My Most Popular Posts of 2025 Show What Leaders Actually Need to Fix
From anxiety to ownership, the culture problems you can't keep avoiding
People often ask me why I write so much. I enjoy it and like sharing ideas. But the main reason? Writing helps me think clearly. It’s how I challenge my ideas and find better ways to help my clients.
Looking back at my 2025 articles helps me gain perspective. I can tell which pieces resonated most and which topics kept surfacing.
This year, I noticed something even more interesting: my most popular articles are about the same problems I help teams solve. The topics you enjoyed most—navigating ambiguity, encouraging people to speak up, making better decisions, and creating a culture of ownership—are the focus of my consulting work.
You didn’t read these articles because they were clever or well-written. You read them because they named your real problem. And they gave you solutions to move your team forward.
Below are my ten most popular articles about culture, leadership, and teamwork. I’ve temporarily removed the paywall on many so everyone can access them. Enjoy.
Facilitation: The Most Underrated Leadership Skill
Your best ideas get lost in meetings because people keep them to themselves. The problem isn’t your team’s intelligence—it’s that you’re running a meeting instead of facilitating a conversation.
The Hidden Cost of the Conversations We Avoid
That conversation you keep postponing isn’t going away. It’s growing more expensive every day you avoid it. What started as minor friction becomes conversational debt. Your team can feel even if they can’t name it.
How to Support Your Team When Anxiety Is High
Your team is paralyzed by uncertainty, and your attempts to make them feel better aren’t working. Anxiety doesn’t respond to optimism or denial. What helps is being clear about what you know, admitting what you don’t know, and giving people agency over what happens next.
The 10 Best Canvases for Culture Design and Team Building
You love my canvases because they turn vague frustrations into concrete conversations. Here are my most-downloaded frameworks to help you make the invisible visible. From mapping culture to designing better collaboration, these tools give your team language for what’s been stuck in silence.
How to Make Better Decisions Asynchronously—And Avoid Yet Another Meeting
Another meeting ended without a clear decision. A room full of smart people produced confusion instead of clarity. What if the problem isn’t your team but the belief that great decisions require everyone in the room?
Change Hurts: How to Lead Through Loss, Not Logic
Every time teams resist change, leaders double down on explaining the strategy harder. But people aren’t being difficult—they’re experiencing grief. They’re not saying no to your plan; they’re upset about what they’re losing, and logic won’t fix that.
The ABCs of Culture: How to Make Culture Tangible and Actionable
Culture is hard to understand because people treat it like something mysterious. The ABCs framework makes it simple: Alignment, Belonging, and Collaboration. These are three things you can see, track, and improve—not just talk about.
How to Build a Culture of Ownership (Top 10 most-read two years in a row)
Leaders say they want a culture of accountability. But instead, they’ve built a culture of blame and control. People wait to be told what to do because fear killed initiative. Ownership is different. It’s intrinsic, not enforced. When people feel they own their work, they naturally take responsibility for it.
The Anonymous Feedback Trap: Why It Actually Undermines Honesty
Anonymous feedback tools were supposed to make people speak up honestly. But here’s what actually happened: you get unclear complaints that you can’t fix, and your team trusts each other less. Anonymity doesn’t make people feel safe—it tells them that honest conversations are too risky.
Too Scared to Collaborate? Why Teams Struggle to Ask for Help
Your team would rather struggle in silence than admit they need help. They think asking for support makes them look weak. So they stay stuck instead of solving problems together. True collaboration doesn’t begin with team-building activities. It starts when people feel safe being honest about what they don’t know.
Which article did you like most? I’d love to hear why. Also, share any other topics you'd like me to write about in 2026.
If you need help with your team, contact me. Let’s talk about how my team and I can help you.