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There is a reason we call it the mother tongue. Language is what makes us human, learned from our mothers and primary caregivers, or so we’ve believed for a long time. But we now know that whales sing in dialects, elephants grieve with specific calls, and prairie dogs can communicate color, shape, and size with startling precision. Other species have language, but ours remains, as far as we know, the most complex. Linguist Noam Chomsky argued that what separates human languag

For years, the debate about where people work has been framed as a logistics problem. Remote or in-person? Hybrid or fully distributed? How many days in the office, and which ones? These are real questions with real consequences. But they are surface questions. Underneath them lies something harder: not where people work, but how they think together, and whether the environments organizations build actually allow that to happen. Most don’t. This isn’t a criticism of intention

You’ve built your team with smart, capable people, a strong manager, and a workable budget. And it still underperforms! Meetings go quiet, the same two or three voices fill the air each time you meet, and you can feel good ideas dying unspoken. Before you begin blaming each other and singling out culprits, consider that the problem isn’t who’s on the team. Two of the most rigorous studies ever done on team performance found that talent is rarely the bottleneck, and the real

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver asked that at the end of a poem about watching a grasshopper eat sugar out of her hand. It is a strange and disarming question to bring to work on a Monday morning. But it may be the most important one we can ask right now. Consider the world as many of us experience it today. There’s an onslaught of bad news, terrifying events, catastrophe, conflict. The data flies at us moment to moment

What's Better Than Gossip? Nothing, for those who are ready for some salacious, juicy entertainment at the expense of others. We are only human after all, right? Well, it depends on what type of gossip we are talking about. Most of us hear the word gossip and immediately think of rumors, whispers meant to ostracize, half-truths, and character assassination. Yet that modern definition overlooks something fundamental about human nature. Long before the printing press, books, n

The phrase “coaching culture” can easily sound like corporate shorthand: better listening, better discovery, better teamwork. All are worthwhile, certainly, but the most important part of the definition is still missing. I have asked many coaches about the methods in which they were trained, and one feature of Erickson Coaching International continues to stand out. An Erickson conversation is not limited to discussing a problem or even identifying a goal. Coach and coachee, o

By Deborah Grant, Professional Coach and Organizational Consultant Most people aren’t ready. Right now, while you’re reading this, decisions are being made in boardrooms, research labs, and government offices that will reshape every industry you can think of — finance, logistics, healthcare, legal, manufacturing, retail, media — within the next five to ten years. And many jobs, possibly yours, are on the line. We’re not talking about having to make a few uncomfortable human r

By Deborah Grant, Professional Coach and Organizational Consultant Something important is missing from many workplaces in the United States, as most organizations don’t have this key ingredient firmly included in their planning. They have training programs, onboarding schedules, mentorship programs, and performance frameworks. What they rarely if ever employ, is the deliberate, structured way for their best people to pass their knowledge along to others for an enduring legacy

By Deborah Grant, Founder, Grant Global Coaching & Consulting Coaching is one of the most misunderstood words in professional development. Many people confuse it with mentoring, consulting, or therapy. But coaching — real coaching — is something entirely different. It’s not about being told what to do. It’s about being supported to discover what you already know. At its core, coaching is a structured, forward-looking partnership. A coach doesn’t advise, fix, or rescue. Instea