Bipana Dhakal shares 5 powerful lessons in mentorship for changemakers, drawing on her journey as a community and global changemaker. Growing up in a rural and marginalized community in Nepal, struggles and scarcity taught me. They taught me to be passionate about youth advocacy for community development. They…
Aparajita Dhar explores the trap of high performance and shares an important lesson on how leaders keep people at the core. During my two-decade long career I have amassed lot of lessons around “what to do” as a leader. I’ve learned even more about “what not to do.”…
Richard Dzikunu shares 4 powerful lessons for young professionals from his experience as a young leader on Ghanaian and Global stages alike. It all started as an extracurricular activity. When I joined a child rights group called Curious Minds, I spent time after school at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation…
The accommodation style of conflict management is an overlooked but powerful skill for leaders to master. Perry Maddox explains how. Over two years as a Peace Corps trainer in Paraguay, I learned one big lesson: You cannot force adults to learn. That’s why facilitators guide adult learning through questions, conversations,…
Nashwa Mohammed explains how our bodies react to stress and shares practical tips for stress to keep leaders calm when the lion attacks. The past couple of years have been unpredictably rough. From the consequences of the ongoing pandemic to trying to solve our personal life challenges, the…
Perry Maddox explains the importance of leaders facing into downturns early and explains how to ensure organizational sustainability through lean times. My second week as a Country Director, I was told to urgently cut the entire budget by 35 percent. Not a dream start, but if you lead…
Perry Maddox explains three simple decision-making models for leaders and answers the worrying question of “how are decisions made?” A few days later, I realized I got something wrong. Really wrong. In the middle of an urgent crisis, I convened a senior team to make a key decision.…
Perry Maddox explores how to avoid conflict at work, identifying when avoidance is best and explaining how to execute this conflict strategy. I grew up playing a lot of sports. Not terribly well, mind you, but sports were a big part of my youth. Unsurprisingly, sports shaped a…
Nashwa Mohammed explores leadership failure and shares practical advice on how to rethink failure not as a problem but as a moment to grow. What is failure? When I first thought about writing this article, I was curious to find out what are the formal definitions of the…
Perry Maddox explores the hedgehog concept and explains how leaders use this concept to build great organizational strategy. A young leader reached out to me last year. He had just founded a community-based organization on the outskirts of Harare, fixing water sanitation problems in his community. At once…