  |
|
08.20.26
Leading Thoughts for August 20, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Creator of the iPod, iPhone, Tony Fadell on building a company: “I needed to learn. And the best way to do that was to surround myself with people who knew exactly how hard it was to make something great—who had the scars to prove it. And if it turned out to be the wrong move, well, making a mistake is the best way to not make that mistake again. Do, fail, learn. Source: Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making Maynard Webb on finding inspiration: “Inspiration often starts with frustration. It begins with what seems like intractable problems—and then an unwillingness to accept that there are not any answers. I keep these intractable problems in my head and keep a lookout for answers or insights that can come from anywhere. Source: Dear Founder: Letters of Advice for Anyone Who Leads, Manages, or Wants to Start a Business Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.   Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:37 PM
08.18.26
Quickpoint: The 3Cs of Self-Reflection
PROFESSOR of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management, Harry Kraemer, Jr., explains the 3Cs of self-reflection in Your Values-Based Legacy. He says we self-reflect to examine our pasts for clues about our future journeys. We are influenced by our connection, our community, and our choices. “When enhanced by self-reflection, these three Cs enable us to gain clarity about what we’re currently doing, what we’d like to do, and how all the aspects of our lives come together with a sense of purpose.” There is no right or wrong way to engage in self-reflection. The key is to find time when you can be silent and contemplate what matters most. In these quiet moments, I look back on the day and ask myself: Why do this?
Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:40 AM
08.17.26
Does AI Lie?
WE’RE used to living with small lies. I was confronted by this fact when, recently, as I was preparing for a dinner party, I climbed onto a step-stool and reached into the liquor cabinet. One by one, I pulled down bottles that were nearly empty. Not surprisingly, at some point over the years, my young adult kids had helped themselves. As they were growing up, we navigated our share of lies. We had conversations about drinking. We had rules. And still, like all children, they lie at times. But I’m invested in them anyway. I love them, and I trust them. I understand that we won’t always tell each other the full truth. That isn’t dysfunction. It’s human. Human lies are tangled up with relationships. People stretch the truth out of fear, protection, embarrassment, ego — even kindness. When I caught my kids lying, it revealed something deeper — discomfort about independence, boundaries, identity. The lie isn’t the whole story. It’s a signal. And now we say AI “lies.” The claim in this context is misleading. Human lies involve intent — someone knows the truth and chooses to distort it. AI has no such awareness. What we call an AI “lie” is usually something subtler: an answer that sounds authoritative but turns out to be incomplete, outdated, or overly certain. That difference matters. AI does not lie in the moral sense, but it also has no loyalty to the truth. It generates confident responses without reliably signaling uncertainty and makes it easier for us to accept incomplete truths. Sometimes the information is simply wrong. More often, complex questions are presented as if the answers are settled. And yet, we’re beginning to treat these answers the way we treat the small distortions of everyday life: we let them pass. It’s easier — and often more convenient — to accept the answer and move on than to question it. In fact, in a controlled 2025 study on human reliance on AI-generated advice, participants followed incorrect AI suggestions more than half the time (52.1%), even when they were told the system was frequently wrong. Simply warning users about AI’s limitations didn’t meaningfully reduce this reliance. Confident, incomplete answers are surprisingly easy to accept as truth. We might think of this as a kind of convenience bias — a tendency to accept answers that are fast, clear, and complete enough, rather than pause to test whether they’re fully true. That raises a simple but urgent question: When does the truth matter more to us than our own convenience? The difference becomes clear when the stakes are high. My friend had been caring for a loved one with pancreatic cancer. Wanting to stay informed, their family began using an AI tool to understand the latest treatment options and research developments. They asked what therapies are most effective and whether newer experimental approaches are worth considering. The AI’s response was clear and reassuring: standard chemotherapy protocols remain the most reliable treatment. Experimental therapies, it explained, are still early-stage and uncertain. The path forward sounded straightforward — follow established care. But cancer researchers and oncologists know that the reality is more complicated. There are promising clinical trials exploring targeted therapies and immunotherapy combinations. The field is evolving quickly, and specialists often weigh the evidence differently depending on the patient’s condition and goals. The AI’s answer wasn’t fabricated. It referenced real, established treatments. But its false certainty presented a complex, evolving field as if the answer were settled. This is one of the most common ways AI “lies” — not through malicious intent or obvious error, but by sounding certain when the truth is much muddier. AI’s answers can be outdated, off-target, or too narrow — shaped by incomplete data, algorithmic limitations, and even the way our own queries are interpreted. In a culture that increasingly rewards speed, those answers can feel especially easy to accept. And unlike a human expert, AI doesn’t express humility. It rarely says, “this is evolving,” “experts disagree,” or “the evidence is limited.” Instead, it delivers smooth, confident responses that make even contested information sound resolved. When uncertainty is hidden, we’re less likely to question what we’re being told. It also can’t distinguish, in a meaningful way, between strong evidence and opinion. It can present both with the same tone of authority. And perhaps most importantly, AI can’t judge when the truth matters more than convenience. It answers a casual curiosity and a life-altering question with the same polished confidence. That’s the risk. The liquor cabinet wasn’t empty because my kids lied. It was empty because I assumed everything was as I expected. I didn’t check. I ran out to the store minutes before guests arrived because I’d relied on an assumption rather than verification. We’re doing something similar with AI. In everyday life, small distortions can be absorbed. But in financial decisions, medical guidance, legal advice, or academic work, the cost of unexamined confidence is higher. So what does it mean to use AI well? The solution isn’t to use AI less. It’s to use it more carefully — and more actively. Most of us already know how to do this when we want better answers. Many parents learn that asking a child, “What did you do today?” produces the unhelpful reply: “Nothing.” But a more thoughtful question — “What was the best part of your day?” or “Teach me something you learned” — draws out richer, more accurate responses. Research supports this instinct. The way a question is framed shapes the quality of the answer. More specific prompts lead to more thoughtful and accurate responses. Better questions don’t just produce better answers — they guide the thinking that makes better answers possible. The same principle applies to AI. The quality of AI’s output is directly tied to the quality of our input. Here are ways to produce better AI answers by asking better questions: 1. Ask detailed questions. Broad prompts produce generalized answers. More precise questions about trade-offs, limitations, and disagreements push the system toward more useful responses since real-world decisions rarely come without disagreement, uncertainty, or competing perspectives. Simplicity can be a signal that something important is missing. 2. Ask for sources. When we have the sources, we can review them directly and assess their credibility. Are they recent? Are they based on rigorous research or opinion? Do multiple sources support the same conclusion? 3. Resist treating our AI usage as a single transaction. High-stakes questions require iteration: ask broadly, challenge the answer, verify the evidence, and ask again from another angle. In the case of my friend researching pancreatic cancer treatments, that might mean asking for summaries of the latest clinical trials, identifying which experimental therapies show early promise, and probing what uncertainties remain. 4. Recognize AI’s limits. No artificial intelligence tool can replace the judgment, experience, and nuance of an oncologist or cancer researcher. AI can help you locate experts. It can’t replace them. There’s no prompt that guarantees truth. There’s no magic question that forces AI into honesty. And in all our concern about AI hallucinations, we may be missing the sharper point: AI doesn’t threaten the truth. It threatens our habit of checking. It exposes how easily we trade truth for convenience. Our human edge won’t come from rejecting these tools. It will come from knowing when a confident answer deserves a second look — and how to search for the fuller truth. The problem isn’t that the bottles are empty. It’s that we stopped checking.  Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:52 AM
08.14.26
The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently
TO make the best decisions, we need to expand our view and think through a wider range of experiences and opinions. See panoramically. Increasing change and complexity require that we get more complete and diverse information and look outside of our usual suspects. We need panoramic intelligence. In The Panoramic Leader, Cornelia Choe and Marshall Goldsmith say that “panoramic intelligence is about training yourself to see through more than just your own lens. The real power is when you move beyond simply noticing others and start to see the world through their eyes, understanding the experiences and beliefs that shape their maps.” The lenses we choose to see the world determine the reality we see. The authors have identified three lenses—inner, outer, and relational—that allow us to see more fully.
The inner lens helps us to gather self-awareness through self-reflection. It impacts how we see the world through our outer lens. The outer lens expands our view through our interaction with others, “taking in the systems, perspectives, and shifting conditions that define the world around us.” The relational lens creates insights between our inner and outer perspectives and transforms each with the insights gained from that enhanced perspective. We grow from the intersection of each lens. The relational lens gathers the insights we develop internally and shines that light back outward to our stakeholders through our outer lens, expressed in dialogue and leadership. This continuous refraction of insight—taking in light and returning it transformed—is what distinguishes panoramic leaders. They do not merely absorb understanding from all sides; they refract it back outward toward their stakeholders, shaping conversations and aligning teams. This model highlights the need for feedback. Feedback helps to remove blind spots from our inner lens. If you are not getting input from outside yourself, you will not see clearly what is going on around you. It has always been the case, but especially today in a rapidly changing world, if you are not adjusting and experimenting, you will become irrelevant. Many of us continue to cling to outdated mental maps because they’re familiar and comfortable, even if they lead us to constant disappointment because they don’t take us to where we want to go. They suggest we ignite our courageous curiosity, question ourselves, and to know our map and keep adapting it. I love this question: Who’s not at your table? Who should we have join us? Inviting people in that we normally don’t associate with opens us up to new perspectives and ideas. Developing panoramic leadership requires that we “go beyond understanding stakeholders to building meaningful relationships with them and staying attuned to their evolving circumstances and views.” As we work with others, we find where their perspective or map aligns with ours and how they might fit together. Where other people’s maps are different or contradictory to our own can reveal areas where we need to pay closer attention and find previously unseen opportunities. For panoramic leaders, differing perspectives are the raw material of better judgment. They help us sort through the information we collect, clarify priorities, and anticipate risks. They test assumptions and reveal how various stakeholders’ perspectives can be integrated into a coherent picture. By engaging with conflicting views productively, leaders uncover blind spots, refine their priorities, and navigate growing complexity with sounder judgment. Combining maps requires that we interpret their perspective and microtranslate our perspective for them. In this way, we learn from one context so that we can apply those lessons to our own. We begin to see where our maps may be incomplete and fill in our blind spots. Another component to consider, as we evaluate what insights we should add to our own and which ones to leave out, we should identify not only what loyalties our stakeholders have but what loyalties we have that might be swaying our judgment. They suggest that we ask ourselves: “To whom do I feel most responsible? Who would react most vigorously if I did something out of the routine? Whom am I trying hardest to please or impress? Who would I most disappoint? Whose support do I most need?” We can never allow complacency to creep into our worldview. The world continues to change around us, and, like explorers sailing to uncharted lands, we must constantly adjust our maps accordingly. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:26 AM
08.13.26
Leading Thoughts for August 13, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Bill Burnett and Dave Evans on detachment: “A state of mind that is fully engaged but calmly detached is the best place from which to do design. When you are fully engaged in any task—really buckling down and getting the work done—you have the best chance of unlocking a great solution. However, most of us can’t shake off the fear of a bad outcome, and this tends to stifle our creativity and burden our actions. But when you can cultivate a mindset that is detached from outcomes, which are ultimately out of your control, you are the freest and most creative. When something goes as hoped for, you’re pleased. When something unexpected or negative happens, you’re bemused and happy to learn from the experience (which is why you come to think that just about everything is a prototype).” Source: How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day Gary Hamel on decision-making: “Paradoxically, as decisions get bigger, the ranks of those able to challenge the decision maker get smaller. Hubris, myopia, and naivete can corrupt decisions at any level, but that risk goes up when the decision maker’s power is, for practical purposes, incontestable. Give someone monarch-like authority, and sooner or later there will be a royal screw-up.” Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:58 AM
08.11.26
Build Your Day from the Top Down: Why Your Goals Should Shape Your Calendar
LOOK at how most people plan. They open the calendar, see the squares, and start filling them. A meeting here, a block there, a few tasks wedged into the gaps. By the end, the week looks full and feels productive. It is also completely backward. Starting with the calendar means you are organizing your time before you have decided what any of it is for. That is how founders end up busy for months and somehow no closer to anything that matters. The fix is to flip the whole thing. Build your day from the top down, not the calendar up. Borrow the Inverted Pyramid I spent years writing before I built businesses, and the most useful structure I ever learned came from journalism: the inverted pyramid. You lead with the single most important point, and everything below it exists to support that point. The further down you go, the smaller the detail. That structure became the spine of the Time Management Inverted framework, a productivity system that I've built over the past decade. At the very top sits the most important thing you have, the one I call your Grand Vision. Everything beneath it, all monthly goals, weekly tactics, and daily tasks, exists only to support that vision. Nothing earns a place on your calendar unless it props up the thing at the top. Most planning advice has you building from the bottom. You stack up tasks and hope they add up to something. The inverted pyramid does the opposite. You name the destination first, then work down to the daily moves that get you there. “Why” A Grand Vision is your long-term target, usually set on a longer-term horizon to keep it concrete. For simplicity, let’s choose a year. Those Grand Visions could be to triple your client base, hit a million in revenue, finish the book, build the team that lets you step back. It is big enough to pull you forward and clear enough to measure. Think of it as your "why." It is the reason the rest of the work exists. Everything below the Grand Vision is the "what" and the "how." Monthly goals are the major accomplishments that support the vision. Weekly tactics are what you execute to hit those goals. Daily tasks are the specific, intentional moves you make each day to carry out the tactics. Each layer ladders up to the one above it, and the whole structure points at the top. When that chain is intact, every task you touch is connected to something larger. You feel it. The work has weight because it is going somewhere. Busy Is Not the Same as Forward Here is what happens when the chain breaks. Your daily tasks stop pointing at any vision at all. You answer emails, sit in meetings, put out fires, and clear the small stuff because clearing it feels good. The day ends, you are exhausted, and you cannot name one thing you actually moved. That is the trap. Busyness is motion. Progress is direction. They are not the same, and a packed calendar will happily fake the second one while delivering only the first. When I was running several ventures at once and felt buried, the problem was never a shortage of effort. I was working constantly. The problem was that almost none of it laddered up to a vision. I was filling squares. The moment I tied my days back to a clear top, the noise fell away, and the real work surfaced. How to Build from the Top Down A few deliberate steps put the pyramid back in the right order.
The point of all this is not to schedule harder. It is to make sure the hours you already have point somewhere worth going. Your calendar should be the last thing you fill, not the first. Decide what your life and your business are building toward, then let that decision shape every square beneath it. Start at the top. Everything else follows. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:18 PM
08.07.26
Be Coachable: Ten Truths of Being Coachable
SPORTS analyst Ric Bucher wondered, after rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest athletes, which traits separate the best from the rest? The common denominator was: I was coachable. In Coachable, Bucher explores ten truths of coachability through the stories of all-time great athletes. The truths are applicable to all walks of life. What is coachability? “Synthesizing your vision of who and what you want to be with someone else’s vision of who and what you can be by collaborating to realize that shared vision.” TRUTH 1: Giving In Is Not Giving Up Change is a constant in the short and long term. Sometimes what you set out to do is not what you should be doing. Giving in to a pivot may be just the best thing. It’s not giving up on your dream; it’s growing. “Being coachable is fundamentally about self-improvement. I want to get better, and I’m willing to go backward to go forward.” TRUTH 2: A Fixed Flaw Is a Fountain of Faith Humility to take correction and do something with it. Every problem is there to teach us something—to move us forward. The frustration of having to reconstruct something as fundamental as his shot led Stephen Curry to learn to have faith in the process. He told Bucher, “There’s faith that comes with going through that, working toward that intended outcome of who I want to be. But that whole process, for me, requires having trust in myself to be able to solve whatever challenges are in front of me. But you also have to have the resources around you and the openness to say, ‘Okay, I don’t know everything, I don’t have all the answers, but I’m curious.’” TRUTH 3: No One Knows Your Priorities Better Than You What you do is different from who you are. By prioritizing your personal development along with your ambitions, you create a deeper and lasting identity. The path matters as much as the goal. The relationship between a coach and the protégé is a two-way street. TRUTH 4: Who You Are, Not Where You Are, Will Decide What You Are Moving forward is about making thousands of right decisions that eventually add up to something. It’s all about what is inside and knowing you have room for improvement. Basketball athlete Fred VanVleet said, “Being coachable starts with accountability. If you don’t have an issue with accountability, then you’re not going to have an issue with coaching. If I know I’m wrong before the coach gets to me, then I’m going to receive his message versus being surprised that somebody’s yelling at me. You’re not paying attention to how that message is delivered, you’re thinking more about ‘How do I get it right?’And once you’re on that track, you start to understand what coaching is.” The challenge is not to find the ideal or most attractive building blocks but to fully utilize those readily available. And, as Fred demonstrates, when we exhaust our resources, there is inevitably someone offering new ones out of respect for anyone with a track record of making the most of their opportunities. TRUTH 5: Humble or Humbled, It’s Your Choice To be talented and humble means you have to be held to a higher standard. When you think you’ve arrived, you haven’t. Great talent easily turns to entitlement. SO you need an environment that keeps you humble. Sports psychologist Michel Lardon said, “Most super-elite athletes have been able to maintain a core group that keeps them grounded. Because if you have sycophants everywhere, you go from swagger to arrogance. You develop an ‘I don’t need to learn anything; I don’t need anybody’ attitude. And then you get in trouble.” Bucher adds. “There are two essential parts to a performer realizing their absolute best: they need someone willing to pull it out of them, and they need to have the hunger and courage to have it pulled.” And that takes humility. TRUTH 6: Tunnel Vision Is a Black Hole Great performance requires a larger perspective. See yourself as part of a bigger picture. Experiment and determine what is effective for your growth. Coach Holger believed that “Learning atypical physical acts enhanced an athlete’s brain to execute more traditional ones.” The same is true for any of us. Get outside your head. TRUTH 7: Anyone Can Be the Answer to a Need Being teachable allows you to maximize your circumstances or position. Learning to do the things that coaches and leaders will notice will set you apart. “You need to understand what important people value and how you can help fulfill that value.” John Staton III realized that there are some things more important than the score and often reminded his son, John IV, of that. “There was a skill set to learn—resilience, situational awareness, sportsmanship—that you could take into life to face real-world challenges with that same competitive nature. If you could come out with that competitive edge a little smoother, your chances of success and having an impact on society were probably greater because you would have a more enhanced skill set than someone else.” “Success can’t, and shouldn’t, be measured by how high we climb but whether or not we climbed as high as we were capable of climbing.” TRUTH 8: The Greatest Goals Are the Ones You Can’t Reach by Yourself It can be years before you see the payoff from the behaviors your coaches tell you to do. By doing it, it prepares you to go the distance. It’s a leap of faith. “There are legions of athletes—and doctors, musicians, and executives—who were materially successful but couldn’t build on it because of the way they achieved it.” TRUTH 9: Why Is More Important Than How When the protégé knows why the coach is asking them to do something, even when they don’t get it right, they will follow them anywhere. Anything that pushes us out of our comfort zone has value. But there shouldn’t be any confusion about what a coach is asking a performer to do or how it contributes to the collective goal; if there is, that’s leaving that performer without a North Star for motivation and improvement. No one ever gets to play their desired role in every situation. But the purpose of every role has to be clear to the person filling it; if it’s not, the question “Is there a purpose?” will surface. Followed by the person in that role questioning if they have a purpose. When a relationship with a coach or an organization doesn’t work or isn’t fruitful, it’s inevitably because of one primary reason: the athlete and coach didn’t have a common goal. TRUTH 10: Tough Love Is Still Love Take the message and ignore the delivery. Often, to get where you want to go costs you a lot, but you pay a higher price by not listening. The idea of not listening to an accomplished coach may sound absurd, but elite athletes often consider and sometimes indulge in it. Their physical superiority has allowed them to advance and possibly even excel without following protocol or directions, and some come to believe doing so is actually an essential part of their success. Many have never completely committed themselves to someone else’s vision and, having gotten away with it, are convinced it’s not necessary-until they reach a level where their innate talent isn’t enough. And by then it’s usually too late. Listening sometimes means letting go of what you think you know. Know that you don’t know. “The hidden value of being challenged to let go of what we do best—or we think we do best—is that it creates space to get good at something else. We don’t lose the first talent; we complement it.” In detail, Coachable provides the nuts and bolts for anyone in any field or position looking to realize the best version of themselves. Bucher says begin the coaching conversation with “What is it I’m not doing that would help if I did?” Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:07 AM
08.06.26
Leading Thoughts for August 6, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Jeremy Pollack on certainty: “Certainty is the nemesis of peace. Our drive toward certainty, which underlies our subconscious and conscious desires to be right, is antithetical to our capacities for flexibility, open-mindedness, and collaboration with those we perceive as sources of conflict. And the unfortunate news is that our brains are certainty-seeking machines.” Source: Wired for Peace: Using 7 Neuroscience-Based Principles to Resolve Conflicts Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner on organizational slogans: “Your organization’s clarity isn’t found in your mission statement; your employees and stakeholders find it in what they experience. They find clarity in the last difficult decision a leader made and how it made sense given their understanding of the business. They find clarity in the project that got funded (and those that didn’t) and how it matches the mission as everyone understands it. They find clarity in the last person who got promoted because they operate in a way that reflects desired values. These actions are the signals that communicate ‘what matters here.’ If your stated clarity contradicts these lived realities, the slogans are worthless.” Source: The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:38 AM
|
 |
BUILD YOUR KNOWLEDGE
 
How to Do Your Start-Up Right STRAIGHT TALK FOR START-UPS 
Grow Your Leadership Skills NEW AND UPCOMING LEADERSHIP BOOKS 
Leadership Minute BITE-SIZE CONCEPTS YOU CAN CHEW ON 
Classic Leadership Books BOOKS TO READ BEFORE YOU LEAD |
|
ABOUT
FOLLOW US:
     
Recent Posts
CategoriesFull site feed
 Subscribe via RSSMONTHLY ARCHIVE
|
 |
| ||
 | Follow us on:
© 2025 LeadershipNow™  |
| |
