You don't glob all the mustard or ketchup on one part of your hot dog, do you? No, you distribute it all over. And that's exactly how leading should happen in an organization. [Tweet "Distributed leadership is a high-quality, high-ingenuity interaction between people that leads to creative-solution making. @davefleming360"] Who doesn't want more of that? Well, to [...]
To be ingenious people, we have to respond to challenges and opportunities with resilience and engage change with flexibility. Emotions are a source of great energy. Without emotion, action is flat and one-dimensional. Emotion infuses action with passion and intention. However, emotional energy can turn negative and even destructive. When emotions are corrosive, they [...]
Adapted from the book, Tribal Alchemy: Turning What You Have Into What You Need. (2016). Dave Fleming. A Tribal Alchemy Resource. We’ve got to figure out a way to put a square peg in a round hole. Deep into the Apollo 13 crisis, this iconic mandate was given to a group of NASA [...]
Do a quick replay of some of your life and work highlights from last week. Let your mind go back to different days and remember a few events. As you remember, ask this question: During the events of the past week, did my emotions support or derail my effectiveness? It's likely that, for [...]
How's your physical breath? Unfortunately, if you really want to know, you have to ask some brave soul close enough to have an opinion. If there's no one willing to venture near enough, that might also be a clue. The sad reality is that other people usually know we have bad breath before we [...]
A number of years ago a friend asked me to speak to her college art class about artful living. The college was located in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I arrived early—which seems to be a dysfunction of mine— and decided to walk around the streets of the city. At one point, I noticed a cluster of [...]
I live my life and do my work in the shadow of a simple but powerful principle: the way you enter a situation has a lot to do with the way it will turn out. [Tweet "the way you enter a situation has a lot to do with the way it will turn out. [...]
Authors: Dave Fleming and Michael Soto, co-founder of Spark Collaboration -- Think back to the moment you met a person who is now important in your life. Can you remember where you were? Do you remember the circumstances surrounding the meeting? Do you remember what you talked about? How did that first encounter "happen," and [...]
Stuck? Constrained? Limited? We often chafe at the constraints brought on by challenges. But what if the constraint itself is part of the way through the challenge? What if the solution is hiding in the problem? What if freedom could be found in the limitation? In order to turn the constraint of a challenge into [...]
It's spring training season where I live (in Fort Myers, Florida). The Boston Red Sox train here in a facility lovingly known as Fenway South. Now, imagine a player strolling into the facility today and declaring that he's done with personal conditioning. "I've had it," he begins. "I'm tired of all this. So... no more running, [...]
