Big Leap Creative and The Breaking Trail Podcast

03/06/2026

I’m curious - what kinds of things do you do to eliminate uncertainty? Over-prepare? Overthink? Nathan Furr and Susannah Harmon Furr say uncertainty is good for us (in their book of the same name, Uncertainty), and I believe them. But I think they left out one critical ingredient when they suggested to meet uncertainty with courage and resilience: self-trust. I've been running an experiment in trusting myself more. Here’s what I’ve discovered.

I’ve been running a personal experiment lately. It has to do with trusting myself, and it comes with some risk, but if I start in lower-consequence situations, like small meetings or quick decisions, I can gradually build my confidence to handle higher-stakes situations.

05/05/2026

I’ve been thinking about women in leadership lately as I get ready to speak to an exciting group of women later this month. It may not surprise you that 11 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Right now. This year. And there’s an interesting Catch-22 women find themselves in, one that Supreme Court Justice William Brennan succinctly communicates: "An employer who objects to aggressiveness in women but whose positions require this trait places women in an intolerable and impermissible Catch-22: out of a job if they behave aggressively and out of a job if they don't.”

Let’s explore ways out of this Catch-22.

Who Did You Picture? - The CEO confidently strode into the boardroom … pause right there. What was the image you created in your mind as you read that sentence? What did the CEO look like? Was it a man? Or a woman?

21/04/2026

I just returned from vacation in Italy, and in the months leading up to my trip, I had attempted to teach myself Italian. I arrived thinking I had more skills than I actually had. It turns out, I kind of learned the wrong set of words and conversations! So I didn’t fare as well as I’d hoped.

Something in that fumbling around stuck with me: Not the embarrassment of it, but the fascination. Language is a window into culture. And when you're on the outside looking in, you start to see things you'd never notice from inside your own.

When we look closely at how a culture uses language — not just what words they use, but the feeling and hierarchy embedded in those words — you start to understand who they are. And when you miss that nuance, you don't just misunderstand the word. You misunderstand the person.

Lost in Translation - I just returned from vacation in Italy, and in the months leading up to my trip, I had attempted to teach myself Italian. I arrived

07/04/2026

We had a great conversation in a workshop this week with a group of nonprofit leaders. I was talking about the importance of the problem you solve when someone made a great observation: People don’t want to be burdened with more problems. So how do we balance that? Here are my thoughts on today’s Power of Story to you.

Talking About Problems in a World Filled with Problems - I don’t think you’re talking enough about the core problem you solve. Clearly explaining it can

24/03/2026

I learn something new every time I deliver a talk or a workshop when I hear how it was experienced by the attendees, because each time, it’s interpreted and experienced through very different perspectives.
One of my big ideas is that we don’t have to have an epic story of life and death or transformation to have something to say. When someone reframed this through the lens of big and small narratives, it got me thinking. And I so I wrote more:

Big vs Small Narratives - In a red carpet interview at the Oscars, Tig Notaro introduced the documentary Come See Me in a Good Light in memory of poet

10/03/2026

I have a theory. We are all keeping an internal score of where we stand vis-à-vis others (whether you’re conscious of it or not), and that our default is often to protect that score at all costs. We like winning. And because of this, we find it hard to apologize when we are less than perfect. So we dig in, and we give false apologies. All in an effort to maintain our high yet imaginary score.

What happens is, you get the pleasure of maintaining your right-ness yet, and the irony is, you lose in the arena of public sentiment.

Who’s Keeping Score? - Recent events have me pondering a question: Why is it so hard to apologize?

24/02/2026

Why is it so hard to tell your own story? Hint: it's the same reason Jamie Lee Curtis can't objectively describe what it was like to grow up with famous parents. Like the goldfish, we can't see our own fishbowl when we are in it.

I believe we need three things to make telling our story easier, and I learned it by doing it. Working on my own story, which has been neglected while I help others tell theirs: a real case of the cobbler’s shoes.

The Cobbler’s Shoes - Since the start of the year, I've been writing the content for my new website and it has been bending my brain.

27/01/2026

Personal narratives elevate your message, and soooo many people leave them out, leaving your audience wanting more or simply passing you over because they didn’t get that emotional buy-in. Today, a shorter story for you about how our personal stories, with a little bit of intention, can make a big bit of impact.

Making Personal Moments Matter - If you had to choose three to five unforgettable moments in your life, what would they be? I’m looking for a moment

13/01/2026

Your best people feel disconnected from leadership. They're making assumptions in the communication vacuum, and fewer than half of your leaders find their work purposeful. The dusty company values on the wall? Not helping. But when leaders share stories about what those values actually mean to them, something shifts—people feel less alone, abstract ideas become concrete, and your culture starts to change.

Why Your Company Values Need Storytelling - On Zoom with my web designer yesterday (working on my spanking-new site coming soon!), she told me a story

09/01/2026

What to do when “you’ve told that story before”.

We all have that family member who keeps telling the same stories. If you’ve created the idea that you can’t repeat stories because you don’t want to sound like your crazy uncle. I have some ideas for you.