It’s not surprising that an organization’s culture often is compared to a garden. After all, culture and cultivate share the same root word. The key to creating a great culture, then, is obvious: Cover it in manure, soak it with water, and pray for sunshine. OK, it’s probably better to plant the right seeds in the best soil, nurture the garden with love, and celebrate your fruits, vegetables, and blooms...

The world is full of people who call themselves leaders, but woefully short of Extreme Leaders. Perhaps you think that’s OK. Extreme Leaders, you might reason, are only needed for extreme circumstances – a soldier taking fellow troops into battle, a Sherpa guiding climbers up Mount Everest, or a quarterback directing a potential game-winning drive in the Super Bowl. Everyday life, you might say, requires only ev...

Heshie Segal is my friend. I don’t mean that as a disclaimer, but as a prime example of what you’re about to learn from her. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar famously estimated that humans can maintain a social circle of no more than 150 people, with no more than five people in our “closest layer” of friends. For entrepreneurs who depend on networks of relationships, that might seem a bit di...

If you want to learn what it takes to become a great mentor, one place to look is at the great mentors who’ve influenced your success. As a motivational speaker, my mentors (and I’ve had several including Jim Kouzes, Tom Peters, and Terry Pearce) had more confidence in my abilities than I did, and always looked for opportunities to shove me into the training and speaking spotlight. If you don’t think you h...

Many so-called thought leaders spew a jargon-laced mish-mash of business nonsense that goes something like this: If your core competencies and best practices aren’t producing buy-in and you feel the need to empower more synergies so you can move the needle to avoid a burning platform in your ecosystem, then you need to leverage your outside-the-box thinking and make hay with a robust, scalable solution. Here&rsq...

The last person who had a stellar career without help from anyone whatsoever was … well … no one. So it makes no sense to lead as if the people around you never need help getting where they, and you, want them to go. In fact, just the opposite is true. If you want to create leaders who are Greater Than Yourself – and that should be your goal, by the way – then you need to express a deep belief in p...

Love has always been good business. No, I’m not talking about the world’s oldest profession. That’s not love. I’m talking about the kind of love that leads to wedding bells – businesses that cater to people who want to find true love or who have found it and want to celebrate it. But what can those types of love-focused businesses teach us about how we can use love as a principle that shapes...

Even the most optimistic leaders among us are reminded almost daily that we live in a mixed up, messed up world. Indeed, that’s why Extreme Leadership is so vital–in our work, with our families, and in our communities. Frank DeAngelis is one of those leaders who reminds us our strength is not displayed by achieving great things in a perfect world, but by our resiliency in a world that brings storms. His leade...

Movement Mortgage has adopted one of those sweet-sounding mission statements that doesn’t tell you much about what the company does but that tells you plenty about who they think they are. It goes like this: “We exist to love and value people by leading a Movement of Change in our industry, corporate cultures, and communities.” Those types of mission statements are great, but they always cause me to ask...

How do you know if you love what you do for a living? It’s a simple question that seems straight-forward enough, but it’s not always easy to answer. Many people would instinctively say something like, “I just know” or “I can just feel that it’s right” or “I definitely know the opposite – when I don’t love what I do.” Those aren’t wrong answers, th...