Leading Thoughts for November 20, 2025

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Nick Bare on the value of running:

“So, why run? It is versus you. You keep driving through the little pieces of pain that you’re experiencing in your legs. Those pieces go a long way to developing something inside of you. Your lungs burn when you first get started and you begin gasping for air as you attempt to move your legs faster than they can sustain. Running is humbling. Running teaches us discipline, focus, and the power of consistent action. Running builds confidence. And running creates opportunities for mental clarity that I haven’t been able to unlock anywhere in my entire life. It is so much more than just “running.”

Source: Go One More: Find the Clarity to Make Intentional, Life-Changing Choices

II.

Entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano on surrounding yourself with compounders:

“Surround yourself with compounders. Compounders are people who focus on compounding knowledge, health, wealth, and deep relationships over decades. These friends are hard to find, but invaluable when you do. They will force you to level up your game, Conversations with these individuals are higher quality. Their success will inspire you to accomplish more. And you will get the added benefit of learning from your successful friends’ wins and losses along the way.”

Source: How To Live An Extraordinary Life

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:30 PM
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The Participation Revolution: Turning Customers into Co-Creators and Co-Producers

THE new hyper-digital age will see a significant shift towards participation branding in what some regard as the Participation Age. As consumers increasingly rely on one another for feedback and input on what and where to buy products and services, the best brands invite consumers to participate in brand-building. This participation could involve a range of actions, from co-creation of product design to customer-led innovation efforts, user-generated ads and promotions, and people-powered influencer marketing programs. Notably, each of these actions has the potential to positively influence customer engagement.

The participation branding approach co-creates value with customers to effectively deliver greater value.

1. It shifts the focus from the firm as a source of value creation to a partnership between customers and firms that results in value co-creation.
2. Although products may remain the same, the platforms created allow customers to customize and individualize experiences, ensuring that each customer experience is unique. This, in turn, contributes to greater value creation.
3. By enabling customers to co-create products and services, firms serve the needs of heterogeneous groups or allow the firm to serve customers who seek variety in their products, services, or experiences.

The Lego Legacy

Participation branding can serve as a vehicle for researching customers’ needs and requirements. It enhances customers’ identification with the brand, as user-designed products provide a sense of empowerment for those involved in the co-creation process.. Participation branding can enhance consumers’ willingness to pay by evoking feelings of accomplishment and a sense of contribution to the production process.

One example of a brand that effectively practices participation branding is Lego. The Lego Group works to enliven children’s creativity through play and learning. Their mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. The brand’s plastic construction bricks are among the world’s most iconic playthings. Today, Lego provides toys, experiences, and teaching materials for children in more than 140 countries. The brand is now more than just a toy manufacturer; it has been widely recognized as a cultural phenomenon, evidenced by its toys’ broad representation in publications, television, and film, along with artistic and cultural works.

Interestingly, Lego is continually seeking ideas for TV shows, digital videos, and toy sets—all essential for helping the company introduce new products and, consequently, enhance its revenues. For instance, Lego enables people to share their imaginings on a new platform called the ‘Lego World Builder.’ It allows users to propose story worlds, characters, and other ideas by uploading concept art, videos, and descriptions. The Lego Group receives thousands of creative individuals with original ideas for new content and stories each year. Lego World Builder has enabled the company to accelerate the sourcing and development of entire franchises instead of just individual toy sets.

AI and Participation Branding

Participation branding can progress from lower levels of getting customer input, to fostering deeper customer engagement, to co-creation of content and products, to a final stage where the customer becomes fully integrated into the production of all aspects of a brand. AI can enable various tasks involved in participation branding. It can facilitate this process in specific ways as customers engage in co-creating advertising or product development with a brand.

A key factor in selecting customer participation activities is testing new product and campaign ideas that arise from customer input and co-creation opportunities. To achieve this, AI can help generate synthetic personas and A/B testing simulations based on customer input and feedback. Marketers could leverage AI-assisted product co-creation to develop new products or campaigns (e.g., Lego Ideas meets ChatGPT). Current AI tools such as Perplexity AI, Notion AI, ChatGPT for idea generation, Loop11, and Maze (UX testing) can help implement these ideas.

In conclusion, participation branding is a crucial pillar of success in the hyper-digital age. It offers significant promise for brands seeking to strengthen their engagement with customers.

Vanitha Swaminathan is the Thomas Marshall Professor of Marketing and Director, Center for Branding at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business. Her research focuses on branding strategy and the conditions that foster consumer-brand relationships, as well as how firms can successfully design brand strategies—such as co-branding, brand extensions, brand acquisitions, marketing alliances— to strengthen customer loyalty and firm up stock market performance. Currently, her attention is on understanding how brand managers can leverage the power of technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality and Ai to deliver better brand experiences. She also examines how content creators and influencers can help strengthen consumer-brand relationships. She has worked on marketing and branding consulting projects with such companies as The Hershey Company, Kraft Heinz, StarKist, AC Nielsen, GlaxoSmithKline, and Procter & Gamble, and has advised small businesses regarding their digital marketing efforts. In light of her many scholarly and service contributions, the American Marketing Association named her an AMA Fellow in 2024. In 2025, she won the University-wide award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring at the University of Pittsburgh. Her recent book is Hyper-Digital Marketing: Six Pillars of Strategic Brand Marketing in an AI-Powered World (Palgrave-Macmillan). Learn more at profvanitha.com

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:01 PM
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Be a Specialist, Not a Generalist: Why Your Brand Depends on Focus

In a market where clients are under pressure to do more with less, they won’t gamble on generalists. The firms and advisors who thrive are those who carve out a niche and lead it.

HEADLINES expressing how AI is reshaping knowledge work are everywhere. From legal research to tax prep, technology is automating the rote tasks that used to justify armies of junior staff.

Clients are noticing. A 2025 Bloomberg survey of corporate general councils found that 61 percent expect to experiment with AI-powered tools this year, and more than half say they’re scrutinizing external providers to ensure “specialized value” that machines can’t replace.

This is the crux for professional experts. Delivering the work is no longer enough. To grow, you must also sell — and in a climate where clients are questioning every hour billed, they gravitate to advisors they trust with proven authority in a narrow domain.

Generalists, by contrast, are interchangeable. And in the emerging era of AI, they’re not only interchangeable with each other — they’re the first targets for agentic AI. If your value is defined by routine analysis, drafting, or process execution, you are competing with tools that promise to do the same work faster and cheaper.

Specialists, on the other hand, offer judgment, nuance, and pattern recognition that machines can’t as easily replicate.

Why Clients Bet on Specialists

When the stakes are high, buyers want the safest option. That means they look for specialists who solve complex, high-value problems every day.

An Am Law 200 firm recently noted that its food and beverage practice doubled in five years because clients trusted the lawyers’ niche expertise in regulatory matters. Similar stories play out in consulting, accounting, and litigation support: specialists are sought after, while generalists are easy to swap out.

Specialization sends a signal. It tells clients you have depth in their world, you have a nuanced understanding of their challenges, and your unique experience allows you to anticipate what’s coming next. That reduces their risk — and increases your value.

How to Carve Out a Niche

Not sure where to start? Here are three proven steps to build specialist positioning:

1. Audit your past successes. Look at your client list and identify patterns. Which industries, company sizes, or problem types have you consistently excelled in? Your track record reveals where your authority is already strongest and where you have the most credibility.

2. Align with market demand. Specialization works best when it intersects with growth sectors or pressing client needs. For example, firms serving healthcare are seeing a surge in demand as regulations tighten and mergers and acquisitions activity accelerates. If you can navigate that complexity, you’ll not just win work, you’ll become indispensable.

3. Test and refine your message. Start small — publish an insight, lead a roundtable, or host a webinar targeted to your chosen niche. Notice the response. If prospects lean in and connectors echo your positioning, you’re on the right path.

You Can’t Boil the Ocean

Here’s the truth: a generalist must cast a wider net, chasing volume to find opportunity. A specialist has a far better chance of cornering a market. By narrowing the scope of your outreach, you increase your odds of dominating a space rather than being an interchangeable player in a crowded one.

For doer sellers, this matters. With billable hour demands and client work taking priority, you can’t afford random acts of networking. You only have the capacity to maintain a “short list” of 9 to 35 relationships (based on analysis of professional services CRM user data). If your positioning is too broad, you’ll waste those limited slots on relationships that never compound.

The Branding Payoff

Becoming a specialist isn’t just about internal clarity. It’s about external differentiation. The professionals who lead with niche authority are invited to speak at industry events, quoted in trade press, and referred more often. They become the go-to experts in their lane.

Contrast that with the generalist brand: difficult to market, hard to defend, and easy for buyers to replace. If your website or LinkedIn profile lists 12 practice areas or industries served, you’re not signaling focus. You’re signaling “jack of all trades, master of none.”

Practical Moves to Specialize

Here are a few tactical steps to reinforce your specialist brand:

• Update your online presence. Rewrite your bio and LinkedIn headline to highlight your niche clearly.
• Publish narrowly. Create insights, articles, or short posts that solve problems for your specific audience.
• Leverage case studies. Show examples of your work in the space you want to own.
• Invest in visibility. Speak where your niche audience gathers — industry conferences, association panels, or podcasts.
• Curate your network. Choose connectors who have direct access to your target industry or role.

In today’s professional services marketplace, being broad isn’t safe — it’s risky. Focus doesn’t limit you. It frees you. By claiming a niche, you differentiate your brand, elevate your value, and make every minute of business development count.

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David Ackert is co-founder and CEO of Ackert, Inc. and its subsidiary, PipelinePlus. He’s a highly regarded business development thought leader and has pioneered revenue acceleration programs for hundreds of professional services firms around the globe. He has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, the National Review, the Daily Journal, the Wall Street Journal, and others, and his Market Leaders Podcast has won several JD Supra Reader’s Choice Awards. His new book, The Short List: How to Drive Business Development by Focusing on the People Who Matter Most (Greenleaf Book Group, January 28, 2025), is an Amazon bestseller and Gold Winner of the 2025 Nonfiction Book Awards. Learn more at PipelinePlus.com/theshortlist.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:49 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 13, 2025

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Anne-Laura Le Cunff on life as an experiment:

“No matter how good your tool or deliberative your thought process, one thing never changes: There is no right choice. If you’re used to zero-sum thinking, that point of view may frustrate you. But it’s almost impossible to fail when you see everything as an experiment. In a life of experimentation, there is no wrong choice, either. A pact isn’t a destination. It’s a path you want to discover more about yourself and the world. Success and failure are fluid constructs, not fixed labels. If you simply keep going as is, it means you found an ideal groove—amazing! If you decide to stop, it means this direction didn’t feel good—now you know!

“The only failure is to confuse mindless movement with mindful momentum. As long as you keep on adapting, learning, and growing, you are winning.”

Source: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World

II.

Nick Bare on consistency:

“Showing up and being consistently good creates results.

“Consistency compounds. Training for a marathon is hard. Building a business is hard. Being a great husband and father is hard. If you start with the expectation of succeeding right away, you are probably going to be disappointed. Consistency always wins. Show up day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and keep putting in that hard work because it will compound over time. That compounding consistency only gets better and better and better.

“Consistency is the foundation to build everything else on.”

Source: Go One More: Find the Clarity to Make Intentional, Life-Changing Choices

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:17 PM
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The Power of Edges: Why the Overlap Between Teams and Disciplines Drives Innovation

THE most biodiverse place on Earth isn’t found deep in the Amazon rainforest or in the heart of the ocean. It’s at the edges–where forest meets water, where mountain slopes transition to valley floors, where different ecosystems intersect and create something neither could achieve alone. These “edge effects” generate extraordinary abundance through the dynamic interaction of different systems.

The same principle applies to our organizations, yet most businesses are designed to minimize exactly these kinds of productive intersections. We organize into departments, create clear reporting lines, and establish distinct territories of responsibility. While this structure provides clarity, it also eliminates the spaces where innovation most naturally occurs.

Picture your organization’s structure as a diagram. It likely shows neat boxes connected by clean lines: marketing here, engineering there, sales over here. These artificial boundaries create “innovation dead zones” where potentially transformative interactions simply never happen. When teams operate exclusively within their designated boxes, customer problems get bounced between departments, resources get duplicated, and breakthrough solutions remain undiscovered.

The cumulative effect drains organizational energy. Instead of generating value, rigid boundaries create tension points where good work goes to die.

Three Strategies to Harness Your Organization’s Edge Effects

1. Create Deliberate Collision Points. 3M has built its entire innovation culture around what they call “technology intersection.” Rather than keeping research teams separated by product category, they actively encourage scientists from different disciplines to collaborate through structured programs and shared spaces.
2. Establish Cross-Functionality and Rotation. Instead of assigning projects to single departments where they get “thrown over the wall” at each phase, create teams that draw from multiple areas and shift leadership based on project needs.
3. Build Systematic Feedback Loops Across Boundaries. Toyota’s legendary production system exemplifies edge thinking. Rather than treating suppliers as external entities to be managed, they create genuine partnerships where engineers work directly with supplier teams. More remarkably, any employee can halt the entire production line when they identify a problem, creating rapid information flow across all organizational boundaries.

Companies that master edge effects consistently outperform their competitors. 3 M’s innovation pipeline thrived because they’ve institutionalized cross-pollination; their famous Post-it Notes emerged from the intersection of adhesive technology and office products. Commonly referred Toyota, they achieved higher quality and faster improvement cycles than competitors because they’ve eliminated rigid departmental separations in favor of integrated problem-solving.

These organizations recognize that their greatest untapped resource isn’t hidden within existing departments—it’s waiting to emerge in the spaces between them.

Inspect & Adapt

It’s worth mentioning that common metrics often miss the value created at organizational edges because they’re designed to measure individual departmental performance. Organizations serious about edge effects need new approaches: track communication patterns across boundaries, identify which breakthrough ideas emerged from cross-functional collaboration, measure customer experience across entire journeys rather than individual touchpoints, and survey how energized employees feel when working on cross-functional versus departmental projects.

“The future is not to be predicted nor forecasted but firstly imagined so that it can be created.”

As customer expectations span multiple disciplines, as technology blurs industry boundaries, and as global challenges require integrated solutions, organizational edges become competitive advantages. The companies that will thrive in an increasingly complex world won’t be those with the most efficient departments; they’ll be those with the most productive intersections.

REvolution

The evolution begins with recognizing that the spaces in between on your organizational chart items aren’t empty space to be ignored–it’s innovation space to be cultivated. Nature has spent billions of years demonstrating that abundance flourishes at edges. Organizations ready to learn from this fine-tuned R&D will discover their greatest opportunities in the spaces we have been overlooking all along.

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Ines Garcia is an organizational coach and the Founder and CEO at Get Agile, dedicated to helping businesses deliver better value and reduce waste, focusing on impact. Her new book is Nature’s Blueprint For Business: Harnessing the Hidden Power of Edges (Routledge; September 8, 2025). She offers hands-on programs for Agile, Project, and Product professionals at www.inesgarcia.me.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:17 AM
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Don’t Be Yourself

THE groundwork for the modern cult of authenticity was laid in our era by philosophers like Rousseau and others of his mindset who followed him. Their idea that any constraints laid on us or attempts to conform us by society make us inauthentic. But the fact is, we find out who we are in relation to other people and the communities in which we interact. Our uninhibited self is rarely our best self.

In Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead) published by Harvard Business Review Press, author Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic asks, “What if chasing authenticity was an actual trap—one that oversimplifies human complexity, disregards the necessity of compromise, and leaves us ill-equipped to navigate the nuanced realities of modern life, which include focusing not just on ourselves and how we feel, but also on others?”`

Our uninhibited, authentic self can hold us back from the potential we have.

Contrary to what the authenticity cult predicates, success is rarely attained through radical honesty or by always showing every single side of ourselves. Instead, it’s a function of carefully managing your self-presentation—adapting to situations and showcasing the qualities that are best appreciated by others—while making an effort to conceal negative, undesirable, and irrelevant aspects of your personality.

Chamorro-Premuzic presents us with four authenticity traps that encourage us to be our unfiltered selves regardless of the situation and refuse to compromise.

The Four Authenticity Traps

1. Always Be Honest with Yourself and Others
   
   Truth at all costs is not always preferable. There are “many practical advantages of not telling others what you think or feel all the time, and to prioritizing their thoughts and feelings (rather than yours) when you interact with them.”
   
   
2. Follow Your Heart and Be True to Your Values
   
   Our society often prioritizes our feelings and emotions over logic and common sense. It is important to remember that our “intuitions are feelings about facts, rather than actual facts.”
   
   
3. Stop Worrying About What Others Think of You
   
   Others’ opinions of us should not rule our lives, but there is value in good feedback. “Feedback from others is not a curse, but the essential ingredient for self-awareness, not to mention critical for our growth and self-improvement, particularly when it highlights an uncomfortable gap between the person we want to be and how others see us. It is only by paying attention to others that we can get a sense of what others think of us, which is critical information if we want to avoid an unrealistic sense of self or utter delusion.”
   
   
4. Bring Our Whole Self to Work
   
   It is difficult not to bring your whole self to work, but as a career move, it may not be wise. There are parts of your life that would best be kept private. “While organizations may encourage us to behave at work in ways that are congruent with these non-professional roles. We are not evaluated, rewarded, hired, or promoted for bringing our whole selves to work. If we were, then we would rightly expect our personal and extraprofessional activities to compensate for our poor work performance.”
   
   

Instead…

You will be more successful if you keep these thoughts in mind:

• Edit yourself in order to please rather than upset others, which includes the ability to be strategically untruthful with others in the interest of getting along and eliciting long-term trust.
• Try to see things from the perspective of others, especially when they don’t adhere to your values.
• Learn to accept or at minimum tolerate other people’s values, at least entertain the possibility that your values may actually be wrong.
• Keep a watchful eye on what others think of you.
• Sculpt or mold your work self so that it shows up as a sanitized, professional, and bright-side version of you, as often as possible.

The common thread here is humility and an other-focus. As leaders, the more you focus on yourself, the less you will care about the needs of those you lead. Your leadership becomes narcissistic.

Focusing on being nice, ethical, and competent, and being perceived as trustworthy by others, especially followers, leaders often view authenticity as an end goal, as if it was a critical enabler of their success. However, focusing too much on authenticity—in this case, adhering too closely to the “just be yourself” mantra—will foster a narcissistic mindset that is not conducive to leadership effectiveness. Instead, leaders would be better off if they focused on being other-oriented, so as to understand how other people think and feel in order to enable them to work together.

The question is, how can we best display our character and humanity in a way that is most beneficial to our goals and objectives?

By shifting our perspective, beyond the assumption that others value our unfiltered or genuine self per se, we can unlock more effective strategies for navigating the complexities and cultural nuances of work and life. This approach, while less self-serving, comforting, or self-obsessed, empowers us to be more intentional about how we present ourselves, communicate, and connect with others. It allows us to balance sincerity with adaptability, personal values with professional demands, and emotional truth with strategic thinking. In doing so, we can become more effective, better performers who rise to challenges with an awareness of our limitations, better leaders who inspire trust and collaboration, and better coworkers who contribute meaningfully to shared goals.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:22 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 6, 2025

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Nick Huber on responsibility:

“This might hurt. This is likely hard to swallow.

It isn’t anyone else’s fault. Your life today is a direct result of your own decisions and actions.

Successful people understand this and take ownership in every situation. If you cultivate resilience, you have a significant competitive advantage over most people. If you are willing to do hard things, your tolerance for discomfort will become a superpower. If you swim against the current and try something new that might lead to a different result from the majority of people, you learn to adapt to difficult conditions without constantly looking for someone or something to blame.

You, and only you, are responsible for your life, your business, and your future.

Not a politician. Not your parents. Not the economy. Not the world around you. You. If you can accept that fact, embrace it even, no one person or situation can shake you.”

Source: The Sweaty Startup: How to Get Rich Doing Boring Things

II.

Adam Grant on discomfort:

“Becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill—an especially important form of determination. It takes three kinds of courage: to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts. The best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.”

Source: Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:27 PM
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To Achieve the Extraordinary, Focus on the Game Changers

IN a world of constant change, leaders face relentless pressure to deliver results. Yet the greatest leaders know that true success is not measured only by outcomes, but also by their ability to create conditions for others to thrive and achieve the extraordinary.

Of course, everyone in your organization plays an important role. But there are the very select few who show a truly exceptional talent. They are the ones who have the potential to achieve extraordinary things, who push the whole team further, under the most pressing conditions. They are the ones who are not just satisfied with the status quo on a high level. They are going the furthest, taking the risks that pay off, delivering outstanding performance as a baseline, creating innovative solutions, and inspiring others to level up. It’s these special individuals that make you think: If they quit, we’ve got a real problem!

I call these individuals Game Changers. In my experience, you’ll find only a very small percentage among your people. They don’t just exceed predetermined targets or goals. They have the potential to deliver consistently exceptional, game-changing performance. However, to reach that level, they need to be recognized, understood, and most of all, led to fully develop. I describe the relationship between a leader and the Game-Changer as a Winning Match.

Here are three essential strategies for leaders when building a Winning Match with Game Changers:

1. Recognize and scout for the qualities that add up to game-changer potential.
   Drawing on more than two decades of experience coaching top-tier executives and world-class athletes, I have identified four essential characteristics that define individuals with game-changer potential:
• Passion: They are deeply invested in their work — driven by purpose and a relentless hunger to learn, grow, and achieve excellence by continually pushing beyond limits.
• Desire for Feedback and Input: They actively seek honest, high-quality feedback and diverse perspectives. They listen with openness, filter insights carefully, and distinguish genuine guidance and useful insights from noise or hidden agendas.
• Ability to Transform Input into Action: They embrace change as opportunity for the better. They act quickly on new insights, prepare proactively for changes, and respond with action – decisively, without hesitation.
• Mental Toughness: They thrive and deliver their best performance under pressure, sustaining resilience and focus through disciplined habits, intentional recovery, and supportive relationships.
2. Expand your leadership focus: Make your best people even better.
   Recognizing what sets Game Changers apart is only the first step. I’ve seen too many leaders make the mistake of buying into a leadership fallacy that holds entire organizations back: “the best will prevail no matter what.”
   
   In reality, many leaders devote most of their time and energy to helping lower achievers meet objectives, while their best people are left to fend for themselves. For Game Changers — the ones that are deeply passionate about their work, and committed the success of the business — being overlooked or taken for granted, or left without specific powerful leadership interactions, can be deeply discouraging. Without intentional and empowering leadership, they may lose motivation, disengage, or even leave.
   
   What they need is a trusted partner — a Leadership Champion – who recognizes their potential, challenges them to stretch further, and supports them in achieving sustained, exceptional performance.
3. Commit to being more than a leader. Aspire to be a Leadership Champion.
   To truly tap into the potential of your Game Changers, you must go beyond the traditional management approaches — such as progress reports, routine cadenced reviews, and biannual goal-setting meetings — because it simply can’t do justice to the extraordinary potential of Game Changers. They need — and deserve — more. You must unlock potential.
   
   Becoming a Leadership Champion requires a conscious shift in mindset and behavior. Here are three essential shifts that define this leadership transformation:
• Partner with your Game Changers: In traditional models, Game Changers are often expected to conform to organizational processes and standards before their true potential can emerge. Instead, once you’ve identified individuals with game-changer potential, step into the role of a leadership sparring partner – someone who guides them beyond traditional norms. Much like a great coach in sports, a Leadership Champion does not just follow a set program; they’re bold enough to inspire and adapt to what best fits the individual strengths and specific needs of their Game Changers.
• Start sparring: The objective of sparring is not to primarily support the other person in finding their solution to fix a situation. It’s far more about having an open, productive, and, if necessary, controversial debates to create long-term impact. As the leader, you’re the primary sparring partner, bringing your experience, insight, and perspective to the table. Offer your wealth of experience and expertise, and commit to being personally involved in co-creating the decisions that drive extraordinary outcomes.
• Make time for breakthrough discussions and plan for Winning Match moments: Strategically planned Winning Match moments are your dedicated opportunities to connect with your Game Changers. These sessions — ideally every four to six weeks, or more often if urgency demands — should be protected and prioritized. Use this time to deeply explore key strategic topics, address high-impact challenges and activities, and spark new ideas. Together, you’ll focus on the areas where your Game Changers can make their greatest contribution, amplifying the exceptional value they already bring to the organization.

When you establish these regular leadership sparring sessions - where you share your knowledge, offer guidance, and open your network, Game Changers begin to see more than a leader. They see your genuine commitment to the overall success, your belief in their role within the organization, and your investment in bringing out the best in them. They recognize your clear ambition to help them reach their full potential.

And then, something remarkable happens: a certain magic emerges in these conversations. That dynamic of trust, challenge, and inspiration becomes the foundation for a true Winning Match.

All in all, a Winning Match represents the ideal combination between a driven individual with game-changer potential and their leader, who acts as their Leadership Champion – engaging in regular, challenging, honest, and deeply supportive interactions. This partnership becomes the cornerstone for creating extraordinary results through your Game Changers.

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Dr. Christian Marcolli is a global thought leader and expert on sustainable high performance who coaches executives, business leaders, market-leading brands and elite athletes to achieve outstanding results. His firm, Marcolli Executive Excellence, focuses on fostering leadership excellence, driving team effectiveness and creating organizational health. He’s an in-demand speaker, award-winning author, University of Zurich-trained psychologist, and former pro soccer player. His latest book is WINNING MATCH: Leadership for Game Changers—Together Toward the Extraordinary. Learn more at www.marcolli.com.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:02 PM
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