"To me, it was always to climb up the hill. Not standing at the top." ~ Robert Redford
Photo Credit: Kevin Jordan, Eola-Amity Hills, Oregon, September 25, 2025
Greetings -
I hope you, your families and friends are well!
I just returned from another fun and festive trip to my hometown of Portland, OR. It is always a treat to spend time with the great group of family, friends and clients that I hold dear, especially at this particularly beautiful time of year.
As I continue to further develop myself and the range of capabilities that I can offer to clients and colleagues, I’m happy to share that I’ve obtained a new certification: The Team Coaching Program from Brown University School of Professional Studies! This was a bit of a labor of love that occupied a fair amount of time over the late spring and summer months and it was well worth it. I learned a considerable amount, met some wonderful new colleagues and now have an array of tools and frameworks that I can draw upon in my future team and individual work.
The recent equinox marked the end of a glorious summer and the beginning of the richness of fall and all of its colorful splendor. With our seasonal change as inspiration, I am deviating from my usual theme-driven newsletter this month. Instead, I am taking the opportunity to mix it up a bit and offer an eclectic edition drawing on a diversity of reading and listening content and sourcing. These pieces provide a range of ideas that have and continue to spark my curiosity and resonate with the work I am doing with clients and colleagues.
With respect and deep admiration for you all, happy reading and listening!
Be well, take good care of yourselves, families and community.
-kj
PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)
Featured: Every Team Needs a Super-Facilitator
Liz Wiseman, in her excellent book Multipliers (a must read for all leaders IMHO), illustrates how the best leaders increase the intellect, effectiveness and capabilities of their teams in ways that no one individual can accomplish. Though she did not use the term, in effect, she describes the role of a super-facilitator (aka 'star-maker'), as Jamil Zaki writes about in his recent article Every Team Needs a Super-Facilitator.
Super-facilitators "...are architects of group performance who bring people together optimally. [They] integrate diverse expertise, promote equitable contributions, and cultivate trust. In doing so they generate collective intelligence, or a group’s ability to reason, innovate, and solve problems."
Many of us have worked with or participated on teams with the super-facilitators. They focus on both the collective and the individual team members and align strengths and expertise that catalyzes groups to higher levels of performance. Their ability to role-craft makes everybody better, whether they are in leadership roles or individual contributors. Power is not a prerequisite nor does it drive their effectiveness. Their success is predicated on creating environments of trust, candor and mutual accountability that serve the team and the larger organization.
While there are those that have innate super-facilitation abilities and tendencies, the great news is that any of us can become adept with practice and experience. How? These folks focus on strengths, openly communicate to foster trust and transparency and ensure that all voices are heard. We are all better for the super-facilitators among us.
What are you doing to cultivate these skills in yourself and your teams?
Articles
Harvard Business Review: Why You Need Systems Thinking Now. "It’s the best way to anticipate the many secondary effects of change in an interconnected world."
Kellogg Insight: The Upside of Recruiting Your Rivals. "Teams that acquire players from their competitors gain an advantage that goes beyond pure skill."
Harvard Business Review: The Conflict-Intelligent Leader. "In these turbulent times learning how to manage disputes is a must."
Korn Ferry: Are ‘Rank and Yank’ Performance Reviews Making a Comeback? "Some Silicon Valley firms have turned to a controversial performance-review system that rewards and removes workers based on rankings. Will other firms follow?"
Fast Company: ‘Job hugging’ is the newest career trend: Here’s what it means—and why Gen Z is into it. "AI disruption, a lack of new jobs, and an unpredictable economic market are some of the main reasons why employees are doubling down on their current positions."
Harvard Business Review: The Success-Then-Happiness Fallacy. "Whether you are an employee or employer, it is a better investment to increase happiness at work and in life, rather than simply trying to increase measures of success."
Resources
Harvard Business Review: The Definitive HBR Strategy Glossary. "Our [HBR editors] guide to all things strategy, from 'adjacency expansion' to 'value stick.'"
Harvard Business Review: Our Favorite Management Tips on Leading Effective Meetings. "[HBR editors] compiled seven Tips on leading effective meetings, from how to boost participation to how to stay grounded and guide high-stakes conversations with clarity and composure."
Blog Posts & Opinions
Chief Executive: I Advocate For Women. But I’ve Been Hardest On Them. "We talk a lot about the external barriers women face—pay gaps, underrepresentation, outdated policies. But rarely do we talk about the internal ones: the judgment we pass without noticing, the expectations we’ve inherited and never questioned and the quiet ways we hold each other back."
Seth's Blog: Bringing goodwill to the conversation. "Learning is an argument, a conversation designed to change minds. Learning happens long after we leave organized schooling, and it requires emotional enrollment. We’re more likely to learn when we bring a desire to be transformed and to leave our previous assumptions behind."
The New York Times: Is Today’s Self-Help Teaching Everyone to Be a Jerk? "Draw boundaries. Protect your peace. Worry less about pleasing others. The prevailing (and best-selling) wisdom of the day encourages an inward turn."
Podcasts
Simon Sinek's A Bit of Optimism: Thinking About Thinking with Brené Brown and Adam Grant, Parts 1 and 2. "To become more self-aware, sometimes you need a friend. Two friends is even better...[In Part 1, we discuss] knowing ourselves and how self-reflection is sometimes best done with others...[In Part 2], we discuss identifying our values, the two types of narcissists, explanation-based parenting, and exercising judgment over our own judgment."
Hidden Brain: How Our Brains Learn. "Have you ever fallen asleep in school or during a work meeting? Maybe you felt your eyes glaze over as your boss or a teacher droned on and on about a topic that had no relevance to you. What's missing from these classrooms and conference rooms is engagement: A state of being absorbed, alert, and eager to learn. This week, psychologist and neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang explores why so many of us feel apathetic at school and at work, and how to cultivate the magic of engagement."
The Ezra Klein Show: Our Lives Are an Endless Series of 'And.' "...We’re in a time when to open the news is to expose yourself to horrors — ones that are a world away, others that are growing ever closer, or perhaps have already made landfall in our lives. And then many of us look up from our screens into a normal spring day. What do you do with that?...How do we hold all that we have to hold, all at once? How do we not feel overwhelmed, or emotionally numbed?"
Arts, Music, Culture & Humor Corner
The New York Times: Hidden Above a Trap Door, 17th-Century Frescoes Come to Light. "While inspecting a sumptuous villa in Rome, an electrician stumbled across long lost works by the Baroque painter Carlo Maratta."
Rolling Stone: Bruce Springsteen: ‘Time Is Finite, and Your Performing Time Is Finite.’ "...Springsteen breaks down his box set Tracks II: The Lost Albums, reveals he has a new album in the can, and looks ahead to the future of the E Street Band."
The Guardian: ‘I am elated each time I watch’: why Rushmore is my feelgood movie. "...Yet it is also a profoundly shrewd study of relationships, ego, and growing up, whose emotional maturity is all the more impressive given that [Wes] Anderson and [Owen] Wilson started writing it when they were still in their 20s."
The New Yorker: Shouts & Murmurs: His Secret Life. "He’d disappear to the Coast for weeks at a time. He’d check into hotels using an assumed name. And why did I keep seeing him on 'The View'?"
Reflections
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~ Alan Watts
Said a Blade of Grass
By Kahlil Gibran
Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”
Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”
All Dressed Up
By Billy Collins (for my brother and his puppy Doodle that he recently rescued)
When I leaned over this morning
to get a closer look at the ants
circling the edge of the sink
in the usual ant parade,
I realized they were much too tiny
to slip on a bathrobe,
read a magazine, or wear a wedding ring.
A dog, on the other hand,
will sometimes allow itself to be dressed up
whenever its owner indulges in a bit
of anthropomorphic skylarking.
Yes, the same creature known
to bolt through a screen door
or dig up a bed of petunias with its nose
may sit still on occasion,
playing doctor in a white lab coat,
or pose chin-strapped to a birthday hat,
candles dancing in the background.
In Colorado, I once saw a dog in a tuxedo
walk down an aisle and give the bride away.
But dogs are happiest on their own,
stepping on their water bowls,
staring up at the mystery of a closed door,
walking from room to room
before making three circles
like the odd number of flowers in a vase.
And I’m happiest every morning
when my dog steers me
into the kitchen where I slowly
open yet another can of dog food,
as we hold our mutual gaze,
me reading his mind and he reading mine.
This is drawn from “Dog Show.”