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Shifting Leaders Out of Reactive Mode
“Slow down, you move too fast. You’ve got to make the moment last.” Simon and Garfunkel We know that doing business today is defined by high complexity and rapid pace. Sophisticated, often nuanced, decisions are made quickly, and actions taken against those decisions...
Cambria Announces Transition of Founding and Managing Partner Ellen Kumata
The New Year usually brings change of one type or another – and 2023 begins with news of an important transition at Cambria. Our longstanding managing partner, Ellen Kumata, is stepping out of her management duties and transitioning to a senior advisory role in our...
Well-Being Development Planning: Managing Executive Burnout & Leading Healthier Work
Since late 2021, chief executives and their talent officers have come to our conversations and coaching sessions charged with a new intensity. The demands of leading through the unprecedented complexities, challenges, and responsibilities of the Covid pandemic – as...
Employee Attraction & Retention in the COVID-19 Era
Employee attraction and retention – or how best to hire people and hold on to them – is always a hot topic in talent development and increasingly so in the age of COVID-19. The “great resignation” – the catch phrase being used to describe the increasing number of...
The Positive Truth of Personality Tests
The streaming service, HBO Max, is featuring a new documentary, Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests, that explores the underside of personality tests and how some companies have potentially, through biased algorithms, turned them into a system for...
Finding Hidden Gems to Meet Your Hiring Needs
This is the second of my two blog posts on hidden gems – the uniquely talented people who are often hiding in plain sight. The companion piece to this one focuses on finding and developing hidden gems within your organization. In this post, I focus on what it takes to...
Hidden Gems: Mining Your Organization for Unseen Future Talent
This is the one of two talent development blog posts about what I’m calling hidden gems – the remarkably talented people who are often hiding in plain sight. This post focuses on hidden gems within organizations – how to identify them and what to do once you find...
Executive Coaching Foundations: Being a Great Client Partner (Part 3)
Note: This is the third of three blog posts exploring how to initiate executive coaching and prime it for success in your organization. For coaching to succeed, an executive leader must be ready for development and able to commit the effort necessary to become more...
Balancing Act: How Great Leaders Embrace Contradictions
Effective leadership is grounded in certain personal qualities and inclinations, but they are not just a collection of ingredients. The concept of balance is important – and there are specific pairs of attributes that may appear to be opposites of each other, but work...
Pixar’s Soul Searching & Personality Profiles
It’s not every day that I find myself explaining psychological assessments to a four-year-old. Why dogs have noses and why you shouldn’t eat ice cream for breakfast, sure. But personality profiles? First, by way of context: as a father of two young girls, I have found...
Coaching Foundations: Selecting the Right Executive Coach (Part 2)
This is the second of a three-part blog series, focusing on selecting the right coaches that fit for your organization and for the leader being coached. The first post in this series focuses on getting started with executive coaches. My third and final blog on this...
Lessons Learned Over a Long Career
As I retire from 35 years with Cambria – with perhaps a bit more grey hair than back in the day – I sat down recently to reflect on a key themes and insights drawn from a rewarding career in talent development. I’m happy to pass these along.