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.
At work, we often train people to treat us a certain way—by always being available, or by letting small requests slide. It’s easy to create these patterns without even realizing it. But here’s the truth: you have the power to reset boundaries whenever needed. Let’s say you expect an agenda before a meeting, but you’ve…
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I just finished a webinar that was over an hour of AI tips and tricks, and I won’t lie – some of it blew my mind. In minutes, AI generated social media videos from LinkedIn posts; it built simple websites and then “made them even prettier.” And that was just the beginning. When I watched…
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When are postmortems the right approach for the team, and when are they no help? The other day, I was discussing the design of an offsite with a client and we talked about how much time to allocate to looking backward at what went wrong, and what didn’t go well versus thinking about a new…
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Picture this: I hop into my Lyft to the airport and my driver and I start a conversation about kids. We bond over parental pride and devotion – his two boys and my two boys and a girl. However, election time was nearing and my friendly driver threw into the conversation that he was supporting…
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It’s already 2025, and January is in full swing. If you’re like me, the holidays feel like a distant memory, and your team is likely feeling the same way. They’ve jumped right back into work, and the hustle is real. But here’s the thing: your team has already achieved January wins—don’t let them go unnoticed.…
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As the new year begins, it’s easy to carry over the stress of year-end chaos. But January presents a unique opportunity to pause, reset, and align your team for a successful year ahead. During a recent conversation with Angela MacArthur, we discussed how powerful it is to intentionally bring your team together at the start…
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2025 is no longer a year in the future but right around the corner. Whether you make New Year’s resolutions or not, Dan Pink’s book, When shares that beginnings, like a new year, are a great time to attempt something new – whether that’s starting a new habit, committing to a new goal, or in the case…
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I’ve been doing a lot of research recently on toxic leadership and how we can lessen toxic behaviors. One of the biggest contributors to workplace toxicity is poor work design—and lack of clear roles and responsibilities is often at the heart of it. Whether it’s an unclear handoff, an assumption about a deadline, or a…
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This year my family is hosting an exchange student from Spain and it was her back-to-school night at our local high school, Berkeley High, which happens to have thousands of students. Even a passing period of students alone is crazy and now there would be a passing period with parents and sometimes two parents for…
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Have you ever had a situation at work that totally exhausted or completely frustrated you? Feeling demoralized at work may stem from a deeper issue — your core values might not be aligned with the situation at hand. Recently, I worked with a client who was exhausted by a work challenge. After some reflection, we…
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