Leaders are Bakers! It’s All About the Yeast.
Leaders are Bakers! It’s All About the Yeast.
My baking skills are marginal at best. I can follow a recipe to bake a loaf of bread, but if it doesn’t rise properly, I likely won’t understand why. Skilled bakers on the other hand know the secret to preparing a fully risen and delicious loaf of bread. They recognize the importance of a small but powerful ingredient…yeast. And they can perform consistently by making loaves that look and taste identical, time after time.
As a leavening agent, yeast makes bread rise and adds taste and color. It is simply a fungus that loves eating sugar. (Don’t we all?) The yeast mellows and conditions the gluten in the dough so that it will evenly absorb the increasing gases and hold them in the mixture as it’s kneaded. This expands the volume of the bread, making it rise; and improves the flavor, texture, grain, color and eating quality. But for maximum effectiveness, it needs to be stored at the proper temperature and humidity. And when making the bread, the water must be warm when yeast is dissolved, and the other ingredients cannot be too cold. (more…)
As a leader, do you know whether your team is connecting, whispering, or shouting? A recent Gallup survey1 identified three categories to describe employees’ engagement at work.
One of the many shifts that resulted from the pandemic was normalization of people seeking therapy. The sudden and awkward adjustments to daily life increased the number of people admitting their need for help, and sharing with others that they were doing it. Companies expanded their employee assistance program benefits to include better options for counseling services and more employees took advantage of this. Everyone became more attentive to the need for improving emotional health and interpersonal relationships, connecting with purpose, and learning to invest in their personal growth.
Hopefully we all know never to get in a cage with a lion, or to stroll through an African safari in a lion’s territory. But what happens when a lion finds us and sees us as prey?
There’s an old parable about a man who planted seed.
Think back a few years to when you were in elementary, middle, or high school. The dynamics of navigating the playground and hanging out around school was often just as much of a challenge as mastering your classes. Sure, for some it seemed easy, but for others it was fraught with social stress of making friends, keeping friends, avoiding bullies, trying to be the bully, finding acceptance, and developing trusting relationships.
Think of a