“Gratitude is the attitude that sets the altitude for living.” – James MacDonald With the holiday season approaching and Canada’s Thanksgiving right around the corner, let’s take a moment to talk about gratitude. How often have you thought, or even heard yourself saying you’d like to be more content? More satisfied? More appreciative of the […]
John Robertson
Transform Your Traditional Crisis Response
One simple fact of leadership is, at some point, you will experience a critical moment- be it a crisis, change, or growth- within your workplace or organization. The important question is this: how will you handle it? As the corporate landscape becomes increasingly difficult to navigate in a post-pandemic landscape, organizations are seeing higher turnover […]
Authority is Essential to Genuine Leadership
Last month, I discussed four qualities that are important for a leader to have within an organization: Authenticity, Commitment, Enthusiasm, and Service (ACES). However, there’s another quality that successful leaders need to have, and that quality is authority. When we think of authority in a modern context, we might get the impression that authority relates to […]
Authentic Leadership: Substance Over Form
When you think of leadership, what qualities come to mind first? Your instinct might be to say title, education, status, or some other similar characteristic. This is the conception of leadership that many people have. Great leaders are the type of people that get stuff done, command a room, and know what they want and […]
Reframing Wellness Through Crisis
It’s going to be okay. You will get through this. You just need to get over this! How many different expressions have you and I been told over the years that are as useless as these? Despite knowing how little these phrases do to actually solve a problem, people seem to offer them anyway. When […]
Leadership: Finding the ACES Within Your Organization
How do you measure leadership qualities? You can probably identify forces within your organization that create greater buy-in, trust, and engagement… or those forces that have the exact opposite effect. These forces possess qualities that you and I can develop, but when leadership misses these, it works like a stone in the shoe for growth […]
The Truth About the Bark and the Bite
Have you ever heard someone claim that a person is “all bark but no bite”? Or what about the saying, “Their bark is worse than their bite”? What if I told you that these phrases can apply to how we view crises and conflict in our workplace? This phrase compares a person to a dog; if […]
Extinguish Your Workplace Root Fires, Not Just Brush Fires
Have you ever thought of your workplace like a forest? As a leader in your workplace, one of your greatest responsibilities is cultivating a healthy, productive work environment for your team. Part of that is being able to identify and address the various workplace “fires” that can ignite and spread dysfunction through your organization. Over […]
Dealing with conflict requires a values-based approach
Conflict within the workplace can be frustrating to handle if you don’t have the right tools. Not only can workplace conflict decrease productivity, but if not addressed correctly, workplace conflict leads to bitterness and resentment among coworkers, creating an unhealthy environment at best- and a toxic environment at worst. Transforming conflict to be productive means […]
Values-Driven Leadership in a Status-Driven Culture
I AM vs I HAVE Leaders What does it take to successfully model leadership in today’s current workplace culture? Some of the first things that come to mind might be power, confidence, charisma, intelligence, and other such characteristics. However, being a great leader requires more than just the right skills, a series of checklists, or […]