Five Ways to Build Psychological Safety on Your Team
I have an awesome colleague named Lindsay and we trust each other. Something that helped us get to where we are is psychological safety. One of the ways that I know such a thing exists is because Lindsay felt comfortable…
Bring Doughnut Economics to Your Community
In 2018, Oxford Economist Kate Raworth introduced the world to a different sort of doughnut. This doughnut is a visual representation of a sustainable economic system that balances the needs of people and the planet. The inner ring represents the…
Nervited
When humans feel the combination of nervousness and excitement we are nervited. Our team was feeling nervited last week because we delivered a conference for 600 employees that blended inspirational speakers, peer-learning, good food, and digital creativity. We felt nervous…
Five Tips for Navigating Worklife Complexity
Worklife is complex. Whether we are making sense of hybrid work and its impact on the employee experience, raising a family, or changing career paths, every day we make decisions amidst complexity. Recognizing this reality and the impact that it…
Five Ways to be a Human Being at Work
Work puts too much emphasis on process, transactions, technology, outcomes, outputs, and the bottom line. Even though we work with people we really like and respect, we often treat our colleagues differently on the job than we do our friends….
Five Tips for Being the Life of the Party!
About two years ago I received a really great compliment from my friend Alison: “John, I just thought of a perfect job for you – Party Initiator.” From a very young age I’ve always had a knack for exuding contagious…
How to Rise Above Gossip
Seth Godin, as he does, wrote a great blog post about office gossip. Eleanor Roosevelt – allegedly – said that “great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” People talking about people is often referred to…
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,…
10 Things we Need to Make Work From Anywhere Happen
This Wall Street Journal article was bouncing around the Internet earlier this week. CEOs and Executive Directors from Vancouver to Nairobi to Singapore are evaluating the impact of Covid-19 on work, particularly the emerging reality of our “work from anywhere”…
Governance
The world is less democratic than it was 15 years ago. Peoples’ growing malaise with democracy has been a disturbing trend that dates back to the 1970s. The way we govern our communities – neighbourhood associations, corporate boards, regional elections…









