September 17, 2026
Feedback is a Gift
Everybody wants feedback until they get it. Scott on asking for it before the performance review, listening without defending, and why acting on it builds trust.
Read Article →Career Advice / Leadership and New Managers
Nobody teaches you how to lead. One day you’re great at your job. The next day you’re responsible for eight people and their problems.
I’ve spent 20 years leading sales and service teams. These articles are the lessons that cost me something: feedback, trust, accountability, and the mark you leave on people.
Everybody wants feedback until they get it. Scott on asking for it before the performance review, listening without defending, and why acting on it builds trust.
Read Article →A 2006 airport kiosk, a clown-show leadership team, and the iPhone that killed it all. Scott on why talent alone can't beat bad products, bad timing, or bad leadership.
Read Article →Coaching gives Scott a front-row seat into dozens of companies. Scott on the mindset shift required when you leave a well-run team for one that runs like a 5am TSA line at JFK.
Read Article →A stretch-goal party, an open bar, and a disgruntled rep who saw her window. Scott on the night he learned that leadership changes the rules around you, even when you do not want them to.
Read Article →On Hard Knocks, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald refused to hand a player the answer and made him think it through. Scott on the difference between building followers and building judgment.
Read Article →A single offhand comment about sport coats changed a whole culture overnight. Scott on why people are always reading your signals at work, and why your career brand is built in the small moments before your results are ever discussed.
Read Article →Nobody trains you for the criticism, the back-room comments, and the flat-out lies that come with any career. Scott on why thick skin is the one skill you build slowly, one uncomfortable moment at a time.
Read Article →Almost everyone is carrying something you can’t see. Scott on why “I’m fine” is usually a placeholder and why empathy has quietly become one of the most underrated leadership skills there is.
Read Article →The survey is rarely the problem. What happens after the survey tells you everything about a company’s culture, and after eighteen years of leading teams, Scott has seen it all: results used to promote, punish, spin, and hide.
Read Article →Meta laid off 1,400 Seattle employees on May 20th. Six days later, Mark Zuckerberg’s $300M superyacht cruised through the same city. Scott on why this isn’t really about yachts, it is about emotional intelligence, reading the room, and understanding that great leaders manage energy, morale, trust, and perception, not just revenue and strategy.
Read Article →A flight attendant calmly pouring drinks during turbulence is doing something more important than serving customers. Scott on why people absorb the energy of the room before they hear a single word, and why calm leaders create calm environments. Confidence is rarely about having all the answers. Most of the time, it is emotional steadiness when everybody else is looking around for signals.
Read Article →Guest writer Dr. Laura Marie Rivera makes the case that caregiving is leadership development, not a career interruption, and what organizations gain when they stop treating it otherwise.
Read Article →Everything in life is a shift, and nothing fully prepares you for one until it’s happening. Marriage, kids, new jobs, layoffs, promotions. Scott on adapting mid-air. Growth sounds exciting until you realize it usually demands an identity change attached to it. The people who win stop trying to avoid shifts and start trusting themselves to survive them.
Read Article →Guest post by Hussein Sleiman. He walked out of a meeting one Friday in June 2024 and sent a resignation email from his car after nine years at the same company. What followed was the identity unraveling, the inner work, and the framework he built from the rubble.
Read Article →Have you ever wanted to leave a job because of a burger? Culture isn't built in all-hands meetings or on posters in the hallway. It's built in the small moments leaders convince themselves don't matter.
Read Article →When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Pressure doesn't create character; it reveals it.
Read Article →Disaster companies fail for three reasons: bad leadership, smoke-and-mirror products, and toxic culture. Here's what you can learn, and how to know if you're inside one right now.
Read Article →Blockbuster laughed at Netflix. Zuckerberg sank $80B into the Metaverse. Most epic failures trace back to one thing: nobody in the room was willing to say it was a bad idea.
Read Article →The older I get, the more I respect Darth Vader as a leader. Sure, he choked a few people out, but he showed up every day trying to execute despite chaos above
Read Article →The corporate leaders you admire might be disasters disguised as geniuses. Stop idolizing and start studying.
Read Article →Nobody likes being lectured. But sometimes the lecture is exactly the care you need. Scott Bond's groomer, his dog Lou, and what they taught him about accountab
Read Article →When I was a 23-year-old manager, an employee named Gwen cried in my office on our first one-on-one. It was the beginning of a lesson: tears at work aren't weak
Read Article →Some of the wealthiest, most intelligent people in business still make incredibly ridiculous decisions. Look no further than the NFL, billionaire owners runnin
Read Article →When I was rolling out goals in Dubai, I realized something: before you can lead people, you need to understand what they're actually carrying. Most people are just trying to survive.
Read Article →Growing up in a family business, Scott learned the hardest lesson: sugar and salt look identical. Trust carefully, but trust.
Read Article →Coach Paine was 6'10
Read Article →High performers love being the go-to person. But the addiction to being needed can quietly become the thing that holds you back.
Read Article →In an all-day strategy session, Scott's new boss told a powerful story about a Four Seasons server, word for word from a Simon Sinek YouTube video. That was al
Read Article →Legacy anxiety is real, the creeping thought that no matter how hard you worked, your impact might fade when you step away. But being remembered has less to do
Read Article →The current CEO of Zillow was once Scott's boss and told him something that irritated him at the time: he needed to lead beyond sales, engineering, finance, op
Read Article →What you tolerate sends a message, whether you realize it or not. Over time, silence teaches people exactly how to treat you.
Read Article →Ships don't sink because of the water around them, they sink because water gets inside. Scott Bond on protecting your focus, energy, and mindset from the noise trying to get in.
Read Article →People will cheer when you win. They won't always be there for the grind. Scott Bond on why believing in yourself first isn't soft, it's the most critical career skill you'll ever develop.
Read Article →Top performers get frustrated when surrounded by people who can't keep up. When high achievers find their peers, something magical happens, collaboration, innovation, collective excellence.
Read Article →A bad agent tried to sell your house for $500K when it's worth $1.8M. Bad leaders do the same thing to your career. Don't let them.
Read Article →If you can't have fun at work, why do it? Fun isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a fundamental ingredient of high performance, creativity, and team loyalty.
Read Article →Subscribers keep telling Scott he writes too much. Scott on the difference between changing because something is not working and changing because you are afraid someone will not like it.
Read Article →We all start our careers as Anakin and risk hardening into Vader. The difference between wisdom and cynicism is not the scars you collect, it is what you decide they mean.
Read Article →Companies love to say they’re like a family, right up until earnings miss and positions get eliminated. Scott on why most organizations are really sports franchises built to win, and what that means for how you run your own career.
Read Article →Cassie’s OnlyFans arc on Euphoria mirrors something I see in the workplace every week. People desire to be wanted so badly that they take on a stereotype, the workhorse, the empathetic leader, the loyal one, that slowly hardens into an identity they can’t shed.
Read Article →There's a quiet kind of power in the people who make everyone around them feel seen. They don't chase the spotlight, they create it for others. That's the real competitive advantage.
Read Article →The best relationships in your career are the ones that challenge you, tell you the truth, and say what nobody else is willing to say. That's not dysfunction,
Read Article →The Dude from The Big Lebowski had it right: 'That's just like your opinion, man.' We live in a world drowning in other people's opinions. Most of them shouldn'
Read Article →Work can be a lot. Deadlines, fire drills, meetings that should've been emails. Here's why humor isn't just nice to have, it's a weapon for keeping morale high and stress manageable.
Read Article →One career article every morning. Free. Three minutes. Unsubscribe any time.