I thought I was alone.

I thought I was afraid.

I thought I would falter.

I thought I would fail.

Until I felt your hand.

Solid and sure. Tender and warm.

Courage and compassion

Kindled like memories

Of an ancient story.

And I knew.

I knew I could not falter and would not fail.

I will never be alone. I do not need to be afraid.

Thank you.

- Karl Edwards, Thanksgiving 2009

It’s over. We’re done. No more.

Labor Day 2009. The day leaders stopped yelling.

Yelling as a “tool” for leaders is one of the great excuses and abuses that persists in the workplace.

It’s an excuse, because yelling is a cover for one’s own inability to either control one’s temper or come up with effective communication alternatives. While occasionally necessary to communicate seriousness, dissatisfaction, and/or anger about work-related dynamics, it is positively never necessary to use yelling to do so.

It’s an abuse because yelling uses the cover of power to get away with a behavior that would not be tolerated from those with less power than you. Because the cover of power is yelling’s only outlet, it is a form of bullying and therefore cowardice.

It’s over.

I‘m putting yellers on notice. Your day is over. Get help or get out. Muster the courage to learn effective alternatives or make way for those who can.

We’re done.

I’m putting anyone who makes excuses for these verbally violent leaders on notice. These are not our great leaders, and those who lionize them as such must stop. You are intentionally ignoring the evidence. While publishing books that claim short term results, you ignore the long term costs and consequences of the high turnover, low morale, bare minimum work efforts, self-protective resistances, retaliatory subterfuges, and antagonistic cultures that spread like cancers throughout these organizations.

No more.

It’s a new day. It will be a day characterized by mutual respect, lofty aspirations, meaningful accountability, shared commitments, trust-based collaborations, and concrete results that outperform anything we’ve ever seen before.

What sort of leader will you be? Not one who yells, I trust.

As you know, one of my favorite questions for leaders is, “Does it matters who’s sitting in the chair?”

The question helps tease out how well a leader knows who is on the team and what each person brings to the table.

Most leaders look to their organizational charts and each specific job description to describe the make-up of their team. But such a view is only half the picture.

Less than half the picture actually.

How would you evaluate an employee who understood less than half of the issues related to their job? Who didn’t have an in depth knowledge of their firm’s assets?

Negligent? Incompetent? A failure?

Sadly, many leaders not only don’t know who is on their team, but boast of the fact. They call such intentional blindness “maintaining objectivity” and “staying focused on the bottom line.”

It is, in fact, negligence. The most astounding failure in modern business history.

These leaders are making decisions of huge significance without (more…)

Does anyone really play their weaker players when serious about winning the game?

It’s a nice sentiment. But if victory is at stake, rare (probably non-existent) is the coach who decides to extend an opportunity for challenge to anyone other than their best.

But how do your weaker players become stronger players when they get no game time?

Experience is a vital and irreplaceable form of training.

So do you risk the game on building a stronger future? Do you even have a future if you don’t build your weaker players?

But will you have a future if you don’t play to win now? What if the game ends early because you bet on the future and lost in the present?

I don’t know that there’s a definitive answer to these questions.

And that’s the point. The conundrum. The choice every leader faces. The risk every leader must take. Does take. Takes whether he or she knows it or not.

What are you doing to develop your weaker players? Is it worth it? How do you decide how much of the present game to risk on the future game?

How do you deal with this leader’s conundrum?

On your side,

- Karl

What feelings does this picture stir?

Reflect for a moment before reading on.

Words matter.

Even words to ourselves.

Especially words to ourselves.

We tend to underestimate the power of words. We casually throw out phrases like, “I’m a klutz” or “I’m bad with names” or “I’m just an average Joe or a plain Jane.” We aren’t totally serious in one sense, but in another we are expressing some inner dis-ease we are feeling.

Before going into how such talk might not be serving us well, I want to affirm that the feelings, experiences, and beliefs about ourselves that underlie much of our negative self-talk are very real. I do not want to minimize or invalidate the reality of those feelings, experiences or beliefs in the least.

We do ourselves two disservices, though, when we are not gracious with our self-talk. We buy into a lie, and we let ourselves off the hook.

First, we buy into a lie—a false frame of reference that is (more…)

The awkward irony of a non-denominational church is the assumption that we can be more affiliated with all other Christians by affiliating ourselves with no other Christians.

- Karl Edwards

Words are power.

Their impact often out of proportion with their intent.

Denigrating words wound long after their issuer has been identified as mean-spirited. Validating words generate exponentially more energy, creativity, loyalty and cooperation than ever went into voicing them.

Negative labels are word weapons used to diminish, marginalize, and rob others of their voice.

Calling out the positive attributes and contributions of others are investments which inspire confidence, build trust, and deepen credibility.

You are more powerful than you imagined.

To what end are you currently using the power of words?

Reflecting on the power of words, how might you go about using your words differently?

Happy New Year!

Let’s choose to make 2009 a very good year.

Let’s make an intentional decision about what will make 2009 “good” for us.

The new year is not something that is going to happen to us, but something we are going to make happen. While much is out of our control, there is much to choose, intend and purpose.

Are you “waiting to see” if 2009 will be better than 2008?

Join me in actively participating in the form that 2009 will take, both for your own sake and the sake of those you love.

Happy New Year!

- Karl Edwards

The distractions are many.

At best the economy feels fragile, though for some it has collapsed. Many of us are hustling to keep our current jobs or secure our next job before this one disappears.

The holidays are upon us with their strange mix of frantic activity and pronounced loneliness. We feel fragile ourselves.

This year we prepare for the arrival of yet another politician who has promised hope and change. We greet the possibility as if this were the first time a world leader has ever offered such, and we look forward with enthusiasm to the coming inauguration of a better future.

Interesting that during this particular Christmas season we are looking to the most powerful leader in the world (maybe even in the history of the world) for hope instead of the powerless infant of Bethlehem.

Understandable, but the story of hope and change through the centuries has oddly accompanied the powerless, not the powerful.

Powerful world leaders come and go, but the memory, impact and inspiration of one particular child endures.

Before you rely on the reigns of power as a source of hope, consider the Christ child who was born powerless and died powerless, and who has inspired life- and world-changing hope for millennia.

Have you noticed? Starbucks has declared war on its regular customers.

Their store remodels of late are stripping out the hospitality that used to make an extended visit to Starbucks irresistibly attractive.

In an short-sighted attempt to increase turnover, they have decided there shall be no space for the self-employed, the writers, the consultants and other independent operators who have enjoyed the tables and power outlets which invited us to stay for an hour or two.

Granted it’s their property and their decision for what sort of clientele they design. While their efforts to chase away those of us who might overstay our welcome will certainly succeed, I question whether our absence will result in an increase in walk-through customers they seem to prefer.

Losing some of their most enthusiastic evangelists, they change the alternative facing their remaining prospects. If the choice for good coffee is between getting in and out at Starbucks or in and out of McDonalds, McDonalds is the “in and out” winner.

It was wonderful while it lasted. Thank you for the delightful place to work for so many years. But I get the message. I won’t bring my clients to Starbucks anymore. We’ll leave what spartan space remains to all those new customers who need a place to sit while waiting for their drinks to be prepared.

If they show up.