We all aspire to be good leaders, supportive of our teams & companies and also at home. The core of this aspiration is that leadership starts with ourselves. We must believe in these qualities and model them for others. One physical instantiation of leadership is the ability to create intentional spaces, or experiences for our coworkers, team and ourselves. The three intentional spaces that all leaders need are 1. External spaces of service, 2. Internal strategic / introspective space, and 3. the Liminal spaces in between.

1. External Spaces of Service

Many leaders I work with believe in a philosophy of servant leadership, where unlike…

Through this pandemic, most of us have re-evaluated our relationship to work, whether it’s through remote work, struggling with unemployment or keeping a business afloat, or serving others as an essential worker. Now in the middle of 2021, millions of people are quitting their current job in this post-pandemic workplace. Leaders are trying to figure out how to fight the attrition and also to take advantage of the surge in job seekers. It’s no longer business as usual, and it’s now time to look at ways to shift company culture to fundamentally value the people who work there. …

A common fallacy I see in people looking to grow their career is believing that leadership equals management, that you’re only a leader when you have direct reports. These emerging leaders fail to realize that they can lead from any position.

One tool to help shift this limiting belief is the five unexpected workplace powers¹ of which a title — positional power—is only one. Understanding each power helps us unlock and experiment with different aspects of our leadership.

Power One: Positional

Positional power is the leadership many of us think of first. A person’s title, be it Manager, Vice President, or CEO, gives…

Where are you with your work today? Would you describe your hours, energy, style as being in a sprint or a marathon? With a sprint, it’s an intense focus where you put in all your energy to burst over the finish line. The marathon is a longer, more sustainable effort where you pace yourself so you don’t burnout. Or perhaps, it’s neither. …

When you hear the word “brand” do you think of websites and marketing materials? Or maybe Mad Men-style ad agencies creating campaigns for the Nikes and Coca-Colas of the world? Is there a whiff of something manufactured and inauthentic? A fake experience that’s purely created for advertising to get people to buy something?

The reality is that identifying your personal brand is a deeply energizing journey of introspection to focus on what matters most to you. Once you figure out your personal brand, you can choose to share it externally, or keep it as an internal touchstone for your leadership.

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For many of the busy professionals I work with, it’s easy to fall into the trap of transactional leadership. We focus on the work that needs to be done—the performance reviews to be written this week, the decisions that need to be made in this meeting, or the deadlines that must be hit to meet our quarterly goals. The days are split into 30 or 60 minute meeting chunks, leaving little space for connection in between all the tasks that must be done.

One secret to mitigating this transactional leadership is to work with your best friends. You may not…

My journey to leadership as an Asian female has had a long and meandering path to this present time when I am 44.

I grew up with a tiger mom who I believe is an undiagnosed manic-depressive. She loved me deeply. She gave up her career to follow my father’s job with Thai Airways, taking on the role of home holder to move our family every 3–4 years to a different country. She gave up her own aspirations and fiercely passed them on to my sister and I in the form of sky-high expectations.

I was a good girl. Culturally…

I am a life-long skeptic. My typical pattern is to listen and value my intellect and reason above all else. For decades, I would dismiss anything that didn’t follow rational thinking as being too “woo-woo.” But I was in a conundrum. Because, as a designer, I also know the value of my gut. There’s sometimes decisions or designs that I can’t rationally explain why and yet I intuitively know will work. I’ve written about how to follow your curiosity and express intuition at work. Deep down, I’ve always known that there was a subconscious mind that helps with creativity. It’s…