Entries by Jeff McMaster

Give People a Chance to Try

I vividly remember one particular day in my 8th grade math class. I don’t remember what concept the teacher was teaching, and I don’t remember many of the details, but I remember the specific experience. The teacher was reviewing concepts from the previous night’s assignment and called me up to the chalkboard to work out […]

Make it Safe to Fail

Have you ever seen someone’s spirit get crushed? I have. I can remember sitting in a fast food restaurant when I was young, when a boy at a nearby table spilled his soft drink. His mother immediately reacted by loudly and harshly belittling him with her words, and by publicly humiliating him. He was visibly […]

Interview Questions with Jonno White from Clarity

I recently had the opportunity to answer a few questions on leadership with Jonno White, from Clarity, in the “7 Questions on Leadership” series. Take a look at my interview questions and answers here! These interview questions give a small picture of what I have learned in my leadership experience.

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The Importance of Story

“Life, you’ll notice, is a story ” (Eldredge, 2004).  This brief statement by #JohnEldredge, at the beginning of his short book Epic, seems to have captured in six words the realization for me that my life is a story.  This was not always my perspective or viewpoint.  In fact, when I first entered my journey […]

Listen to the new podcast!

Leadership is hard, often overwhelming, and even intimidating.  There are so many different approaches and views on how to do it well, and so many different contexts, organizations, and issues in which it is happening.  Added together, this can result in significant struggle.  Often, we can feel like Solomon when his father David passed away, […]

If Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Is

For years, my wife and I had envisioned having some sort of “mini-farm” in our backyard and had dreamed about what that might look like. We did lots of research into various plants and animals, talked about which ones we thought we would want, and even sketched out plans and ideas. But just as often, […]