There’s been an explosion of reality TV contests – the Next Big Whatever Star. While the chance to become a celebrity lures contestants, I think it’s the grueling rite of passage that lures viewers. Last month we had exams at the Process Work Institute, which were fairly intense 3 day affairs, with 5 different exams [...]

A friend posted this great video clip of Viktor Frankl on Facebook. What an extraordinary man he was, and what a treat to see him in action.

Frankl’s analogy of learning to fly and how he learned to aim ‘north’ to arrive at his destination, reminded me of my high school yearbook quote. In the 70s, [...]

Last week news broke that 15 year-old Phoebe Prince killed herself after months of harassment and bullying by her classmates at a South Hadley, MA high school. School administrators initially denied knowing anything about it, even though Prince’s mother had complained to school officials, and a renowned bullying expert had been called in to consult [...]

I asked my trainer and owner of Recreate Fitness, Nathan, if he would coach a “cross-fit club” with my 5th grade boys from the I Have a Dream foundation. It’s one of my kids and leadership clubs I’ve been doing. It’s definitely been fun, but also challenging. Some of the games and activities require technique, [...]

I spent the first week of January in Victoria, B.C., at a conference that brought together leaders from two very different sectors: social change agents and leaders in the personal development field. Our goal was to develop a framework for a personal development program to support social change agents and activists in their work. On [...]

The last decade is a strong contender for the title “the decade of dubious leadership.” From the handling of Katrina to the collapse of the banking system, it was a disastrous decade for leadership. Ironically, it was also a decade during which more was written on leadership than ever before. I’m hoping for a better [...]

In Brisbane this week and I just finished teaching a seminar on the Unfinished Work of Ancestors, exploring  how our relative ease and/or discomfort in the world is influenced by generational issues and attitudes, known and unknown, seen and unseen. The wars, famines, forced migrations, poverty, and challenges of our ancestors still reverberate through us [...]

I’m getting clearer on what this blog is about. I have started to call it, to myself at least, Learning and Leading. While leadership and power is a main focus, looking over the posts, I see that a great deal of what I write about involves the problems of learning to lead. And that reminds [...]

The Process Work Institute is about to begin the process of applying for regional accreditation. My job is to help spearhead this process, and one of the tasks is to create assessments – of the programs, of student progress, of individual courses, and of faculty. I’ve been up to my elbows this summer studying the [...]

There’s a lot of interesting research out there on excellence and superior performance. What accounts for superior performance? Why are some people superstars at what they do, and others just average? The question is pretty interesting, not only for what it says about excellence, but more generally, what it says about learning and development. Gladwell’s [...]