Tag: Psychological Safety

Leadership

Why the Best Leaders Build Structures That Disappear

During my regular walk yesterday, I passed a building under construction and saw that it was surrounded by a web of metal poles, planks, and cross-braces wrapping the structure like a second skin or in a word – Scaffolding. And when I saw it and thought about what role it plays in the construction or maintenance of the building, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities with leadership. Here is what I think scaffolding can teach us about being an effective leader or a leader worth following. What Scaffolding Actually Does Before we stretch the metaphor, it is worth being […]

Leadership

What Can Leaders Learn from Improv Comedy?

Premise It was a Sunday evening, and we had decided to go attend a theatre performance. It was not a typical performance, well rehearsed, with carefully scripted dialogues, choreographed movements or a strong background music. Instead, two people walked onto a bare stage and asked us, the audience, some simple questions to come up with a scene, a place, some characters and a situation. There was no script. No rehearsal. No safety net. They had to act out the scene and move the situation forward. An actor starts the show and says something absurd (since it is a comedy show). […]