Y’all. I need to tell you something, and you might brush it off because it’s still warm outside… but February will be here before you know it.

“Don’t be silly, Hanna,” you might say. “February is 4 MONTHS away!”

Trust me; they’re the fastest four months of the year — between now and then, we’ve got Halloween & Día de los Muertos, Thanksgiving, the Winter Light holidays, New Year’s, and let’s not forget the election (which I hope will be a reason to celebrate! Don’t forget to vote!).

It’s a sleigh ride through time; if you’re not careful, you’ll wake up on the other side of it a little dazed and a lot overwhelmed.

I remember turning ten years old so clearly. It was my first milestone birthday, and I looked forward to it for a long time. A full decade old! Double digits! Somehow, crossing that threshold seemed like it would change everything…

Recently, while engaging in the endless game of calendar Tetris, I came across a little reminder: AC Anniversary (2014), reminding me of the first day I went to work as a consultant. The memories of my excitement about my tenth birthday were revived as I realized I was approaching the end of a decade in my new profession!…

As I mentioned last month, I’ve given myself the gift of a shortened workweek this summer. Rather than a traditional vacation, I’m taking Fridays off until mid-September.

While I’m certainly motivated to rest and recover from my too-busy spring (and summer is the season for hiding indoors for those of us living in the desert!), the real reason for this decision is to elevate my productivity.

Because when we overcommit or overbook ourselves (or both!), a crucial piece of us winds up crumpled in the corner beneath all those obligations and appointments…

“I just need to be a little more weird and communicate when things are frustrating,” said my new client at the end of our first coaching session. One month (and two coaching sessions) later, she is visibly relaxed and way less hard on herself. Her boss even said to me, “I don’t know what you’re saying to her — she has such an ease, it’s magnetic!”

I was a pretty serious kid growing up. Even in elementary school, I took my grades very seriously. I was so focused on getting “straight-A’s” that my dad was concerned about how I would react when inevitably I received a lower grade. Unbeknownst to me, he had planned for this eventuality… when I came home with my first “B”, he took the whole family out for pie to celebrate!

I can’t really begin to describe how much I love the work I get to do with my clients. Helping individuals and teams grow into their leadership in dynamic and diverse ways is incredibly fulfilling and rewarding, and sometimes I even have to take a moment in the middle of facilitating a retreat to revel in the joy of it!

We are all intimately familiar with the concept of “impostor syndrome”, but I’m not a fan of the term. I think it reinforces the idea that there is something wrong or broken — a syndrome is, after all, a kind of pathology. But feeling insecure is not an illness, it’s an unavoidable consequence of forging a unique path!

Why? Because she confirmed in her email what I had observed in our initial meeting — this is someone with a high degree of self-awareness that is ready to take the next step in her leadership growth. She just has a self-limiting inner voice that says she should be able to do it alone, and my mission in life is to provide a counterpoint to self-limiting inner voices.

My sister lives in Berlin, so instead of waiting until our schedules align for a phone call, we swap voice messages. What’s especially cool is that, since it’s asynchronous, there’s no pressure — we both get to set the pace that works for us whether we’re listening or talking. I wish I could take the credit for this brilliant communication hack, but it was all her idea.

When you let go of trying to be good at things that other people are great at, you suddenly have all this energy to invest in what you are naturally great at! Sure, I’m an undisciplined, inconsistent flibbertigibbet - that’s because I am creative, spontaneous, optimistic, and willing to take risks – of course I can’t be both.

With the holidays fast approaching, you’ve probably started thinking about what gifts you want to get for the people you love. But I’ll wager there’s someone important you’ve left off your list… your future self.

A circus is nothing if not a “strengths-based” organization. A group of people with unique and irreplaceable talents come together to build something greater than the sum of its parts. The audience is captivated by the sight of people performing these impressive feats of artistry, flexibility, and bravery.

I spent my first couple years in management rather desperately trying to avoid the kind of confrontation necessary to hold my “problem employees” accountable for their actions. I bent over backwards to help them change, but ultimately *nothing I did* improved their patterns of problematic behavior.

I’m someone who thinks better out loud — thinking or reading alone doesn’t provide the kind of spark that conversation does, and it rarely activates my creativity in a way that leads to the insightful connections I’m known for.

No one enjoys holding other people accountable. It is uncomfortable, annoying, and frustrating as all hell. Unsurprisingly, many of my clients struggle with this critical part of management because it feels inauthentic and at odds with the compassionate, empathetic style of leadership to which they aspire.

I recently started coaching a small business owner for whom I am also a client. She is an absolute rock star in her profession, but her business is still very new and as we got to know each other I realized that she was exactly the kind of client I love to work with — brilliant at what she does but struggling to figure out how to grow her business in a way that supports her life.

A prospective coaching client wrote me an email recently admitting that she felt lazy about finding her potential through coaching, and she was worried she wouldn’t become engaged. When I read that I knew that we were a perfect match.