believe that we should stop “killing it”. The casual language and colloquialisms…
Five Reasons Why You Should Have a Place of Zen
I’m spending next week at my family home in Merville, British Columbia. It’s where I grew up and it’s my place of Zen. If people are the soul of our communities then our souls also connect to physical spaces that…
Bicycles
Two of my best friends and I are riding bicycles across the San Juan Islands this week. Bicycles feature prominently in my life (they represent the most awesome way to explore communities). In fact, more people on Earth ride bikes…
How to Break Toxic Culture at Work
Between April and September 2021, more than 24 million American employees left their jobs, which was a record. More than half of Canadian employees would rather quit their job than return to the office full-time. As the Great Resignation rolls…
Five Ways to Maximize the Potential of Small Talk
Most of us don’t like small talk because it kinda sucks. For introverts it can be terrifying. For people with big ideas it can be frustrating. For intellectuals it can be boring. During my undergraduate experience I made a friend…
Why You Should Invest in Boredom
Seth Godin, as he often does, captured our relationship with boredom perfectly in a recent blog post: “…the market has figured out that we simply don’t like to be bored. And so there’s more stimulation, more options and more noise…
Seven Tips for Your Next Sales Pitch from the Joker
The Joker is an iconic villain of comics, television and movies. Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime in Christopher Nolan’s 2008 movie The Dark Knight was awesome. My favourite scene in the movie is the one where…