Inside This Week's Brief: Lynda Foster Interviews Andrew Schoka  on Cybersecurity and AI Take your team's AI pulse with the free AI Confidence Assessment . Big News & Business Impact:  The AI model war escalates with Gemini 3 Pro and GPT-5.1 releases, focusing on reasoning depth and adaptive speed. Plus, critical new Microsoft Copilot in Teams features for collaborative intelligence. Read This - Editor's Insight: ( Kim Levings ): The uncomfortable truth that your greatest s

Kim Levings - The thing you're most proud of about yourself might be the exact reason people find you exhausting to work with. And the worst part? You have no idea it's happening. Self-Awareness

As you look at this list of emotions, which one are you feeling? Noticing which emotions you feel at what times and how they change is key to a practice of mindfulness which simply means your capacity to remain present. Being present allows you to focus on the task or person at hand and provide your best self in any situation. Being aware of your emotions and how they might be affecting your thinking and your actions leads to a higher level of emotional intelligence which is

Try these 6 questions to start making shift happen – move from drama to empowerment What are you focused on? What is your biggest concern? What will right look like? What are you focused on that is NOT within your control? What change can you make that IS within your control? What do you need to do differently? Below are reference materials for a deeper dive into learning how to shift from drama into empowerment. By having a basic understanding of the differences between the

We’ve all attended bad meetings.  Meetings that take too long and that have one person monopolizing the conversation the whole time.  I posted this guide recently on LinkedIn that some people could utilize in a meeting to decide whether or not they should speak up and when. Some people loved it and others seemed angry.  I remember the moment Courtland James , one of our executive coaches at Cortex, gave it to me to review.  I said to him, “Wow, this could really help some of

Who shares in your vision?   How reflective of your organization’s current culture is your vision?  Are your frontline team members, that have the most amount of contact with your citizens, clients, or customers, engaged and enthusiastic about your vision? With 67% of people reporting to Gallup they are disengaged at work, and competition for time and people’s attention at an all-time high, starting with why they want to work for your organization could be a good place to b

I am, and perhaps you are too when you look up the definition of what prejudice is. Prejudice:   Any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable. I have a prejudice against people who don’t want to learn.  My mind has trouble understanding how someone can solve problems, permanently, if they don’t take the time to learn enough about what be causing that problem in the first place. I’m prejudice when it comes to hard work.  This serves me well sometimes an

A Beginner's Mind by: Lynda McNutt Foster, CEO and Founder My first job, outside of my family’s art business, was when I was 16 and working at Bojangles. I remember trying to solve a problem with customer flow.   I asked my supervisor when I was working on the line dishing out chicken, beans, and dirty rice, why we did it in the order we were doing it in.  I thought maybe it could be more efficient if we changed things slightly as it might make the line go faster when we were

Many of our Leading a Winning Team modules can be delivered as a standalone workshop for your team or department.  This high impact, high engagement workshops teach teams valuable communication and leadership skills, while building cohesion and unity within the group. Some examples of our more than 200 workshops available include: DISC/Motivators: Foundations for Better Communication Participants will complete a DISC and Motivators assessment and bring the report to your Jump