ConceptsNest

   Close your eyes and imagine yourself standing in front of a towering wall with small, colourful pegs scattered along the structure. Around your waist is a snug harness, and you begin to scale the wall, one step at a time, climbing higher and higher. Every move you make is methodical, forcing you to think with your body as much as your brain. There are mental health benefits of rock climbing that exceed the physical ones, and we don’t necessarily have to be a master of the sport to reap them. Leadership can be learned anywhere. Reflecting back on rock-climbing sessions, we realized how much this experience can be a metaphor for leadership experiences. Rock climbing offers many opportunities for personal and professional development.   1. Collaboration and Differing Perspectives: . . . -> Climbing is solitary, yet highly collaborative in nature. To climb safely, you must have someone to belay and/or spot you, meaning you are always part of a team. Active encouragement and coa

Daily stand-up meetings might be the quickest way to waste your time as a leader. As a manager, you’ve likely witnessed this first hand. Your daily stand-up meetings have become bloated and unengaging, the more time passes and the bigger your team grows. Should you be doing something different? And if so, what? The time to kill the daily stand-up meeting has come. Here’s exactly why and what we should do instead… Why Daily Stand-Up Meetings Do Not Always Work 01.   Many oars, too many directions: The original  intention  behind a daily stand-up meeting is extremely sound. Popularized by the  Agile methodology  of project management, daily stand-up meetings are meant to share progress and identify any blockers the team is facing . For the few teams who strictly adhere to only sharing status updates and blockers, a daily stand-up can serve them well. However, for most of us in practice, it’s a different story. We get overly excited and cram other intentions into our daily stand-u