Teams are more than just a collection of individuals. They are communities with unique cultures, and the way members interact determines their success. When dynamics are strong, engagement soars, connections deepen, and organizations thrive. By intentionally shaping team culture, leaders can unlock their team’s full potential, fostering resilience and ensuring long-term success.

Infrastructure is the scaffolding that enables your team to operate at its highest potential. It encompasses everything from the tools and processes that run your day-to-day business, to the knowledge and plans you rely on in times of crisis.

When each and every person’s roles are tied to the organization’s greater purpose, and when leaders are inherently expected to act cross-functionally, everyone’s actions become a driving factor in creating an enterprise leadership team, all accountable for the results of the organization.

How does each individual contribute and rally around a team’s shared passion and purpose? This is where a true enterprise leadership approach comes into play. When this shift happens, every single person across the organization begins to see themselves as a critical part of the whole, taking accountability for not only their immediate responsibilities, but everyone else’s too, and ultimately the organization’s results and purpose for being.

When high-level leaders make everyone’s challenges their business, and work together cross-functionally to find solutions and support each other in order to reach the goals of the larger organization as a whole, they function as an 'Enterprise' Leadership Team.

The concept of innovation is so often associated with big, revolutionary ideas, but at its core, it comes down to a simple concept: creating change with the goal of improvement. Any time you move forward in a different way with the aim of getting better, even if it’s by asking a simple question – Is this thing that we do still necessary? – you are innovating. Whether you’re innovating locally (meaning you have never done it before), globally (meaning the world has never done it before), large, or small – it all counts.

You would never build a facility that creates a product without making sure it works properly, has regular maintenance, is cleaned often, and has a plan for long-term care. And yet, people and the communities around them have not historically been treated the same, regardless of the fact that they are the foundation for everything else. As leaders building the future of the workplace every single day with our choices, it’s time we changed that by focusing on what true wellness looks like.

The outcomes we want for our teams – trust, clarity, collaboration, resilience, financial security – do not happen in any lasting way without challenges. In fact, it’s how we prepare for, respond to, and navigate those very challenges that create the outcomes we want in the first place. And when we try to avoid those challenges, we actually rob ourselves of opportunities to build the connection, comradery, trust, and true resilience that high performing teams are made of.

While polarization is often connected to politics and topics in the media, it’s a concept that’s readily found in all areas of life and at varying degrees. To demonstrate this, I led a group of 50-or-so participants through an exercise of identifying where polarization might be found in our own community of Summit County, Colorado. And the results might surprise you.

The name of the game shouldn’t simply be to master one level of leadership and then move on to the next rung in the ladder in order to own the next title. It should be to learn and grow, over and over again as needed, so that you’re able to apply your knowledge in new ways as challenges and opportunities arise.

Herein lies an interesting paradox about being a leader: We often get promoted into higher and higher leadership levels by doing the work, and doing it well, but once we are there, our actual roles change quite a bit; they shift from doing the work to providing the resources needed for others to do the work, which is a skill in and of itself. Though related to the skills that may have gotten you to a leadership position in the first place, it is a different one.

In an age of chronic burnout and on the heels of the Great Resignation, it’s become more important than ever for companies to strive for more than mere survival or the bare minimum of basic productivity; we have to set our sites on thriving, on leaning into what supports us as people and mirroring that in how we support our teams.

In order to be the best leaders we can be, we have to get back to our true selves, to what makes us human, to what has shaped us and what we value – and to steadfastly allow that to guide us. One’s voice and action, after all, is only as powerful as one's alignment to their own purpose and authentic self.

While tradition and best practices have their place, if we’re not diligent about continuing to question them and adjust over time, they can become so comfortable that we don’t even realize they no longer serve our goals. In fact, sometimes our behaviors become invisible to us — comfortable to our detriment.

The film Elemental: Reimagining Wildfire explores the natural element of fire from several different angles and perspectives as it rages hotter and wilder across our great globe. This complex story and analysis of how to manage wildfire and keep us safe left me immensely curious as to how this question, “Can we let it burn?”, might apply beyond fire, to all that we do in business and in life. It’s a brave question that goes against the norm to solve a complex problem through innovation. This is what is needed now more than ever from our leaders in every industry.

There are certain times in history that stand apart from the rest as periods of enormous expansion — eras remembered for the great achievements, discoveries, or inventions that would forever change the way humans show up in the world and interact with one another. Though incredibly impactful, none of these times were easy for the people who lived through them – and certainly not everything that came from them was good. But what they did do was require people to reconsider and shift their values on a massive scale, changing society’s values and culture along with them.

Back in the thick of the pandemic, there was a phrase that permeated the airwaves — or some version of it — Do or die.

Heavy, I know.

Sadly, that’s what so many businesses and organizations felt to be true during that time, and we saw it play out over and over again. Today we look around and see near-ghost towns in some places and vibrant, thriving organizations and communities in others.

I have a colleague that worked in youth development for many years, managing programs for kids of all ages in her community and working with other organizations to bring them exciting, engaging opportunities to learn, develop and just be with other people their age. Sounds like a lot of fun, right? She thought so too; she loved what she did immensely.

When he was young, my son had a way of framing the whole day based on one fleeting, but seemingly significant situation. It was that blanket statement, “This is a horrible day!”, when something undesirable happened, even if it was just a blip on the radar.

While I know many of our readers are experienced executive leaders, I recently had the opportunity to guest-star on the #7 ranked Canadian podcast, Trench Leadership: A Podcast from the Front, with host Simon Kardynal.

Simon’s podcast lends advice, inspiration, and tools to help emerging leaders face challenges and find their way as they work through the squiggly, often messy path toward becoming an authentic leader.