Archive

You're closer to the water than you think

Helping at work costs less than you fear, and compounds more than you'd expect.

Cancel the noise.

Protecting your capacity to handle pressure is a quiet lever of influence. So is protecting other people's.

You Keep Reaching for the White Cauliflower

Your sense of "normal" creates a quiet bias that skews your assessment of merit and costs you influence.

The Day You Got Eaten

What a centuries-old Arabic fable taught me about office politics

Hard-boil Your Emotions

How you get ready before a conversation decides whether people come back for the next one.

I Couldn’t Stop Watching His Hands

What the calmest people are doing that has nothing to do with nerve.

Talking About Other People

The Alpha Wolf Myth

Authority can buy you attendance. It can't buy you the thing you actually need.

The Right Comparison Changes Everything

The Fastest Way to Sound Credible

Every expert eventually reaches the edge of what they know. Credibility is built by what happens next.

You Can Help a Thousand. You Can Only Carry One.

Being needed and being effective are not the same thing