Josh Dietrich

  • Unnesting

    A friend recently characterized this period of my life as a time of locomotion. I loved the imagery of a locomotive gathering steam, the way my April unfolded. By mid-month, it was full steam ahead. Now, I find myself very much in motion. My preferred metaphor is the river. Earlier this year, I was floating

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  • The Gem Within Executive Presence

    As I wrap up a week connecting with lifelong friends and colleagues at Ellucian Live, I sense more deeply than ever the richness of life that emerges when we are fully present. I’ve written about presence before, and two years later, I find its impact deepening my journey and my clients’ as well. Somewhere along

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  • Growing Up, Again

    I wrote about adult development theory a few years ago. At the time, I still had a scientific bias. I looked at a model and felt it had to be justified with rigorous evidence for people to buy into it. The model made sense to me. It deeply resonated. But would readers find it valuable

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  • More or Less

    Recently, I caught up with a friend who is approaching that magical age of 50. Somewhere around this age, give or take 5-10 years, so many of us go through that phase we’ve unfortunately labeled a “midlife crisis.” I much prefer to think of this phase as a midlife awakening. The conversation went as these

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  • Same Coach, Wider Door

    If you have followed my blog for a while, you may be noticing a new pattern. Some of you have called it out to me directly. I’m talking less about leadership and more about life. I see the pattern. It’s not a deliberate, premeditated choice on my part. It’s simply the way the wind is

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  • Fiercely Loyal

    Throughout my life, I’ve described myself as fiercely loyal. Historically, I’d say that’s an aspect of my personal brand. Loyalty never made the list when I did a values exercise, but I identified with it and boasted about it. Now, that concept of loyalty gives me great pause. While I don’t want to throw the

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  • Zones of Engagement

    Engagement. It’s the holy grail of employee performance. When our employees are highly engaged, they do their best work. They are in flow. They love their work, their colleagues, and their clients. When employees are disengaged, they may do the bare minimum. Their work is below what they are capable of. They may be looking

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  • Acknowledge. Honour. Release.

    The past few months have been filled with new gifts of awareness. The primary catalyst was my meditation retreat in December. It formed a wave of new awareness, arguably a tsunami of awareness, that I’ve been tumbling around in ever since. It seems to me that, as children, we enter this world as lumps of

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  • Ten Hours

    It’s been a fascinating week, teaching another life lesson I’d love to go back in time and impress upon my earlier self. It’s a lesson I think we all intuitively know in our hearts, but refuse to accept with our minds.  Let me tell you a story… My Week As I watched the Super Bowl

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  • Learning to Read

    It’s safe to say I read a lot. Certainly more than the average bear*. I’ve often felt my reading was more about quantity than quality. Recently, I’ve experienced a profound shift in my relationship with reading that may inspire you to re-evaluate your own. Reading as Achievement My love of reading has long been intertwined

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