The LAB JOURNAL
EXPLORE THE LATEST FROM THE LAB JOURNAL
At the Transformative Leadership Lab, we believe great leadership is learned through curiosity, reflection, and real-world application.
Our blog is divided into two categories—each offering a different lens on how leaders grow, evolve, and create thriving teams:
FIELD Notes
Real leaders. Real situations. Real results. These stories capture how TLL concepts are applied in the wild—from coaching conversations to client case studies. Expect insights from the field that show the messy, powerful reality of putting leadership theory into practice.
Lab Notes
Dive into fresh thinking from inside the Lab. These posts explore the mindsets, behaviors, and breakthroughs that define transformative leadership. From challenging old assumptions to sharing practical frameworks, this is where we distill what works and why.
M2 ep 001 - Managing Managers, an Introduction
There's a science to managing managers. In fact, without that science, you will struggle needlessly to fully support your subordinate managers in becoming excellent leaders.
Jim Prinzing and Thomas Cox share their breakthrough understanding of what followers need in order to follow at their best, which paints a clear target for exactly what each leader needs to do, and learn, in order to lead with excellence.
We further develop the idea that true lean and learning organizations need this model as their prerequisite to the work of collaborative problem solving needed to create excellence at all levels of an organization.
Sadness, Grief, and What They’re For
When teams take a hit—a lost deal, a reorg, a goodbye—what do you do with the sadness or grief that comes? If you meet these emotions with Sage calm, clean language, perhaps an appropriate ritual, people feel cared for. By letting these feelings flow through us, by honoring them, we help each other deal and, in time, move on.
A Real Conversation About Delegation, Growth, and Getting Unstuck
Most managers struggle with delegation because they were never taught how to do it well. Poor delegation leads to burnout, bottlenecks, and underdeveloped teams. Great delegation—rooted in clarity, trust, and shared decision-making—unlocks scale, team growth, and stronger leadership cultures. This story shows how it happens in real time.
How Asking a Better Question Revealed the Blueprint for Transformational Leadership
In today’s complex, hybrid work environments, traditional leadership models fall short. This mindset shifts the focus from the manager to the team experience, equipping leaders with repeatable, teachable behaviors that elevate performance, engagement, and trust. It’s not just helpful—it’s essential.