Three Ways to Write Your Professional Journal
Writing makes your life better. Fast Company’s Drake Baer has his reasons for why writing cultivates knowledge, wisdom and a powerful personal narrative. For me, writing is the thing that slows down my thinking, sorts out my ideas and goals, and sets clear context for...
The One Thing Leaders Need for Practicing Self-Care
The world is burning out and burning up. As organizations strive to enable hybrid work (or work from anywhere) amidst health and climate emergencies, leaders are being asked to do a lot. A former colleague of mine, Ilene, introduced nearly every workshop and...
Self-Assessment
Self-awareness, which means deeply knowing your values, abilities, style, areas to grow, and impact on others, is a critical capability for work life. Seeing ourselves clearly enhances learning, improves decision making, enables stronger relationships, and makes...
Developing Successful Storytellers
This is a story about stories and storytelling. Its purpose is to inspire you to, first, give a copy of your favourite children’s book to a kid and, second, support A Good Book Drive if you live in Vancouver. Why? Because stories are the most powerful communications tool that we, as humans, have at our disposal.
Eight Ways to Practice Pragmatic Consensus-Based Decision Making
Whether you’re discussing the foundations of governance or how to take our an enemy sniper in Call of Duty, you’re probably talking about consensus-based decision making, which informs everything from family trips to important business decisions. Consensus-based decision making has been widely used, in everything from early democracy to organizational theory. But what exactly is consensus-based decision making, and how best can it be practiced?
Adapting to a New Food Order
Food. Everyone can relate to food in some way, whether you eat to live, or live to eat. Through our choices around food, we can have significant impact on our environment. Since there are so many ways that food impacts sustainability, there are many ways people can make change.
Sport and Community Leadership
The Vancouver Whitecaps FC is leading positive change in Vancouver. We predict the club’s ideas, commitments and positive role modeling will soon send ripples throughout the worlds of sport, wellness and community. We look forward to measuring the myriad ways that Vancouver’s newest professional sporting club reaches its potentiality – on the pitch as well as in the community. As part of their club vision, the Whitecaps are committed to being a significant community asset. For the past year, the club has been championing the Vancouver Street Soccer League through a unique partnership with the DTES community sport association.
Communicating to Different Media
There are many stories out there. Some are so important that every media outlet in your area, region or country will want to cover them. Other stories are of more limited interest to particular media groups. Identifying which stories will be attractive to which media will save you a great deal of time when it comes to communicating your idea. It can also significantly aid you in the development of your story pitch and allow you to be much more convincing when you are on the phone speaking with a journalist or producer. Here are some simple things to consider when you are deciding what, and for whom, is newsworthy.
Assessing the Impact of a Policy or Program on the Mental Health of a Population
There are many definitions of mental health promotion that have been put forward by organizations, governments, and individuals from around the world. While all similar, there are some important differences that impact how mental health promotion is understood and practiced. One of my favourite definitions is this one: the “actions taken to maximize the mental health and wellbeing of populations by improving social, physical and economic environments; and strengthening the understanding and skills of individuals in ways that support their efforts to achieve and maintain mental health” (Victorian Government Department of Health, 2010).
How Outcome Based Decision Making Can Get You Through a Crisis
One of the unfortunate facts of life is that, more often than not, we’re forced to make some of our most important decisions under pressure. Whether that pressure comes from time constraints, high emotion or some kind of crisis, it’s just not a good time to successfully arrive at good decisions. But whether you like it or not, there’s a good chance that at some point in either your personal or professional life, you will be confronted with tough choices under less than ideal circumstances.
Pluck and Persistence Will Drive Your Story into the News
Every company and organization has an interesting story to tell. Finding news and honing it into a finely crafted pitch is the first challenge. You want to make sure you’re “selling” the best “product” that you can. Here are a few factors to consider when it comes to what makes news, well, ‘news’. Once you’ve got your story down, the next step is to convince a reporter or editor that it has a place on a newspaper page as opposed to remaining lonely and forgotten on your organization’s blog.There are many ways to do this.
How to Lead Like a Pioneer
A few weeks ago, I took a road trip through Oregon and got a firsthand look at how the philosophy of the state’s early pioneers continues to influence that culture of leadership in Oregon to this day. During my trip, I traveled down the coast (pirates!), inland through a State Forest (Tillamook!), and then wrapped up our brief trip with some urban adventures in Portland (craft everything!). Through conversations, news, museums, universities, and various other sound bites, I learned about the pioneer culture of Oregon and how such a philosophy still informs and inspires the community to this day.
The Elements of an Effective News Story
Ever wonder why a spate of deadly car crashes makes the front page (or leads-off the news hour) while announcements about a new social enterprise that employs people with mental illness tend to get buried? It’s all connected to how “newsworthy” a story is considered by the editorial/production staff. Each day, thousands of producers and editors around the country are forced to rank what’s worth paying attention to and what they can safely ignore.