Leadership Blog
From Incite to Leadership founder and CEO Jo Ilfeld, read the latest on strategic vision, leading change amid complexity, and honing the way you communicate and collaborate with others. Get resources, practical strategies, research, and more.
In leadership, it’s easy to treat missed meetings as isolated events—customer issues pop up, priorities shift, and something gets bumped. But when this happens more than occasionally, it’s no longer an exception—it’s a signal. In a conversation with my executive coaching client, a startup CEO, she shared that her Friday C-team meetings often got postponed…
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Dear Dr. Jo, I’m in a situation at work that has never happened to me before and I was hoping you might have some advice. I work as Chief of Staff at a local company. I was hired relatively early on, but even so, I don’t feel that I know my boss that well or…
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Are you familiar with the well known saying “Buy real estate like there’s no one watching”? No? Ok, the real famous comment is “Dance like there’s no one watching” but recently I’ve been thinking about the alternate real estate version. This thought came to me during a recent stay in Carmel, where I discovered an…
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As leaders, we often wrestle with one key question: When do you experiment and when do you listen to tried and true wisdom? I recently remembered a time I served on a nonprofit board. Whenever new members suggested ideas, I’d catch myself shooting them down: “We tried that already” or “That won’t work because…” Eventually,…
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When it comes to giving leadership feedback, how often do we ask ourselves: Am I making this better or just making it different? This gem of a question came from a recent client conversation, and I had to share. I love the distinction because sure, we all have our own ideas. We can all make…
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Last month marked my 25th wedding anniversary. The milestone made me pause and reflect on something unexpected: the overlap between a strong marriage and strong leadership. At the core of both? Showing up and caring deeply. In a marriage, success isn’t built on grand gestures alone. It’s built on consistency—being there day in and day…
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Decision fatigue is real—especially when everything on your list feels equally important. I was recently on a college tour with my daughter and was finding it hard to choose her priorities. I remembered a decision-making framework that I have often used in the past but had forgotten. Whether you’re choosing a college, a career move,…
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If you’re an executive, your personal brand isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a career necessity. Whether you’re actively job searching or not, your reputation as a subject matter expert can open doors long before you need them. In my latest LinkedIn Live, I spoke with Michelle Mendoza, a certified career coach, and she emphasized that building…
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When setting your goals, it’s important to think strategically about how we can achieve them. One concept that is often overlooked in leadership is soft power—the ability to influence others without formal authority or control. Take 10 minutes today to map out your top three to five goals for the second half of 2025. Then,…
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Change is inevitable, but how your team responds to it makes all the difference. In a recent conversation with executives, one recurring challenge emerged—how to stay strategically aligned while adapting to unexpected external changes, like shifts in federal policy or industry regulations. It’s easy for teams to get stuck in a cycle of worrying about…
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