In aid work, time is precious.  And although we know that spending time on our team's professional development will pay off in the long run, it often seems like competing priorities get in the way.  In today's episode you'll learn about a very efficient way to use your time during professional development, and three reasons why it's so effective.

Every day we have the opportunity to either strengthen or weaken trust with others through our actions and words.  There will be times when we act in a way which breaks down trust, whether intentionally or without knowing it.  However if you have enough deposits in your "trust bank account" from previous efforts, it can go a long way in terms of mending your relationship or at least making it easier to repair.

In aid work establishing trust can be tricky because of working in...

A five year study by Google on highly effective teams found that by far the most important characteristic of a successful team is to feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable.   So how can we create an environment in which our teams feel safe enough to be vulnerable and in which we can have open and sometimes difficult conversations?

Whether it is a change in policy or a cut in funding, we all have to have difficult conversations as aid worker leaders.  But saying or doing the...

I have recruited staff before that were great at interviewing and talking about their experience, but once hired demonstrate a poor attitude.  One example is a Project Manager who was great at selling herself but then consistently talked down to the admin staff, treating them like her personal servants.  This type of disrespect is exactly the opposite of the type of culture we work hard to maintain, and therefore counterproductive.

Mark Notaras and his wife Alva Lim have combined...

Coaching is becoming more recognized in international development as a powerful leadership methodology that when used properly will help your direct reports develop professionally, realize their goals and become the best version of themselves. That said, there are a lot of misconceptions of coaching, what it is and how to do it. In this episode I share three common misconceptions (the wrong way to coach) which you may not know you are doing and how you can correct them.

The art of delegation in the humanitarian field can be challenging, considering the wide variety of backgrounds of those we manage. Perhaps you have heard of monkey management, a popular article from the Harvard Business Review which explains delegation in terms of monkeys (tasks) and how those monkeys have a tendency to jump onto the backs of their managers.  This upward delegation burdens you as a leader and can create bottlenecks in decision making, in addition to demotivating...

I am reading "The Art of Possibility” and in the section on leadership co-author Bill Zander, who is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, remarks on a momentous realization in his career in relation to leadership:  “The conductor of an orchestra’s true power derives from the ability to make others powerful.  So instead of asking “how good am I?” he replaced that question with “what makes a group lively and engaged?” ...