How Three Simple Changes Made an Impact for Me in 2025
The science of goal setting is both clear and nebulous. Most of us fail or quit our goals by February of the year we set ‘em; however, when we seek to become someone different by establishing regular habits, receiving support…
Three Ideas for Celebrating the Holiday Season
If I’m being honest, there isn’t much to celebrate on the West Coast of Canada these days. The pandemic/endemic is here, restrictions are being implemented, and lockdowns are looming. I feel for everyone who is enthusiastically looking forward to social…
Three Things You Can Say to Enhance Collaboration
Language is an amazing thing. What we say and how we say it reflects who we are and what we value. Whether you are speaking out of habit or stepping out of your comfort zone to make a point, the…
Sense-Making Needs to Be in Your Toolkit
Sense-making enables leaders and teams to understand what just happened and figure out what to do next – ideally we use this skill to process positive experiences, like when a crush visibly returns our affection or we get a job…
What Tough Loves Teaches Us
We’ve all received tough love at some point in our lives. Whether we hear from spouses who have feedback about our facial hair, coaches who know we can do better, or managers who need to inspire teams to achieve their…
Build Strong Relationships Through Community Service
The world is weird and tense and unsettling these days. Building strong, diverse relationships help communities become connected and resilient for the long term. A few weeks ago, I joined dozens of neighbours for a beach cleanup with Surfrider. We…
Why Conflict is a Good Thing
The Potential of Dialogue Meaningful dialogue is an elusive thing in our communities. Having a respectful conversation with someone about something on which we do not agree isn’t common. Yelling opinions overtop of someone else or building a newsfeed that…
Tension: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How it can Realize a Community’s Potential
My Tension Tension happens in work and life all the time. Recently, I found myself in situations where tension was both palpable and enabling. The first instance occurred during the planning of an important event. Initially, there was considerable confusion…
Three Ways to Break Your Bias
Vancity Credit Union is completing a month of learning about unconscious bias. Partnering with the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI), all employees are completing online learning and discussing bias within teams. A quick Google search will reveal dozens of articles about how…
How to Talk About Death at Work
For the last decade I’ve worked for two of Canada’s leaders in financial services (Vancity Credit Union) and pension administration (BC Pension Corporation). Through activities like estate planning and benefits changes many of my colleagues are required to talk about…