Are you feeling demotivated with development or humanitarian work?

It can show up in different ways.

Maybe you're feeling more tired than usual.

Or you just don't feel like checking your email.  

Or getting to that task---whatever it is.

Today I am going to walk you through four simple steps to overcome feelings of demotivation so you can start becoming your more energized self.

They are steps I have taken as a Country Manager and follow even now---and whether you're feeling...

I was honored to do a Time Management Master Training at the WILD Forum last week.  After the training, I found myself looking through the participants' comments for feedback.  And I quickly stopped myself.

While receiving feedback is wonderful, we need to be careful when we find ourselves craving it.  In my case, I was craving the feedback to confirm that "this presentation is amazing" - or really "I am amazing."  Although I found the feedback to validate people felt it...

This episode is a continuation of last week's, which includes advice my husband Shannon and I have based on 32 years' combined experience in the aid worker and humanitarian field.  In this episode you can learn:

• Best thing you can do for your health when living in a difficult environment
• Our best advice for surviving long distance relationships (we have five years experience)
• Daily habits that made the most impact in our lives in 2018
• Habits we hope to maintain in 2019
• Books that have...

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 created by gossip into an opportunity to reinforce a culture of trust, open communication and respect...

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 (or maybe gun shots?) through my open window.  The next morning we discovered...

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 experience in this area and provides some practical advice you can start using next week to...

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 with small things like staff turning in a report a day late or not being able to reach...

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 around where the humanitarian sector is headed and what International NGO's will need to do...

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 whether during visits, or during stakeholder meetings or when leading a project. I think this...

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 also shares advice around how her leadership skills evolved as she advanced in her career and...