On internal chatter . . . How many times have you left a meeting and hours later you are still turning over in your mind what you had wanted to say but hadn’t or find yourself ruminating over having not been at your most impressive? This is not purposeful review, or part of positive self-talk, but the nagging habit of second-guessing ourselves and finding ourselves wanting. Did I do the right thing? Why didn’t I say that? Was I good enough? Gee, they must be thinking this

An executive in an immersive, experiential leadership program that I facilitated – let’s call her Lydia (not her real name) – described to her colleagues in the program how she was now understanding that being leaderful back at work had little to do with what she had been encouraged to think over many years about leadership. In the past she had bought into the view that there were people who "became leaders” – through the effluxion of time, arriving at a state of grace, a con