Welcome to Wellness for Leaders!

Each week, I post a video highlighting research-based wellness practices that can enhance your leadership abilities. My first video is about Flow. Flow comes from the research of the late psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi as described his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Csikszentmihalyi researched the conditions under which people experienced Flow and defined it as doing something that: you …

SPIRE for Leaders: Implementing SPIRE into your Life and Leadership

In our last post, we shared how leaders from OPERA America’s Leadership Intensive Class of 2023 are applying the science-based SPIRE wellness framework.  These leaders have learned the value of promoting wellness at work both for themselves and for the staff members. They are also implementing SPIRE into their lives and enhancing the wellness of their staff members and their …

SPIRE For Leaders: One Year Later

Since 2013, I have had the privilege of teaching at OPERA America’s Leadership Intensive Program. This initiative trains mid-career opera executives to take on senior leadership positions at major opera companies. We meet for a week in New York and then I have a series of coaching calls with the leaders throughout the year. For our most recent cohort in …

Entrepreneurial Projects at the Yale School of Music: What Today’s Audiences Need from Classical Music:

Each fall, I teach a wonderful class at the Yale School of Music (“YSM”) entitled, Collaborative Leadership To Advance Creativity, Innovation and New Opportunities in the Arts.  My class uses the experiential semester-long collaborative project to teach graduate music students how to create innovative solutions to problems in the classical music field.  Our focus is on meeting the needs of …

The SPIRE of Career Planning: How to Build Happiness and Optimism with Meaningful Career Goals

My first post on the SPIRE of career planning explained how to embrace a positive mindset around your career planning and then conduct a personal assessment of your purpose, values, passions, and strengths. In this post, we will explore how to incorporate those elements to set meaningful career goals and create an action plan.  The result will help you to …

The SPIRE of Career Planning: How to Build Happiness and Optimism into Your Career Part 1

Career planning may feel daunting so here is something that can help to make the process feel fulfilling and motivating, build resilience and lead to greater optimism: The SPIRE model of happiness. Let’s explore the SPIRE of Career Planning! Career Planning is a great way to clarify what you want to achieve professionally and how to get there.  My method …

Strengths and Happiness Part 2: The SPIRE of Strengths

How do you feel when you are doing something that you are really good at and that you love? Probably pretty terrific! That’s because you are using your strengths: the talents that energize you.  Research from positive psychology demonstrates that identifying and using your strengths enhances your capacity for greater well-being and happiness. Strengths connect closely to Tal Ben-Shahar’s research-based …