The Potentiality

John Horn's Website for Community Builders

Have Better Conversations

Three Ways to Evaluate Your Resilience in 2020

Well, it’s been a year. As 2020 winds down, many of us are united in our view that this year can go straight to hell. The global pandemic has taken nearly two million lives and disrupted countless others with unemployment,…

Nine Books that Enhanced My Range

Generalists will lead the future of work (it’s already starting). According to pioneers of the movement, Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin, the generalist “brings together diverse people, synthesizing ideas and practices, addressing the big issues that confront us in order…

How to have Better Year End Conversations

Performance reviews and year end conversations are ramping up around the world, which makes a lot of us uneasy because the experience can be clunky (HR systems aren’t slick like apps), emotional (money and personal identity are on the line!),…

10 Better Things to Say than “Be a Man”

“Be a Man”. We’ve heard the phrase jabbed at a dude caught in a circle of dudes (sometimes women are there, too) who are using peer pressure tactics. Or it’s a classic movie line aimed at motivating male protagonists to…

The Potentiality Playlist vol. 1

Music is – and always has been – the fabric of everyday life. Daniel J. Levitin, author of This is Your Brain on Music argues that, “music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and…

A Personal Reflection on Racism and Anti-Racist Allyship

Sometimes I see an event occur and I marvel at the humanity of people. Other times, I see events occur and I wonder, where is our humanity? The last couple of weeks have been more of the latter. It has…

Black Lives Matter

I want to be on the record – on this side of history – as someone who stands against systemic racism and who believes that Black lives matter. This is also a time for guys who look like me to…

What I’m Learning from Using Gender-Neutral Pronouns for My Bike

Last year I joined several of my Vancity colleagues in a gender identity workshop delivered by Adrienne Smith, a transgender human rights activist and drug policy lawyer. Adrienne shared simple tips for fostering inclusive communities, especially for folks who identify…

Three Things I’m Doing to Lead a Remote Team

So there’s this global pandemic happening. While the far-reaching economic and social impacts of COVID-19 are still unknown, the return to normal will take a long time and, when it’s over, we probably won’t live and work the way we…

Five Places to Find Wisdom and Ideation in Your Community

Communities are full of knowledge and creativity. When we take out our earbuds, look up from our phones and deeply listen to our neighbours, baristas and Lyft drivers we can gather information and insights that just might enhance our work…