KSTorrey

I talk a LOT about the power of choice in the leadership series that I create and facilitate. You can read about the Magic Wand of Destiny here if you aren’t already familiar with the concept. When discussing how to effectively wield the Magic Wand of Destiny, I draw pictures of a leaf, a boulder, and a sailboat. You can see above that my drawing talents are limited! We can choose to be like a…

I tell a story in leadership workshops about how three fictional people face a change in leadership and direction at their organization. Jane embraces change. When a new opportunity comes along, she is ready to make the most of it. She quickly learns about the new goals and works to create ways to implement them. Sean doesn’t mind change at work if he believes it’s worthwhile and going to be…

Feedback Is a Gift

It is common to feel defensive when we get feedback about our performance or decisions. Once when I was listening to a presentation, I pointed out that it was sexist to include a picture of a company founder with a Victoria’s Secret model when talking about a company’s achievements. The person giving the presentation got flustered and defensive. He responded with a comment about wanting to…

What CAN I Do?

Back in 2009, I had a brain abnormality corrected. The doctor threaded a tube up through an artery in my groin area, past my heart, through my carotid artery, past the jugular vein, and into my brain. There he deposited five tiny platinum coils to create a wall between arterial and venous blood that was mixing in a fistula.

For reasons I’ve never fully understood, that abnormality that I’d had…

So. Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving celebrations this year are going to be different for many of us. The bigger the celebration in the past, the more different it is going to be.

The pandemic has forced us to do many things differently. For example, I no longer facilitate leadership workshops in person. I am now fluent in Zoom.

I am grateful that many of my clients have decided to move to a virtual…

November 13 was World Kindness Day. The various posts about kindness reminded me that kindness is an essential leadership quality.

Leaders often push back at the idea that kindness matters. They say, “I don’t have to be kind. I’m not their best friend!” True, we definitely should not be an employee’s best friend.

However, we don’t have to be someone’s friend to be kind to them. Holding high…

State a Positive Need

It’s not uncommon for us to complain about things. Humans are hardwired to notice and remember things that they see as wrong.

Sometimes we see something that isn’t efficient enough or an action that challenges our value system. Maybe someone’s thoughtlessness sets us off.

Complaining is natural – and not terribly useful.

If we are having a disagreement and I only tell you what’s annoying me, you…

It seems that motivation is pretty thin on the ground for a lot of people right now – myself included! It’s time to pull out a trick from the leadership bag.

One of my goals is to clean the kitchen each evening before I go to bed. Lately, I haven’t been doing such a great job.

I just can’t find the motivation to get myself up off the sofa and do the dinner dishes. It really doesn’t take very…

I’ve been rewatching the new Picard series – which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I am a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, and I love Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

In this new series, I am particularly taken by a group of Romulan warrior nuns called the Qowat Milat. Don’t worry! You don’t have to understand anything in the last sentence to get value from the rest of the blog. (But…

Find the Bright Spots

“Finding the Bright Spots” is one of my favorite concepts, and it comes from the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Dan and Chip Heath. In one chapter, the authors tell the story of a young man charged with reducing the number of malnourished children in Vietnam.

The young man had little money and no power to deal with things like poor sanitation and poverty. Instead, he…

"In the past, I’d have seen the dusty windowsill, been bothered by it, but ignored it until I found the time to clean the window, the blinds, and the windowsill. Everything was a project in my mind that had to be done to perfection."

When I was a young mom with young children, I struggled to keep our home neat and clean. The sinks in the bathrooms would get mold of some color or scale around the base of the faucets. I hated to drop anything around the toilet. Yuk! The kitchen was usually cleaner but very cluttered. And there were toys everywhere.

When I did clean, it was with fervor. When I cleaned the bathroom it was an…

Behavior Is a Form of Communication

In leadership seminars, I talk about the three types of communication – verbal, nonverbal, and symbolic. You can read about these three types here. I am ready to add another category.

My daughter-in-law and I are both working from home and hear snippets of each other’s Zoom meetings as we both care for my grandson. She works with special needs kids and talks to their parents regularly. One day…

We’ve been discussing the MBTI. We talked about the history and overview of the instrument and then the important considerations of the Extrovert-Introvert scale, which describes how we get our energy. We talked about the Sensing-Intuitive scale, which describes how we perceive the world. Last week, we discussed the Thinking-Feeling scale, which describes the values that we use to judge the…

We’ve been discussing the MBTI. We talked about the history and overview of the instrument and then the important considerations of the Extrovert-Introvert scale. Last week, we talked about the Sensing-Intuitive scale, which describes how we perceive the world. Now, let’s discuss the Thinking-Feeling scale, which describes the values that we use to judge the world.

Thinking types (T’s) are…

We’ve been discussing the MBTI. We talked about the history and overview of the instrument and then the important considerations of the Extrovert-Introvert scale. Now we are going to discuss the Sensing-Intuitive scale, which describes how we perceive the world.

Sensing types (S’s) live in the moment. They use their five senses to soak in the world around them. S’s like concrete facts and…

We’ve broadly discussed the MBTI and its history. Now, I want to talk about each of the four MBTI scales from a leadership perspective. The first scale is the Extravert-Introvert Scale. As Jung began studying people’s behavior, he first noticed how involved they were in the outside world.

He separated people into Extraverts (E) and Introverts (I). I’s are mostly interested in ideas and concepts…

"I know that not everyone is an MBTI fan, but I call the MBTI workshop my “Give Peace a Chance” workshop."

 Whatever the circumstances of your life, the understanding of type can make your perceptions clearer, your judgments sounder, and your life closer to your heart’s desire. – Isabel Briggs Myers

I am an accredited facilitator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and administer it to many of my leadership participants. I know that not everyone is an MBTI fan, but I call the MBTI workshop my…