Many thanks to the folks at Google for inviting me to come by and give a presentation about Goal Play!  The audience was very responsive to the leadership and team-building stories and lessons from the book.  As my readers know, the premise of the book is that the best leaders serve as coaches to their teams, rather than engaging in hierarchical, directive roles.

A number of excellent questions followed my talk.  One person asked about the use of fear by leaders and couldn’t that be helpful in carrying out an organization’s mission.  I replied that such an approach could be effective, but not for long, as it would tend to discourage front-line creativity.  Another asked whether leaders had to become more directive in more highly stressful situations in a firm.  I explained that such was not always necessary, citing the example of my former hospital, in which we engaged in crowd-sourcing of ideas to solve a financial crisis and avoid layoffs.

Special thanks to my hostess Ann Farmer, a linguist by training, who now works at Google as an information engineer. You see us both in front of Stan, the resident T. Rex in the Google sculpture garden.  Stan was decked out in pink flamingos in honor of Halloween.