steffan surdek

This article was initially published on Forbes.com. Co-creative leadership I talk and write a lot about co-creative leadership these days. When people ask me to name the key traits of a co-creative leader, I usually list the following five skills: Being a voice among many in the conversation. Unleashing the …

This article was initially published on Forbes.com. One topic I often find myself discussing these days is learning by doing. Cultures that value continuous improvement encourage experimentation. They also encourage people to fail fast so they can learn fast. But this idea is scary to those working in cultures who believe …

This article was initially published on Forbes.com I talk a lot with those around me about co-creative leadership and collaboration. My team and I collaborate a lot with our clients, but not as often as we do with each other. More often than not, you have the choice whether or …

This article was initialy published on Forbes.com A while back, I wrote an article called Awaken Dormant Leaders. It is one of my favorite articles ever, and it seems to connect with many people. Recently, a few visitors to the site sent me emails to ask me to write more …

As leaders, it is very difficult to create change in our organizations. One of the biggest problems is that over time, we forget what drives our change and what progress we are making. When we work with our teams, change sometimes feels to them as if it lacks structure and …

This article was initialy published on Forbes.com Over the last five or six years, I played hockey in different garage leagues, usually very late at night. Hockey is a very fast-paced sport, and even if we were “just playing for fun,” there were nights when players behaved recklessly, causing frustration …

This article was initialy published on Forbes.com One of the recurring themes in my life in the last few months has been the place of love in leadership. I work with many clients who, when I bring up the topic in conversation, find this concept to be a bit shocking and …

Early in my career, I used to be very demanding of myself. It was hard for me to accept when I made mistakes in life. I remember one day, I was working on a woodworking project in my garage, and I got upset from making mistake after mistake. I got …

   This article was initialy published on Forbes.com. Leaders and managers don’t always realize the impact of their language when talking with their teams. You can do many things with language, from empowering people to generating new possibilities. However, language can also create disengagement and dissent when wielded ineffectively. Language has a lot …

This article was initialy published on Forbes.com. I invest a lot of time learning to have the right and sometimes difficult conversations with members of my consulting team. This is important to me because every day, I see the challenges my clients face when they are unable to have the conversations …