Five Ways Forward

08/21/2024

Super excited to be a sponsor for this event and hope you will consider a donation to help children and families in the Baltimore and DC area.

A big thank you to Five Ways Forward for being our tournament sponsor! ⛳️ We’re thrilled to have your support. See what President Colin McLetchie has to say about The Children’s Guild:

“Beyond having a great mission of serving children and families – incredible in and of itself – The Children’s Guild and its leaders have been on a deep mission of transforming themselves and their organization through conscious and difficult leadership development activities. This effort is paying off in so many facets of the organization, its culture, its service, and its people. They live deeply into their values of serving children and families and that their people matter. It’s an honor to both partner with them on their leadership and organizational growth and to support the mission directly through sponsoring this tournament.”

There’s still time to join us for the 17th Annual Golf Tournament! Register now at https://ow.ly/sPUt50T33Iu.

02/13/2024

We're making it all up! Are we making it for good? Read more about what I'm discovering after my mother's death in July 2023.

08/03/2023

Yesterday, the Calm app messaged me and said “put your hand on your heart, and take five deep breaths”. I did. It was wonderful.

Go ahead. I’ll breathe with you. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

06/19/2023

Pause. Reflect. Act.

01/02/2023

Ten years. It's been a full decade since I went out on my own and launched Five Ways Forward full-time. I have had the sacred honor and privilege of serving hundreds of people, managers, leaders, teams and organizations in helping them find their way forward. I am so immensely grateful and humbled to get to be a leadership and career/life coach, facilitator, teacher, teambuilder, catalyst. Ten years. Time really does fly.

So here are five things I've come to believe, and I'm not the first to say many of these, so thank you to many great teachers and leaders:

1) Deep, transformative change is possible - it's often simple, and rarely easy - and it usually takes longer than any leader thinks it will. Commitment, perseverance, faith, and courage are all required.

2) Upgrading the inner operating system of individuals and groups is required for transformation to occur and be sustained. And it starts at the top if you want #1 to happen. There is no escaping this (and so many CEOs want me to come in and "fix them" and aren't willing to model the way. Don't be that CEO.)

3) Leadership is primarily conversational. And if you want different outcomes, you need different conversations. (Usually starting with yourself - see #2)

4) We are almost always the ones in the way of our own success and impact (which is why #1 & #2 are so important). And leaders often try to go it alone - which is exactly the opposite of what's asked of us.

5) Leadership (which is really no different than "life-ship") is a deep personal journey to the self in service to others. It requires our whole self - Body Emotion Spirit and Thought. It is something we "be" and it's not kidding around. The spirit component is the emerging area and necessary to powerful transformative leadership.

There is so much more I could say, and I'll leave it with this:

Thank you to every client, every person that I've been in this space with. Thank you. You have taught me more than I could ever teach you.

Onward - forward to what the next 10 years have to bring. Celebrating my work anniversary. Feeling thankful for this

06/24/2022

Had an amazing time back with the PM Hotel Group leaders after a two year hiatus. Speaking on “From Surviving to Thriving: The Five Moves of Elevated Leadership”. And got to connect with absolutely wonderful people.

05/13/2022

Awesome morning yesterday with the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) leaders and managers exploring Leadership Converstions: Preparing for Dialogue that Matters. Their facilities are gorgeous (and available for rent) and everyone was in a learning space together. It was an honor to faciiitate this for them.

05/02/2022

Are you leading in return to work planning or are you managing it? Hint: lead don’t manage.

Senior leaders, please hear me. For many of you, your return to the workplace program isn't working.

04/19/2022

From Glennon Doyle this morning:

"We gotta meet with ourselves every morning so we understand what kind of person we're sending into every other meeting that day."

01/28/2022

Stop torturing your (new) managers and your teams. Find out how here and share your ideas!!

You've done it, and if you haven't done it, I'd bet my next two paychecks, your organization - at one time or another - has. It happens in almost every organization, across the globe.

12/21/2021

That feeling when you're doing a closing of a coaching engagement with a client and their manager, the goal of which was to help her prepare for a promotion and shift some ways of being that were getting in the way, and just today, just before the closing, she got the promotion!! Yeah, that feeling. So thrilled for her and so honored to get to do what I do.

12/08/2021

Work is personal. Leadership therefore must be deeply personal. Which means it's about love. Join Daniel Kimble and I on the Unshakeable Influence podcast - episode 2 of our co-hosting series.

Returning guest co-host Colin T. McLetchie, PCC BCPP (President and Founder of Five Ways Forward) and I expand on a topic we touched on last week: Leadership...