How to frame hiring, retaining and developing talent while scaling your company culture intentionally. — This essay first published on my blog at danielstillman.com Hiring, retaining and developing talent is a key leadership skill. Without great talent it’s impossible to have a great team. And without a great team, it’s impossible to build a great organization. Hiring, retaining and developing talent is also time consuming…

Three’s a Crowd, Four’s a Mob Groups can move mountains if everyone is pushing in the same direction. More often, group conversations ping pong back and forth. The conversation flow gets stuck, drifts, or overheats. Why are group conversations so messy? Alignment and connection in one-on-one conversations is complex enough. In groups, these connections compound, fast…

Tapping into Intrinsic Motivation — Originally posted on my blog here. A few weeks ago I stumbled on the lovely diagram below on twitter. It’s a simple flowchart to help answer that extremely essential and very common question: “Should I take on this new project?” The basic answer is: NO. You just don’t have enough time. …

Mindfully Slowing down the conversation — This essay appears on my personal blog. Lately, I’ve been hearing lots of friends and colleagues talk about slowing down a bit for the summer. If it’s summer where you are, and you have the means, that’s an awesome choice For example, if you’re in the Northeast of the United…

Four Tips for for Artful Deflection — “What was your salary at your last position?” “Are you planning on having kids?” It happens often: we get asked a question we don’t want to answer, or that we don’t feel like we should answer. We can also get asked questions that we legally don’t have to answer (like #2!) In that moment, we have a few options. We can reply honestly or…

this essay first appeared on my personal blog here. Learning happens on three levels. The most primal is single loop learning — doing something to get a result…and checking in to see if it got you closer to your goal. (Loop A, below) Think about following a recipe step by…

Why being able to speak to crowds, teams and yourself is essential — If you’d like to listen to this article instead of reading it, you can do that here. When you hear the word “conversation” the image that most likely lights up in your brain is of two people facing each other (or these days, in a zoom room). What happens if…

The Art of Facilitative Leadership — I love a good recipe. Take this one, from Food52, for Lemon Bars with a salty, olive oil crust. I’m not sure how I first stumbled on this recipe, but I do know that I nearly never make it…or at least, not in full. The crust, however, has become a…

Four Tips for Defeating Mansplaining and Manspreading — THE BIRD OF HUMANITY HAS TWO WINGS The founder of the Baha’i faith is quoted as saying: “The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly.” I love this quote, but it’s a bit outdated since…