When you show your team that you care enough to study them, they are more likely to care about you and the overall goals you are trying to reach together.

Effective leadership is founded on the idea that a leader must first take care of themselves before they can take care of anyone else. This isn't about being selfish in the negative sense. Rather, it is about being a good steward of the only tool you have to offer the world: yourself.

We often get stuck trying to find the perfect definition of a leader. We read books, attend seminars, and look for a checklist of traits. But leadership is less of a definition and more of a lifestyle. It isn’t something you turn on when you get a promotion; it’s the way you conduct yourself when no one is watching.

We wear our exhaustion like a badge of honor. We mistake burnout for dedication. We believe that to be truly good people, we must give until there is nothing left, scraping the bottom of the barrel to feed everyone else while we starve.

I have wanted to start this blog/website for many, many years. I have spent money on domains or web services only to have them sit idle in their small corner of the internet, with the words “Coming Soon” big and bold on the landing page. I might post one or two posts, but then either delete them or take them behind the curtain for no public consumption. In short, I have been living in a virtual waiting room.