Blog | Leadership Tools | Diamond Leadership

The Fog of War

You’ve got five meetings today. A decision hanging over your head: launch now or wait until spring? Three final-round candidates to interview. A key team member just announced maternity leave. And this isn’t an unusually busy week. This is every week.

Are You Too Much?

“Just try to tone it down a bit, Julie.” It took me by surprise. This was a teacher I respected deeply, someone whose judgment I trusted, and she was telling me that I was too intimidating to another student. That I needed to dial myself back.

The Struggle

We live in a world saturated with advice. There’s guidance on everything: fitness, health, business, relationships. Knowledge is everywhere. But is knowledge enough? Can we grow simply because we’ve been told how?

Kill Your Darlings

Success is so often defined by scale: bigger companies, bigger markets, bigger valuations. We’re conditioned to chase growth so it’s easy to assume that our competence and worth is reflected by size. But is bigger always better?

I’m Not OK

Research on the personality traits of leaders shows that leaders tend to be more assertive, calm, confident, and unflappable than the average person. And we like this. We expect leaders to project strength and certainty. But what happens when the person in the role doesn’t feel strong, certain, or composed?

What Time Teaches Us

I truly love this time of year, the threshold between the old year and the new. It’s a liminal space, the in-between. We’re no longer fully in the year that was, but we’re not yet in the one coming. For people who spend much of their time deciding, directing, and carrying responsibility, this pause can feel unfamiliar. It’s like being on a long plane ride, or stopping in the doorway, neither here nor there.

Beware the Underdog

We love to cheer for the underdog. Their struggle mirrors our own deepest hopes, that we can overcome doubt, adversity, and the odds stacked against us. Watching someone with less power, privilege, or preparation rise to the occasion stirs the belief in us that effort and heart can outweigh advantage.

Jumping Into the Deep End

We’re here on earth for just a short time. And the time we have is a privilege. And a responsibility. A responsibility to do something with your “one wild and precious life.”

Side-stepping power

Most misuse of power is seen as its overuse: dominating discussions, micromanaging others, coercing or threatening to get your way. But the underuse of power—timidity, hesitation, fear of making the wrong decision—is just as costly. Holding power means having a responsibility to use it. And side-stepping your power, ceding your authority to be seen as nice, or to avoid making a wrong move, can have negative, even dangerous consequences.

Staying True to Your Voice

Praise, approval, and positive feedback is attractive—and addictive. When you have an audience, it’s tempting to bend toward their expectations, to dilute your voice, your truth to earn their approval. We see artists sellout, teachers lower their standards to get better ratings from students, even managers turn a blind eye to things, to stay in the good graces of others. But real power comes from resisting that pull: from staying true to your own voice, even when it’s uncomfortable, unpopular, or unrewarded.

Power Intelligence: