Ideas & Inspirations

 I was watching the World Cup when I found myself paying more attention to the referee than the players. Clément Turpin, working the England-Norway match, had just made a call and was standing there while a few players continued to argue it. He didn't raise his voice to compete. He didn't try to win the exchange. He simply waited, silent, until the players ran out of things to say, and only then did he speak. I thought immediately of the classroom, where the same instinct shows up in teachers who stop talking rather than shout over a noisy room, trusting that silence will do what volume can't. But watching Turpin longer, I found myself thinking less about classroom management and more about leadership itself, and about what it actually asks of the person responsible for the whole field. A referee has to track everything happening around him while staying fixed on what matters most. He has seconds to decide what needs action and what can wait for review. He has to listen wit...

The other day, I found myself taking a walk at the end of my workday. That sentence may not sound particularly significant, but for me, it was. For years, my days were measured by how much I could squeeze into them. Early mornings. Late nights. Skipped lunches. Missed breaks. Full days at work followed by evenings spent building a consulting business, recording podcasts, writing articles, preparing presentations, chasing the next opportunity. I told myself it was necessary. Some of it was. Some of it wasn't. At the time, I couldn't tell the difference. The grind became part of my identity. The constant motion became proof that I was committed. The exhaustion became evidence that I cared. If I wasn't busy, I felt guilty. If I wasn't building something, I felt like I was falling behind. Many of us wear those beliefs like badges of honor. We celebrate the first one in and the last one out. We applaud the leader who never takes a day off. We admire the person who somehow ma...

Last weekend, one of my bonus daughters had Formula One racing on in the living room. I had never really watched it before, so she started walking me through it: the cars, the strategy, the culture around the sport. It was more layered than I expected, and I found myself genuinely pulled in. Then the pit stop happened. In the time it took me to process the scene, it was already over. The average Formula One pit stop lasts around 2.8 seconds. The fastest ever recorded came in under two seconds. In that window, all four tires are changed, debris is cleared, adjustments are made, and the front wing is realigned so the car can continue performing at the level the race demands. What stayed with me was not the speed of it. It was the necessity. Even the fastest cars in the world cannot finish a race without stopping for care. The timing matters too, and the team takes it seriously. Pull in too early and the adjustments may not hold long enough to matter. Wait too long and the damage from wor...

Every Sunday, I run the same route. Aldi. Walmart. Occasionally Menards. If my wife is along, we might add HomeGoods or Marshalls to the mix. It is a routine that has become efficient over time. I know the layout, I know what we need, and I walk in with a list that I fully intend to follow. This past Sunday broke that pattern. I went in hungry. And what followed was one of those small, unremarkable experiences that somehow ends up revealing something you were not quite prepared to find. At first, it did not seem significant. I still had my list, and I was still moving through the store with the same general intention. But somewhere between the produce section and the frozen aisle, something shifted. The list was still in my hand, but it had quietly lost its authority. Items that were never part of the plan started finding their way into the cart, not recklessly or carelessly, but in the way that feels completely reasonable when you are standing right in front of something and you are h...

I made an offhand comment recently comparing life to a credit card. At the time, it felt simple. Almost obvious. But the more I sat with it, the more it started to reveal something I had not fully considered before. We are constantly paying for things in our lives. The problem is not that we pay. The problem is that we misunderstand what we are actually paying. There is a difference between a price and a cost. The price is what you see up front. It is visible. Immediate. Tangible. The cost is what accumulates in the background when the price goes unaddressed. And the longer it goes unacknowledged, the more expensive it becomes. In leadership, this shows up in ways that are easy to recognize once you decide to look for them. A toxic behavior surfaces within a team. It creates tension. It disrupts trust. It quietly chips away at culture. Addressing it carries a price — a difficult conversation, a moment of discomfort, the possibility of pushback, maybe even the risk of losing someone who...

There was a time in my life when difficult conversations were not just avoided. They were unrecognizable. We had what we called family meetings growing up. On the surface, they appeared to be spaces for communication. In reality, they were cycles. Blame would be passed around, voices would rise, time would stretch on, and nothing would move forward. When it ended, we were left with the same problems, just layered with more frustration. No resolution. No clarity. Just exhaustion. It did not take long to learn the lesson. Say less. Feel less. Engage less. Suppress. That became the strategy. And for a while, it felt like it worked. Silence can create the illusion of peace when you have never experienced what real resolution looks like. So I carried that approach with me. Into relationships. Into leadership. Into life. Over time, that began to change. Not overnight. Not all at once. But slowly, through experience, failure, and the work I now guide others through, I began to see difficult c...

The crack of the bat, the rhythm of innings, the slow unfolding of a game that refuses to be rushed. Opening Day always feels like a reset, not just for teams but for anyone paying attention. The air shifts, the sun lingers a little longer, and the grass begins to reclaim its color. There is something grounding about it, something that signals movement, growth, and a return to possibility. I have always loved baseball for that reason. As a lifelong Cubs fan, I know something about patience, persistence, and the belief that the work eventually pays off. The game teaches you things if you let it. So there I was, tuned into the second game of the season, when a comment from the broadcast stopped me. The announcer mentioned a player's batting average, sitting around .300, and then said something that I could not shake: that player fails seven out of every ten times he steps to the plate. Said plainly, almost as an afterthought. And yet it landed like something worth sitting with. Becau...

Last week, I wrote about the beauty of a lived-in life. The idea came during a morning walk through my neighboring subdivision. It is brand new, while mine has clearly been around for a while. The new development was spotless. Fresh paint, perfect landscaping, sidewalks that looked untouched. Walking back into my own neighborhood, the contrast was immediate. Landscaping stones slightly out of place. A mailbox leaning just a little off center. Grass worn thin where people had cut across the yard instead of following the sidewalk. Nothing looked neglected. It just looked lived in. And honestly, I found it more interesting than the new one. Those small details told a story. Life had happened there. Since writing that piece, another thought has been sitting with me. It surfaced while working through a couple of repairs around the house. The first one involved a section of subflooring near the center of our home. Beneath the carpet, the wood had weakened over time. That part of the house co...

This morning I went for a walk through the neighborhood. Next to our subdivision, a new development is being built. Streets are paved, houses are standing, and fresh sod has just been rolled across the lawns. From a distance, everything looks immaculate. Out of curiosity, I wandered through it. The houses were beautiful. Clean lines. Fresh paint. Landscaping rocks arranged exactly where they were placed. The sidewalks looked as if no one had ever walked across them. Most of the homes had not even been lived in yet. Everything felt pristine. As I turned the corner and walked back toward my own section of the neighborhood, the contrast was immediate. Our subdivision is still very nice, but it tells a different story. Landscaping stones have shifted slightly from their original lines. A mailbox leans just a little off center. Some houses show small chips in the paint. Lawns are worn in places where people cut across the yard instead of staying on the sidewalk. Nothing about it look...

There was a time in my leadership journey when I took quiet pride in being essential. If I stepped away and things got messy, I noticed. If decisions stalled without me, I noticed. If people came to me afterward saying, “We needed you,” I definitely noticed. And if I am being honest, part of me liked it. It felt like proof that what I was doing mattered. Proof that I was making an impact. Proof that the organization was stronger because I was there. At least that is how I interpreted it at the time. Over the years, though, I began to notice something that made me uncomfortable. The more things depended on me, the more limited they actually were. Progress slowed when my attention was elsewhere. Growth was constrained by my availability. Improvement only happened when I personally pushed it forward. What I once viewed as influence began to look more like bottleneck. That realization forced me to reconsider something I had never really questioned before. What does it actually mean ...

Tomorrow is Presidents Day. A day traditionally set aside to honor Washington and Lincoln. A day that, in many ways, helped shape the origins of Black History Month, which was initially tied to Lincoln’s birthday and the Emancipation Proclamation. A document that served as a catalyst toward the end of legalized slavery in the United States. That is the version many of us were taught. Clear. Direct. Moral. But history is rarely that simple. Over time, scholars and historians have made it clear that Lincoln did not issue the Emancipation Proclamation purely from moral conviction. It was also a strategic military decision designed to weaken the Confederacy and preserve the Union. Lincoln himself made this clear in an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley when he wrote that if he could save the Union without freeing any slaves, he would do it. If freeing some or all would save it, he would do that instead. His priority was the survival of the Union. He also expressed views about race that are ...

I recently helped facilitate a leadership training session with school leaders. During our time together, we posed two simple questions: What is a recent leadership win? and What is a current leadership struggle? A pattern emerged immediately. When leaders spoke about wins, nearly every response centered on their team or their school. Success was collective, shared, and outward-facing. When we turned to struggles, the shift was stark. Almost every answer became deeply personal. Leaders spoke candidly about their own shortcomings, blind spots, and areas for growth. When we pointed this out, the room grew quiet. The realization landed. Reflection matters. Continuous improvement matters. But so does recognizing your own victories. Too many leaders are experts at accountability and amateurs at celebration. I know this because I live it. I struggle with personal praise, with public recognition, with allowing myself to simply receive a compliment. A therapist could likely trace that bac...

Today marks the first day of Black History Month. Those who genuinely honor this month understand that Black pride, excellence, and contribution do not begin on February 1 nor end on February 28. Still, starting here felt intentional. It felt necessary. Many of you have likely seen the film Sinners . If you have not, you should. Recently, the film returned to the public conversation following the Golden Globe Awards. Sinners earned seven Golden Globe nominations , a significant acknowledgment of its reach and resonance. Of those seven, the film received two awards . One was for Best Original Score , an honor that was not aired during the broadcast. The other was for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement , a category tied largely to revenue and audience turnout rather than artistic evaluation. For many, those outcomes felt unsatisfying. Not because recognition did not occur, but because of how it occurred. The film was present in the conversation, yet absent when the major artistic ca...

 “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.” Over the past few months, the first half of that statement has been everywhere. Good. Better. Best. It became a mantra tied to the Chicago Bears’ unexpected season and their return to the playoffs. For many fans, those words felt new. Fresh. Energizing. They were not new to me. Years ago, when I was principal at Plato, we talked a great deal about excellence. Not as a buzzword, and certainly not as a synonym for perfection. We talked about excellence as doing the best you possibly can with what you have, where you are. There was a stretch of time when we began many of our mornings with the full mantra, not just the catchy first line. The emphasis mattered. We were intentional about framing excellence as personal growth rather than comparison. Today should be better than yesterday. This week better than last week. This month better than last month. This year better than last year. If t...

Tomorrow, Indiana University will head to its first football championship in quite some time. They are undefeated and, by any objective measure, having an incredible season. This creates a problem for me. I am a Purdue graduate. My wife is a Purdue graduate. One of our daughters is a Purdue graduate. The rivalry between Purdue and IU is not subtle. Walk around Purdue’s campus and you will see “IU sucks” signs. It is a chant shouted after every kickoff, regardless of who Purdue is actually playing. Rivalries like this are baked into identity. So of course, we have given our other daughter and anyone else who graduated from IU a hard time. The same goes for friends and family who attend or are considering attending. That is part of the culture. Playful banter. Ribbing. A shared understanding that allegiance comes with jokes at someone else’s expense. And that is where it should end. Healthy rivalry creates space for competition without contempt. It pushes each side to sharpen its ed...

During this past holiday season, I attended my wife’s holiday party. It was exactly what you would expect from a room full of educators. Easy laughter, shared frustrations, food, drinks, and that lightened emotional state that comes when the end of a quarter and a break are finally in sight. As we sat talking, my wife and her colleagues started pointing out the “babies” who had recently joined her team. New teachers. Fresh energy. Wide-eyed optimism. At some point, we realized something that stopped us for a moment. Some of them were the same age as our own kids. Then one of her colleagues walked in, stopped in her tracks, and stared at me. She looked familiar, but I could not immediately place her. She eventually sat with us and said, almost casually, that I had been her principal at Thea Bowman. I was only at Thea Bowman for one year. It was my first year as a principal. I was thirty years old and, if I am honest, there were plenty of moments when I questioned whether I should be run...