Motivation changes when summer arrives. School’s out for summer. The vacation calendar is full. Employees have cottage weekends, family trips, and days off planned. Parents are juggling camps, childcare, and kids who’d much rather be outside than following anyone’s schedule. And, honestly, most of us would rather be at the beach than sitting in another meeting on a beautiful summer afternoon. But the work still has to get done. That doesn’t mean leaders need to pretend summer

\ Information becomes valuable when we use it. We often hear the phrase, “Feedback is a gift.” I understand the intention. Feedback can be valuable. It can help us grow, improve, and see things we might otherwise miss. But I prefer a different way of thinking about it: Feedback is data. Data isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s information. It gives us something to examine, understand, and act on. That distinction matters. When someone tells us our communication wasn’t clear, a

The future of leadership is still human I recently read a New York Times article with a title that made me smile: That Meeting You Hate May Keep A.I. From Stealing Your Job. The idea is worth thinking about. AI can analyze information, generate reports, summarize data, draft presentations, and help us work more efficiently. But work has never been only about producing information. It’s about persuading someone to support a difficult decision. Reassuring a team when uncertaint