ARTICLES BY DR. ANDY NEILLIE, CSP
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Stillness, Service, and Seeing People Clearly: Leadership Lessons from the Veranda
By the time our week in Kenya was drawing to a close, I realized something important: the most enduring leadership lessons of the trip didn’t just come from the animals.
They came from the people. And from the hours spent sitting still.
Much of our time at Ol Pejeta followed a predictable rhythm, early morning drives, shared meals, afternoon rest, evening outings. But some of the most meaningful moments happened when nothing was scheduled at all.
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Power, Restraint, and Responsibility: Leadership Lessons from the Wild of Kenya
Fellow leader: in my last LeadersBlog, I shared how our Kenya safari slowed us down enough to see clearly. This time, I want to talk about what we saw once our eyes adjusted, specifically, what watching animals in the wild taught me about power, restraint, and responsibility.
Safari mornings start early, but not all early mornings are the same.
One morning, most of the group departed at 6:00 a.m.
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The Long Way There: What a Kenya Safari Taught This Aspiring Leader About Slowing Down to See Clearly
Some trips start the moment you arrive.
Others start long before. Maybe somewhere over the Atlantic, halfway between exhaustion and anticipation, when the seat barely reclines and you realize there’s no shortcut to where you’re going.
My wife Lynn and I took a “Trip of a Lifetime” Kenya safari last fall along with our daughter Drew. This trip was very much the second type of trip.
Austin to Philadelphia.
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Buen Camino: Everyone Walks the Same Path, but No One Walks the Same Journey
Happy New Year! 2025 has been marked with some significant trips for me and my wife, Lynn. Here is one story of significance from the Buen Camino trip.
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Traveler, Our Cattle Dog, Needs a Job, and So Do We
Traveler Needs a Job
Our gym is dog-friendly. In fact, it’s more than dog-friendly; on any given day, there’s at least one member’s dog clipped between barbells and rowers, greeting people like they’re old friends. Truth be told, while our CrossFit gym has great coaches and an incredible community, I’m convinced a surprising percentage of members joined because they could bring their dogs.
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The Both-And of Leadership: Formal Roles and Personal Relationships
If you’ve been in leadership for more than five minutes, you’ve probably felt it: that constant tension between delivering results and genuinely caring for your people. It can feel like the world is trying to force us to choose, performance or people. But in my experience, the best leaders? They don’t choose. They embrace both.
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Two Origins, One Identity: Leadership Lessons from a Day in Northern Portugal
My wife Lynn and I were in Portugal earlier this year, and after a full day of exploring Porto, we took a driving tour with Victor, our wonderfully insightful driver from the Forte de Gaia hotel. He insisted we couldn’t understand Portugal – really understand it – without seeing two places that shaped its earliest story: Guimarães and Braga.
What I didn’t expect was how much these two locations would speak to me as a leadership guy.
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Ethical Leadership in the Digital Age: Leading with Character in a High-Tech World
Let’s be honest, leadership is challenging enough when it’s just people, projects, and performance.
Now add artificial intelligence, big data, algorithmic decision-making, facial recognition, keystroke monitoring, and digital assistants that listen better than your teenage kids. Welcome to the digital age.
It’s not just a new chapter of leadership, it’s a whole new book. And here’s the big idea:
Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
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Confident Uncertainty: Leading With Clarity During Times of Upheaval
Leading through Confident Uncertainty
Let’s face it, this past decade has thrown everything at us. Political instability, economic disruption, cultural shifts. It’s been a season that’s tested leaders in ways we couldn’t have predicted. And in the midst of all that, one idea keeps surfacing in my conversations with leaders across the country: we’ve got to learn how to lead with what I call confident uncertainty.
Now,
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