As a business consultant and ICF-certified executive leadership coach, I've helped over a hundred founders, entrepreneurs and business leaders grow their impact professionally and personally. On Sundays, I write a newsletter highlighting some of those coaching insights and ideas with the hope of helping others grow their impact too.
Issue #94: the high return activity of raising others' ambitions
The High Return Activity of Raising Others' AmbitionsThis is the title of a Tyler Cowen blog post that I've thought about a lot recently. It applies to coaching, but I also think it has broader relevance to our day-to-day lives and encounters. Here's the salient paragraph from Cowen: At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous. Cowen uses an example he saw frequently as head of graduate admissions at George Mason to illustrate his point. Often students pursuing PhDs and future academic careers would present their plan to obtain a Master's degree before continuing onto their PhD, but Cowen would inform them that a Master's degree was unnecessary in these cases and that the students could go directly into the PhD program. The insight and nudge from Cowen saved the students precious time and money and accelerated their path to achieving their career goals. What Cowen proposes doesn't require a lofty admissions job or even a specific form of expertise (although both might be helpful in certain cases). Instead what he reveals is a very lopsided ratio of effort to impact. As Cowen notes, it cost him relatively little to point a fact out, but the impact on the student was dramatic. The level of effort required might be so minimal, in fact, that we might not even recognize the opportunity when it appears. In many cases we probably underestimate our ability to help. We certainly underestimate the impact that our curiosity alone can have on another person. We all have someone in our lives facing a big decision, confronting a challenge, or adventuring a new path. In those instances we don't control the outcome, but we can perform the significant act (regardless of outcome) of expressing genuine curiosity, asking questions to elicit better understanding, and, with any luck, adding some fuel to the fire. Sometimes all it takes is a change in perspective to help accelerate someone's path to a desired destination.
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District Distinct
As a business consultant and ICF-certified executive leadership coach, I've helped over a hundred founders, entrepreneurs and business leaders grow their impact professionally and personally. On Sundays, I write a newsletter highlighting some of those coaching insights and ideas with the hope of helping others grow their impact too.
Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, Outer Banks, NC Annual Review + Goal Setting At the beginning of every year, I take time to reflect on the year prior and set intentions for the one ahead. I've been doing this for several years now, and it's become a valuable practice I use not only for myself but with clients. Most of the prevailing wisdom around New Year's resolutions is that they're a waste of time and that very few people stick with them for very long. What I've learned, both...
Havasupai Gardens, Grand Canyon Great nonfiction I read this year Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams Fantastic title that would make for a great dystopian novel, except it's our shared reality. It's an insider's story of Facebook—the greed, myopia, and hypocrisy of Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and their accomplices. 'Careless' describes their apathy toward anything other than profits and privilege, but it's also the most charitable thing you can call them. That, or 'innovators.' It's...
The Aspen Nature Loop, Flagstaff, AZ (trip in October '25) Hello? Is this thing still on? I'm dusting off and reviving my long dormant newsletter with the intention of more consistent publishing in 2026. This week and next I'll share some of my favorite movies and books from the year that left an impression. One thing I did this year more than years prior was going out to the theater to see movies. In particular, I want to shout out the great arthouse cinema in Chapel Hill called The Chelsea....