The Subtle Art of Power
What we can learn about power from rock, paper, scissors.
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Executive Function Under Authority: When the Way You Operate Becomes Someone Else’s Working Environment
A leader’s executive-function patterns rarely stay contained to their own workload. Decisions, shifting priorities, emotional responses, forgotten commitments and follow-through can shape how other people organize and experience their work. Authority gives ordinary operating patterns a wider reach.
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Where Should a Leader Spend Their Executive Function?
As responsibility grows, leaders inherit more cognitive work along with more visible work. The leadership challenge is deciding where their own judgment creates unique value, where remembering and monitoring can be carried elsewhere, and how to remain accountable without personally holding every mental operation.
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What Should You Let AI Think About forYou?
Generative AI changes the division of cognitive labor by moving activities such as organization, synthesis and comparison outside the person. For leaders, the resulting challenge is deciding how much human understanding, verification and judgment a consequential decision requires.
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Why Leadership Has to Start Inside the Leader
Leadership skills do not operate independently of the leader. Regulation, identity, thinking, and unresolved patterns can shape how power and influence are exercised, especially when pressure rises.
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The Space Between Impulse and Action
Response inhibition creates enough space between an impulse and an action for choice to enter the picture. When that space narrows, we may act before the rest of the relevant information catches up.
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When Your Brain Needs to Change Course
Cognitive flexibility helps you adjust when circumstances change. Understanding the change is one thing. Reorganizing your thinking around it can require considerably more work.
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Staying Able to Think When Feelings Run High
Strong emotions don’t mean you’ve lost control. Emotional regulation is about what happens to your ability to think, choose, and respond when those emotions are present.
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Problem Solving Is More Than Finding an Answer
Problem solving is more than coming up with a good answer. It requires understanding what is happening, deciding what matters, choosing a response, and adjusting when new information changes the picture. Here’s why I include problem solving in my executive function framework, even though it technically relies on several executive functions working together.
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Executive Functions: The Skills Behind Getting Things Done
Executive function is the mental machinery behind getting things done. Understanding it makes performance problems more specific, less personal, and easier to investigate.
