Office gossip can be very damaging to a team and organization, not to mention the reputation of yourself and others! Gossip can lead to low staff morale, feelings of mistrust, and even problems with staff retention. It is therefore essential that we understand how to recognize gossip, what it is and why it happens. In this episode I share this as well as five ways you can turn the toxicity creat...

Everyone has one or more moments in their life they will never forget where they were or what they were doing when an unexpected event took place.  For me it was a typical hot sticky evening in South Sudan, with a broken generator in the hundred degree heat.  I remember getting up in the night to douse my hair with water to cool down enough to get to sleep, and lying back down hearing fireworks ...

In today’s episode Virginia da Graca and her colleague Nuno Delicado share a tremendous challenge they faced which we all fear--- that is, having less funding for programming.  But in this case, their funding wasn’t just slashed a few thousand dollars--- it actually went from an annual budget of $77,000 to zero--- yes, ZERO. 

Being in this situation made them challenge assumptions about what op...

We all engage with communities on some level in our work.  But the difference between meaningful engagement and mediocre is the difference between the community adopting new technologies or maintaining behavioral practices beyond the life of the project versus a full stop.

So how can we more meaningfully engage with communities?  Lucky for us, Deb Cummins of Bridging Peoples has significant ex...

Our career is unique in that we cannot always escape the stress factors at work just by going home.  I can think of times when I had a lot going on in the office, only to come home and find out there is no power or I am out of water and have to use my drinking water for bathing.  Although by themselves these situations are manageable, over time they can build until you start to become frustrated...

The majority of us participate in humanitarian response at some point in our career or even in "non-traditional" contexts - whether it be from a flood, drought, civil unrest or landslide.  The traditional model of sourcing funding through governments can be cumbersome, and the consequence costly.  My guest today Sean Lowrie is the Director of START Network and has some forward thinking ideas aro...

We have a lot of jargon in our industry, and recently it is becoming more and more common for donors and organizations to talk about "learning cultures" and "adaptive management".  But what does that really mean, and how does it relate to our day to day work?  My guest today, Guy Sharrock, has almost 40 years' experience in development and 17 of those in monitoring and evaluation and most recent...

This interview is a bit different - and that is because it is not from an aid worker perspective on humanitarian leadership, but from the donor perspective!   In this interview an individual working for a large, global donor shares, well, the good, the bad and the what you should never do when working with a donor.

He has a lot of great advice for all you leaders who interact with donors whethe...

In this interview Edna Morris, with forty years' experience in the male dominated restaurant industry, shares some great advice to apply to our field in many of the patriarchal contexts for men and women.  For example when Edna was told by several men that the role she had taken at a new job should be for a man, she shares how she handled this situation in a way which earned her respect. She als...

We’ve all been tortured by the same old “let me show you ALL my results” presentations in international development. They all kind of blend together after a while. So how can you make your public presentation (sharing of Baseline or Endline Results or Strategy) more memorable? Well you’re in luck, because in this episode I share three proven ways to conduct a presentation that will leave your st...