Jedi Mind Tricks – How to Travel with Family
I’m traveling with my family to Mexico for two weeks this winter. The trip is a throwback to holidays from my childhood. Every other year, my family avoided the holidays altogether and traveled to Latin America. As a kid, I was sad to miss the holidays, but in retrospect those international trips were formative. This […]
Habits for Gratitude and Celebration
Throughout my life, I’ve believed that in order to acknowledge what’s going well in my life, I have to first solve any difficult emotional situations. Over the last several years, I’ve realized that it is often more effective to focus on the positive, instead of first trying to solve the negative. Instead of waiting for […]
Habits for Grief
Two years ago, my best friend was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. Two months ago, I went through a breakup. Whether personally or globally, challenges arise. Someone you love dies. A friend lets you down. You’re forced to confront your own aging or an aging parent. Grief is complicated. We aren’t taught much about […]
My System for Emotional Self-Management
I spoke with an entrepreneur recently who described founding her startup as the loneliest of jobs. Elon Musk, somewhat more dramatically, said that “starting a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass.” Running Robin’s Cafe was the loneliest job I’ve held. It taught me a lot about my own emotional management, which […]
The Unexpected Benefits of Celebration
Special Announcement! My book Responsive: What It Takes To Create a Thriving Organization is free today on Amazon! Responsive chronicles the stories of organizations from around the world that are designed to thrive amidst chaos. Today only, Responsive is free on Amazon. Get it here! — August 2016 was a wild time for me. Three […]
How Do We Make the Most of the Time We Have?
Early in high school, I discovered what Tyler Cowen calls a “quake book” – a book that fundamentally alters my world view and how I live. Tuesdays with Morrie is a book about death, and it has changed how I view, and talk about death, ever since. When my best friend was diagnosed with breast […]
On the Shortness of Life
I was driving home after my aunt’s memorial on Saturday afternoon when my car was hit by someone pulling onto the freeway. My car was slammed across two lanes of traffic into the median; airbags deployed, and my Prius totaled. The other driver’s SUV spun nearly 180 degree; airbags deployed, front axel broken, and his […]
From Boy To Man: Bullying, Sensitivity, and Growth
I visited my middle school last week, which is the location of the darkest moments in my life. There were times in 6th and 7th grade when I did not think I would survive the experience.
Finding inner peace through 24 years…
Eldra is a TED main stage speaker and the co-executive director of Inside Circle, a non-profit which works to end cycles of incarceration and recidivism. Eldra was incarcerated for 24 years, with several years of that time spent in solitary confinement. Eldra now spends most of his time sitting with people inside and outside the […]
Achieving Radical Alignment with Alex Jamieson…
Welcome back to another episode of the Robin Zander Show! My guests today are Alex Jamieson and Bob Gower, co-authors of the new book, Radical Alignment. This book is designed to help people achieve more joy and less drama – at work and in daily life. Bob Gower is an organizational design consultant. He supported […]
We’re All In Different Boats
When the pandemic hit in early March, everyone had to make changes. In addition to observing my own responses, it was interesting to see how other people reacted, as well. Everybody I’ve talked to this year has been impacted, but nobody has been impacted in quite the same way. I first heard the metaphor that […]
Love, Guide & Let Go
One of the premises of Responsive.org is that the rate of change is accelerating. Over the six years that I have run events about the Future of Work, we have seen that the ways we work and organize are changing ever faster. The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited this rate of change and fast-forwarded the Future […]
The Practice of Resilience
A week ago, I conducted a webinar with former Navy SEAL, Chris Fussell, about the Coronavirus Pandemic. Chris was a speaker at the First Annual Responsive Conference, and we have maintained contact ever since. I started the interview asking about a longtime curiosity – what makes high performers, like the military special forces – calm […]
An Interview about Culture Culture, Talent Development, and the Circus with Greg Russell
A few weeks ago, I sat down with Greg Russell, Head of People and Talent at Snapdocs to talk about talent development. The conversation ended up covering a great deal more including company culture, special needs, human development, and my own eclectic background. I hope you enjoy!
How I Conduct A Personal Annual Review – and Highlights from 2017
Every year, for nearly the last decade, I’ve conducted an annual review. When writing a personal annual review, my process looks like this: Going on the week by week view of my 2017 calendar and listing out every single thing that I spent my time doing. Given that most days I usually have 10-20 things […]
Doug Kirkpatrick on The Morning Star Company and Building Self-Managed Organizations
Doug Kirkpatrick is the author of Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization. He spent the first season of his business career in the manufacturing sector, principally with The Morning Star Company of Sacramento, California. In addition to being a world leader in the food industry, the Morning Star Company is known for being […]
Meredith Haberfeld on Fostering Leadership and Building High Performing Organizations
My guest today, Meredith Haberfeld (@merhaberfeld), is the co-founder of Think Human, a coaching company that has worked with a wide variety of organizations – including, among many others, SoulCycle, Spotify, and Flat Iron Health – to foster leadership and build high performing organizations. Meredith looks at things from a unique viewpoint bridging a scientific, […]
Are You Afraid of the Happy Idiot?
Happiness is an overused term, and rarely well defined. The Happy Idiot Usually, when we think of a “happy” person, what comes to mind? A kind-hearted, somewhat bumbling buffoon. Charlie from Flowers for Algernon in the earliest and latest stages of his development. And yet we spend most of our lives, in innumerable ways, trying to […]
When Everything You Have Learned Is Sufficient
I’ve never considered myself a sophisticated business person. Several years ago (albeit, after interviewing more than a dozen MBAs) I decided against going to graduate school in business, focusing instead on a less tradition career of which business is more the necessity than the focus. That said, I enjoy learning. And “business” – encompassing everything from tax law […]
The Best of Robin’s Reading List from 2014
In 2014 I’ve read more books than in any previous year of my life. That includes the Reed College humanities curriculum, which is just ridiculous. I chalk up the depth and breadth of my reading to the combination of my infra-red sauna, Amazon Prime, and the fact that I’ve been writing. These are some of my favorite books, and miscellaneous media, […]
Getting Back Up Does Get Easier
Fair Warning: This post is more personal than many of my solution-oriented articles. If you are more interested in specific tools for cultivating successful habits, the blog is full of them. I think it is only fair to share stories of challenge, too. — I have fallen over more times that I can possibly say. Literally, in my variety […]
Why Habits Are The Future
Habits are the future of our health and livelihood. While you might not think in terms of the word “habit” you probably recognize that you are pulled between nearly infinite information and how you chose to spend your time. Current educational systems are unable to change to teach to 21st century challenges quickly enough. The solution to modern problems are up […]
Fixation, Addiction and Pursuit of Perfection
When I find something I like – a new sport, person, company or restaurant – I fixate. Culturally we usually discuss fixation only in terms of “addiction.” I’ve discussed before the benefits of enthusiasm for special needs children and non-attachment for overcoming hurdles. There is utility to the boundless (perhaps incessant) enthusiasm that accompanies discovering […]
Always Be Cross-Training – How Multiple Disciplines Will Help You Succeed
I am always cross-training. I’ve just returned taking letters to the post-office, meaning that I ran there and ran back. I could have used Shyp or driven to the Post Office but it took less time to run, and besides, I was cross-training. I don’t mean cross-training in just the traditional sense. While I do […]
Attached to the Outcome? Doomed to Fail. Try These Shortcuts!
Anytime someone is completely fixated on a specific outcome, they are doomed to fail. I recently found this to be true when a broken toe severely limited my ability to turn in ballet, but we see examples across the board – from special needs to athletic performance to business successes. When someone is fixated on […]
Cultivate Presence
The last 5 months have a been a whirl-wind. Since January 1, 2014 I’ve founded a corporation, attempted to launch a 500+ person workshop in the Bay Area, failed to publish a book, begun ballet and achieved triple pirouettes, spoken at Stanford University, UCSF, and Ignite SF, and more. Today I’m going to look at […]
The Attitude That Works to Learn Anything
The Attitude that Works is how I describe an attitude I bring to my coaching with special needs children, and try to apply everywhere, in any learning environment. The attitude consists of three parts: Love Presence Acceptance For background, I’ve been developing an attitude that works for years. When I talked a guy down from […]
How to Learn From Entrepreneurial Manic Depression (And How To Avoid It)
I chose the header of this blog for a very specific reason. The up and down arrows are a reminder to me that learning anything has ups and downs. Last week I wanted to punch things and felt like sleeping all day to avoid reality, but had to get out of bed, answer emails, issue […]
Closing the Creative Gap
Learning anything worth learning is tough. And especially for those of us who want to not just learn a skill but excel, there are a lot of ups and downs. It seems that the more exciting a venture is, the more I’m liable to turn manic-depressive. This is actually the reason I created the header […]
Ask Questions with an Attitude That Works
I have spent most of the month of January refreshing my study of the Option Process Dialogue, a form of socratic questioning which I have found invaluable in my practice, personal life, and physical training. If you haven’t heard me discuss questions before then by way of introduction, I suggest reading my post Ask More […]