The Open Line

Jackie Brown June 21st The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ Happy Father's Day to all the father figures! Can Mary come out to play? My 10-year-old knees were knocking - much louder than my knuckles on the door a minute before. The whole walk over to this house I’d been sending up a prayer: please let it be her mom, please let it be her mom, please let it be her mom. Each step up to their stoop, I repeated the prayer. I softly knocked on the...

Jackie Brown June 7th The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ The squeak I'll never forget Squeak, squeak, squeak. My trimmers were speaking to me as I lopped off the dying daffodil leaves. Apparently, they were still pretty juicy at the bottom, right against the soil line. It was late spring, time for my beloved peonies to be blooming and those daffodil leaves were all up in the way. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Another handful of leaves gone. As I...

Jackie Brown May 24th The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ In gratitude for those who've made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms, may this Memorial Day honor them and their families. What we assume The hotel door pad lit up green and as we opened the door to step inside, the tang of ammonia hit my nose. Not quite the stench of a sketchy gas station bathroom, but close enough that I started questioning every decision that led to crossing...

Jackie Brown May 10th The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ A Mama's Chirps Two inches of fluff and feathers followed a tiny beak out of the dark hole in a wooden box. A beautiful mama wood duck floated about four feet below the box, chirping away. Just barely two days old, the tiny little duckling just simply jumped from the hole, sailing alllllll the way down, landing with barely a splash on the water. And then another came to the entrance...

Jackie Brown April 26th The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ Note cards or tablet? What's the best practice as I host this fireside chat? What a way to start our session. I knew this client was excited about her upcoming event, but I didn't realize how excited until she jumped right into the call, leaning into the webcam, pen at the ready, eager to do well. Just a few months into a promotion and she was taking the bull by the horns,...

Jackie Brown April 12th The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ The ping Friday I played golf with my dad. He's in his late 70s and still hits it better than most people half his age. We've been playing together for years and don’t always get together as much as we’d like, but when we do the energy is just awesome, so positive, so fun, so us. There's a moment we both live for. You probably know it even if you've never played. It's the ping. That...

Jackie Brown March 29th The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ What the blueberries know Out of the corner of my eye a small black dot was getting larger quickly, bringing with it the buzz of a tiny mighty motor. It banked one way and I ducked to the other, and as I stood upright again I couldn’t believe it. Bees buzzing in the blueberry bushes! The very same blueberry bushes I’d given up for the season after a late spring freeze. Surely the...

Jackie Brown March 15th The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ When your best quality gets you in trouble "So Carl, how'd the fishing trip go over the holidays? Did y'all limit out?" And as Joan leaned in to hear the details, she felt laser beams from her boss seated just across the table. She pushed down the knot in her throat and focused even harder on the fishing story, filing away funny moments to rib him about later as she laughed in the...

Jackie Brown March 1st The Open Line Honest conversations. Real presence. Leadership people want to follow. ↓ Influence starts earlier than you think. In the previous email we took a look at what happens when a group of colleagues slows down enough to think together. They created a shared understanding, made better decisions then forged a new, faster path forward. But how can we get that same sort of cohesion in a room where the power is skewed? What does a program lead do when they need to...