Essays on creative leadership,
culture, and the human side of work.
Published weekly, with an original illustration. Two series: Becoming and Advisory Notes.
Hold those dates and please join us… With Covid, negotiations have become completely virtual. Jessica and I have always recommended strongly for conducting negotiations in person whenever possible. But here we are in a Covid dominated world. So, we created our seminar – Negotiations for Creatives – to help all of us become better at getting what we need in spite…
Struggling with asking for what you need? Jessica Knapp and I created this seminar to answer the burning need… Negotiations for Creatives – January 11-15, 10-noon, and only $200 per attendee – has been structured to help creatives understand how to turn our natural discomfort asking for the money into a strength. A discomfort increased during Covid.…
Negotiation in the age of Covid-19 I could see that he was already flipping through a document when the Zoom window opened. Then he took off his glasses as if in deep thought. Must be my proposal, I thought. Shit. I could feel the perspiration beginning to form. I’d planned to walk him through my…
We’ve never experienced trauma like what we’re experiencing now. When you’re negotiating, and you’re in some level of panic, it can feel like it would be so easy to tell a little lie to advance your position, or to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation. Maybe your work has dried up. Or you’ve been let go and…
Yes, I’m creative. But I have to make a living, too. How? When I was running The Leonhardt Group and waxing fancifully about some new opportunity, our CFO Tracy Wald used to say, “show me the money.” That always jerked me back into the reality that we were a cash flow business. If the cash…
Hierarchical System We live in a hierarchical system, where we’ve been trained from birth to respect those who are in charge. To be deferential. To respect authority. To do as the authority tells us to do. To be afraid to not do as we’re told. Pleasurable work We love the work that we do. In…
Standing between you and the offer is a hard-driving recruiter who’ll decide whether you get to meet with the hiring manager. What now? As soon as Mike walked into the room, the recruiter opened with, “I can’t believe you’re 15 minutes late.” Then, in a louder voice: “Don’t you have any respect for the company, for…