Category: Leadership
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My Kryptonite
Days ago one of the staff in our organization lost her sister after a long and valiant fight against cancer. I went to the visitation and looked at a roomful of mourners, at a woman too young to be in a casket, at photos on screens and displays, all showing someone full of life and…
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Vulnerability
As a leader, as a friend, as a partner, a parent, a colleague, we build relationships. I often say, and fully mean the words, that life is all about relationships. It is how we accomplish things, how we solve problems, how we enrich our life experiences, how we perceive, and appreciate, the world around us.…
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A Way Back
So many difficult moments this week with others that loom in the nearly immediate future, making it hard to shake them from your thoughts. The tragic anniversary of 9/11 prompted so many reflections about where we each were on that day, the way we felt, the impact on our world. A political assassination that, regardless…
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Rescues
Over the course of the last 30 plus years, we’ve never had a household without a dog or dogs. Growing up, when we asked for pets, we got a definite and vehement “NO” from our dad. One year, he relented and we had a brief and unsuccessful experiment with goldfish. Turned out none of us…
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Enduring
One of the things I believe fully is that life is all about relationships. They are at the core of our quality of life and the richness of our experience. They are also at the core of our ability to achieve in our professional lives. Whether you believe it or not, existing in isolation, succeeding…
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Creating Change
If I had to choose one thing to be, one way to define myself in my career, it would be as someone who believes in, supports and wants to create change. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, “when you know better, do better” and there is always more to know and there are always ways to improve.…
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Moments
I’m not sure why, as a child, I remember being conscious of the fragility of every moment. Perhaps it was, when I was 10, watching my father grieve for his only sister, a loss I felt but didn’t fully understand. He’d devoted a year of his life to helping care for her, as she lost…
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Sorry not Sorry
Our lives are filled with so many competing priorities. We have to focus on our work and we can’t forget about the priority of our families. We have to practice self care and also care for others. We need to protect our families and ourselves and, simultaneously, care about the safety of the world. I…
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A Body in Motion
I have come to believe that the one of the most important things we can do for ourselves is the simplest one, just move. When we are not physically active, everything changes, everything declines, and physical ability is the least of it. In the work I do with older adults, it is clear that inactivity…
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Modifying Mantras
For as long as I can remember, even before I knew the term “mantra,” I had a phrase that I often repeated to myself. There are lots of reasons that I made these words my watchword but, primarily, they are the result of a lifetime of working to self-manage my ADHD. My mother’s favorite admonition,…
With a Full Heart 