Strategic planning doesn’t begin with a three-day retreat or a glossy 60-page deck. It begins when you, as a leader, decide to pause, ask better questions, and invite your people into the conversation. When strategy is grounded in what you already know, tested against real data and real voices, and captured in a living document, it becomes one of your most powerful leadership practices instead of another task on the calendar.

When we break bread together, there is a generosity of spirit present. In organizations that are contracting in conflict, pain, misunderstandings - we as practitioners want to create the conditions for generosity of spirit, and food is such a good way to do that. Leaders who create those conditions by bringing pizza or donuts to work, who offer lunch or even a birthday cake - they  display that generosity of spirit, and they model it through these simple actions and offerings

It is hard for leaders to trust the theories about how to do things differently. After all, what we learn throughout our lives in schools, universities, churches, and workplaces, is that winning means that we dominate the field. We are so accustomed to the idea that leadership means having all the answers and that our job is to tell people what to do and how to do it, and to discipline with consequences like termination when they do not. But that is an exhausting way to work.