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When I began teaching leadership one of the traditional events students were asked to lead was a charity event. It makes sense, leaders should be charitable and help out the community. My students decided to create an event to help a popular local charity. During the week long event in December the students raised over $2500. Due to financial procedures a school district has to follow and the winter holiday break we did not get a check cut for the charity until January. I set up a time to present the check to the manager of the charity and had [...]

I have never like the word ‘leader’. The word seems both elitist and generic. I remember in elementary school we would elect two class leaders who would get to leave class and go to a secret meeting. I had no clue what a leader was, but leave class? I’m in! The teacher asked students who wanted to be leaders to stand up and she wrote our names on the board. My name was on the board. Then she asked the students to vote for who we wanted to be class leader. As she proceeded through the list I quickly figured [...]

The leadership wisdom of rats. The foundational mistake we make with leadership. Rats can play hide and seek. Inspired by YouTube videos of people playing hide and seek, Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University of Berlin, set out to see if rats could learn to play as well. As humans, hide and seek may seem a simple game, but it is a complex game with boundaries, rules, roles, and goals that participants must follow. Within a couple weeks Rats were taught to successfully play hide and seek. What is truly mind blowing about this study is the rats did [...]