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Bestselling author of 14 books, Kevin Kruse, has teamed up with EQ expert Evan Watkins to write “Emotional Intelligence: 52 Strategies.” With a free validated EQ assessment and 52 highly practical strategies, this book will show you how to: 1/ Discover your strengths and weaknesses 2/ Stay calm under pressure 3/ Influence and persuade 4/ Build strong relationships through empathy 5/ Resolve conflict easily with collaboration and negotiation strategies 6/ Improve your decision-making 7/ Lead better by motivating others and fostering teamwork Pick up your copy here - bit.ly/4f1QMgO

Great way of thinking about the future direction of leadership:

Great leadership development = a little learning + a lot of practice Somehow that gets reversed. All. The. Time.

The best leadership development programs are like mullets: Short and to the point up front (delivery), long and flowy in the back (tail of reinforcement).

Breaking down the "I" of the BANI model—Incomprehensible.

Apply each of these stages of failure to your leadership development programs:

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest, most influential writers of the last 50 years. She’s won a National Book Award, a Pulitzer, and a Nobel prize. But when she was asked how she fits into the literary canon, she didn’t hesitate to reject the question entirely. “That’s the narrative talk. The real truth is there are a lot of people writing all the time. I’m one. “It’s true that I have a certain celebrity status…but that doesn’t confuse other writers and that certainly doesn’t confuse me,” she said. “It’s just a little story of rank. And I will not put myself in a competitive relationship with another book or another author. That’s not why I’m writing… "I’m writing because I’ve got to say this stuff in this way. And find a newer and better way to say this stuff.” Takeaway: Your purpose protects you—from comparison, jealousy, and ego In our EQ workshops, we always talk about knowing your values and your purpose as a pillar strategy for self-management. Purpose can: - make tough decisions simple. - help you zoom out and see past your current emotions & situation - help you focus on what really matters (like the writing itself for Morrison) It’s the reason Morrison didn’t waste her time on comparisons. And the reason the question drove her directly to talking about why she writes (even though he didn’t ask). ___ P.S. Follow me, Evan Watkins, for more EQ posts like this one. ___ Sources: 1/ Toni Morrison interview on "Love" (2003) ___ #emotionalintelligence

Just got off a Zoom with the CHRO at one of our big US government clients, and his team is scurrying trying to comply with Trump’s executive orders. They have to change every instance of the word “sex” to the word “gender”, remove pronouns from their email footers, and cancel ERGs and inclusion programs. This post isn’t about politics. It’s just a hot-off-the-press example of the world having gone BANI—Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible. Specifically, this is about Nonlinear. Which means no more traditional cause and effect. No more predicting what will happen next. Odd outcomes. Black swans that seem to be landing all the time. In other words, welcome to the era of daily, “WTF?” Examples: DeepSeek releases a new AI platform and erases a trillion dollars from the US stock market, a Reddit forum about Gamestop topples a hedge fund, Trump wins the election and government employees need to edit their email footers. Like I said, WTF? So what can we do as leaders when things are incomprehensible? ?? BUILD EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS Your quarterly KPIs are too slow - you need daily inputs, from as many places as possible. When Nvidia's stock tanked on DeepSeek's release, the warning signs were in developer forums and research papers weeks earlier. ?? EXPERIMENT DON’T PLAN Stop expecting your 5-year forecast (or one year budget cycle) to survive contact with reality. Think 90-day sprints. Think of multiple bets. Think of optionality. ?? INCLUDE SLACK This overlaps with responding to Brittleness. How can you plan for the unplanned? You can’t. But you can build slack into your budget, your schedule, and your staffing so you can respond quickly. ___ If the US government isn’t even slow and predictable anymore, do you think your business is? You need to let go of your straight lines and lean into the messy, unpredictable swirl of modern business. As leaders we won’t thrive by being the best planners—we need to be the best adapters. I find this concept fascinating and I’m still working it out in my own mind. What are YOUR ideas? Let me know in the comments below. ___ Find this interesting?? ? Discuss it at next week’s team meeting (tag your colleagues in the comments). ?? Repost it to add value to your own LinkedIn followers. ?? ?Follow me, Kevin Kruse, for more posts like this one. ___ #Leadershipdevelopment #Leadership #Futurecasters

Had a fantastic conversation late last year with Kevin Kruse and his commuity of leadership practitioners about the power of peer coaching—why it works and how to build an effective program in your organization. Big thanks to Kevin and Evan Watkins for turning that discussion into an article for Forbes! You did an incredible job capturing the key takeaways and making it easy for anyone to get started with practical, no-nonsense advice. If you're curious about peer coaching, coaching skills or looking to cascade a coaching culture in your own team or organization, I’d love to connect!

It’s time to abandon the 40-year-old 70-20-10 learning framework. Let's replace it with a simpler more actionable 3-to-1 framework. 70-20-10 puts the emphasis on on-the-job which is great, but every CLO and director of learning I’ve spoken to in the last year says they aren’t doing it. 70% of their budget, 70% of their design time, is NOT spent on application activities. It’s spent on the formal piece (ie, workshops and e-learning). My humble suggestion is that we adopt a “3-to-1” learning framework. It’s simple and actionable: for every 1 formal learning objective, you should design and facilitate at least 3 on-the-job application exercises. Simple example related to teaching Effective Feedback: * Week 1: Live workshop to learn and practice * Week 2: Participants ask team members to give THEM feedback * Week 3: Participants give team members POSITIVE feedback * Week 4: Participants give CONSTRUCTIVE feedback End of each week: Participants submit a red/yellow/green light reflection exercise (ie, what went well, what didn't, questions, etc.). It’s putting the focus on HABITS not LEARNING. It’s reimagining our roles, not as instructional designers but as behavioral designers. ___ PS - I truly believe programmatic micro-coaching and behavioral nudges (like we do at LEADx) are the key to overcoming the Knowing-Doing Gap. ___ PPS - I know I've posted this video before, but I'll stop posting it when the numbers improve! ___ #leadershipdevelopment