Leadership Archives - Andrea Tackore

The Art of Undoing

April 6, 2026 by Andrea

Is Hustle the only way you work toward goals?

Are you a good starter but not so great on finishing?

Have you been told you do things the hard way?

Spring brought new beginnings and many of us are deep in implementation of changes we wanted to make this year. Fresh starts are bumpy though, making it easy to give up and turn back. A problem I’ve noticed is the assumption that our wins should come the hard way in order to “count”. We’ve all heard, work smarter, not harder, but I think we love the scrappy, ‘overcoming all the odds’, underdog tale of victory – projecting that on to our own journeys.

I’m here to tell you, there is no extra medal for doing things the hard way! It is not shady or lazy to make things easier on yourself. There are no life hack police coming to ticket you.

Now that we have that straight, be sure you are subscribed to our newsletter, as this month’s freebie is a worksheet of strategies from Atomic Habits that may make your change process easier. In the meantime, let’s discuss a foundational strategy for easing the process of change: slowing down.

Wait a minute…I just got going and you want me to slow down?! Yes. Taking off at top speed is a great way to burn out before you can truly establish the new habits, skills and mindset you’re trying to build. Make things easy on yourself by slowing down the speed of the changes you’re making. Give each step of change more time for you to acclimate. For example, if you want to improve your sleep routine, go to bed just one hour earlier each week instead of setting a date and expecting yourself to stick to your goal bedtime right off the bat. Slowing down the pace of your life overall improves your ability to make wise decisions, reduces stress, increases your self awareness, improves learning of new skills, strengthens connections, increases creativity and reduces burnout. Just like marathon runners, we must pace ourselves if we are to finish the race well.

So if you’ve been struggling to implement steps toward your goals…slow down. Consider these strategies if you need practical ideas on what that means for you:

Develop a default answer when anyone wants you to make a decision – I’ll let you know tomorrow. This gives you 24 hours to consider your options. Be sure to honor your word and communicate your decision the next day.
Notice when you are rushing and get curious. No judgment; just analyze what is driving the hurry and consider how you can shift that pace.
Schedule a few minutes each day or an hour a week for quiet reflection. This will give you an ongoing understanding of your emotions, needs and desires which will enable you to shift your strategies regularly to be more effective.
Practice mindfulness – paying careful attention to what is happening in the moment. Describe to yourself what you are hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching – right here….right now. This trains your brain to slow down and think more critically and effectively.
Regularly remove (or turn off) all digital devices from your surroundings when spending time with your core people. You’ll be surprised at what you notice and how much easier it is to implement any changes you are making in your relational style.
When practicing a new skill, purposely move slowly so that you can build muscle memory and make less mistakes. Quick wins feel great but more often, we experience frustrating fails when we go too fast, making it more likely we will give up.
Set aside time to be bored. This is when creativity and innovation arises because there is finally space to generate ideas.
No matter how much you’re trying to get done, prioritize regular rest. This is the only way to ensure that your efforts remain sustainable.

Long term gains are greatly reduced when we hurry. If you want to make your journey lighter and easier – slow down!

Filed Under: Emotional Health, Leadership Tagged With: Boundaries, Foundations, Life Seasons, Mindfulness, Self Care, Transformation

Reality-Based Planning

March 2, 2026 by Andrea

Do you find that your plans usually don’t work?

Do you end up “winging it” after a while – with mixed results?

Has life convinced you that planning is pointless?

Realistic expectations. A key to mental, emotional, physical health and…planning. Is that a surprising claim? Think about it; at the root of every disappointment, heartache and failure you’ve experienced is an expectation that was not fulfilled. Sometimes, that is unavoidable when we are blindsided by the unforeseen, but many times the disappointment, heartache or failure could have been avoided if we started with a more realistic expectation.

First we reflect and dream. If you’ve ever been exposed to a ‘funnel approach‘, you understand the creative benefit of casting a wide net. When we begin with reflection on what has been, we can gain an honest assessment of what worked well, what did not and what our heart’s desires are. From there, we set goals. If we take the time to align our goals with our standards and boundaries, we are setting a target that is true to who we are. Next comes planning and this is where things can fall apart if we do not take the time to examine our expectations. Let’s look at common pitfalls:

Life is dynamic – Many of us plan as if life is linear or static. We set a goal, list out the objectives and begin the process with the expectation that if we simply follow the steps, we will move directly toward our goals. You probably chuckled out loud when you read that, as most of us realize this is not how life works but if we are honest, we often plan as if it does. We expect that the conditions present at the start of our process will remain static as we move forward so that we can concentrate on what we are trying to achieve. We all know this is far from true – change is inevitable but when you are planning out the procedures for reaching a goal, do you take the time to consider: What changes will affect my process? What shifts are already happening around me? What supports or factors am I counting on that may disappear? What blessings may come my way that would make this goal obsolete? When we plan as if life is ever changing, we will not struggle as much when the reality of that unfolds.
Life is not a destination – I love a solid sense of “arrival”! It feels so good to work hard for something and then finally attain it. The problem is that we can wrap our sense of worth, stability and/or well being into a particular goal and that is always a setup for disaster. Many of you reading this have learned the hard way that achieving that goal you set did not give you the sense of value, security or health you thought it would. At least not long-term. Instead of basking in your arrival, there is this creeping sense that there must be more. Growth is lifelong, there is no point where we can sit back and believe we are finished. Well, that sounds horrible…Who wants to live on an endless hamster wheel of striving? That is definitely not the alternative! Instead, let me trot out the trope of “life is a journey”. Yes, we’ve seen it on a thousand cards, posters, mugs and t-shirts because, it’s true! We must root our sense of worth, stability and well being in something higher than goals we achieve. Psychology calls that a secure base. Once that is established, our goals become opportunities for growth, not the thing that defines us. When our goals do not define us, we can approach the journey with balance and less tension. Detours happen on the journey and we have our secure base to slow us down, ground us, and help us find the path we need to be on. As you plan your steps toward a goal, ask yourself what you are expecting achievement to accomplish for you. You’ll catch the unrealistic expectations for value and security that set you up for burnout and disappointment.
Rest is not optional – I’ll sleep when I’m dead: We’re all familiar with hustle culture; the concept that good things come only to those who maintain the grind. Perpetual productivity becomes the ‘holy grail’ with down time or self care dismissed as hindrances to success. Capitalism requires continuous expansion and individualistic cultures offer little investment in a collective safety net, so for many of us some form of hustle feels necessary. Realistic expectations demand that we respect the systems in which we operate so I must acknowledge this reality, especially in the USA. However, while there may be little to no societal support for sleep and the art of doing nothing, our bodies need what they need. This presents a dilemma that must be wrestled with in planning: What is the bare minimum pace I must maintain in order to meet my survival needs? Are there other activities I can forgo in favor of the rest my body needs? (Note that rest is defined as sleep and quiet time for reflection.) What is at stake if I do not get enough rest? What consequences have I noticed in the past? Do my goals allow me to incorporate rest along the way and how do I make sure that rest happens? Adjusting our expectations for rest allows us to avoid the inevitable mental, emotional and/or physical crash that comes when we let society dictate our expectations for constant effort.
Life happens in cycles – Similar to the linear expectation that gets us in trouble, many of us plan with absolutely no attention to the cycles operating in and around us. A quick glance at nature shows that everything operates in patterns of progress, rest, regression and renewal. Yet we plan and operate as if we are exempt! How would our planning change if we took into account the cycles at play from the reproductive cycle we women face to economic cycles, work cycles, individual mood cycles for those around us, to empire cycles, etc. What cycles internally and externally affect your life? Where are you in each of those cycles? How do the various stages of each cycle affect your progress toward a goal? Understanding the ebb and flow of cycles helps us build flexibility into our expectations and our planning. The idea of seasons is another way to look at cycles and you can find a deeper dive on that here.

So, if you’ve reflected on your heart’s desires and set SMART goals, it’s time to identify the knowledge you’ll need to gain, the skills you’ll need to master and the day to day habits and practices you’ll need to cultivate in order to reach those goals. Those are the specific components of planning. Once you have them, come back to this post and review the expectation pitfalls against the objectives you’ve identified.

May I encourage you to complete a time budget: tallying the amount of time regular life tasks as well as self care and goal-directed tasks take. Remember to include the time it takes to prepare for a task or commute to where you need to be. Add in a 10% margin (that’s 17 hours) and see if everything fits into the 168 hours we all have each week. Talk about working with realistic expectations! Adjust your planning accordingly and you will have a much more effective road map for reaching your goal.

Your final step is to sit with your planner/life organization system, whether analog or digital and record your deadlines and reminders each day, week or month. Block the times in your calendar that you will need to do the things that are priority for you. Life comes at us fast so we must protect our time against the things that will very easily consume it.

Filed Under: Emotional Health, Leadership, Mental Health Tagged With: Career, Leadership, Mindfulness, Purpose, Self Care, Self Knowledge

Business Success

June 16, 2018 by Andrea

We are in a season of business volatility, do I have time to worry about healthy organizational culture?

**This is the second in a two part series. Click here to read the first post.***

Intelligence and knowledge are so common these days that we can’t trade on just those anymore. Emotional intelligence, applied to corporate culture design is the factor that sets you apart and is the key to longevity. In part one of this series, we defined business smarts as the usual trifecta: strategy, marketing and finance. ‘Smarts’ gets you in the door. Let us not minimize that. However, you need emotional intelligence to work the room. Here’s the cool thing: learning requires clarity and interest so organizations that focus on health automatically get smarter. Whaat?! Think about the airline in part one’s story. Their company has the smarts but smarter does not automatically lead to healthier since we are typically relying on expertise rather than creativity and relationships. It’s like a bank safe full of cash (smarts). Organizational health is the combination to access the safe.

Organizational health is an integrated and intentional approach to the things we already know matter, but usually attend to in isolation: team building, strategic planning, productive meetings. Reflect on my airline fiasco story from part one. Can you fathom the losses leaking from the bottom line daily? (Every member of our group ended up with a $500 flight credit. A credit I was loathe to use as I NEVER wanted to sit on one of their planes ever again). Organizational health is ridiculously expensive to ignore! More importantly, the physical, emotional and mental toll on you when you work in an unhealthy culture is far too high a price to pay for short term gains.

The corporate landscape has shifted dramatically in the past few years. Obsession with bottom line maximization at any cost, rooted in runaway greed and/or perceived scarcity has infiltrated the business world from billion dollar corporations to small businesses. Add to that, the unknowns of AI integration and we are facing years of turbulent adjustment and transition. Owners and C-suite members face a choice: short term gains or long term sustainability. Run with the strategies of the moment and grab every dollar you can because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed or slow down, prioritize sustainability and outlast the chaos. BOTH smarts and emotional intelligence are key to survival in the long term. Strategy, marketing and finance define your business’ ability to live to fight another day. Emotional intelligence gives you an asset that transcends every trend and fad. It prioritizes human resource – the key component of longevity. After all, without humans, we have no customers and customers will crave and prioritize human connection more and more as we fall deeper into the black hole of technology. If you want to be one of those still standing when the industry house of cards topples, tending to organizational health is your secret weapon.

As a counselor dedicated to holistic health – this is the factor that drives my passion for helping businesses design a healthy culture. Combine that with my 15 years in the corporate world in various positions of leadership, several years of higher education leadership plus years as a successful business owner and you have a uniquely qualified individual who understands both the business and psychological components of organizational culture. The fact that healthy organizations are more likely to increase productivity and profit is a nice bonus that pays the bills for all of us 🙂

To learn more about organizational health – check out this great resource:

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Business, Corporate Culture, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Culture

Let’s talk business

June 15, 2018 by Andrea

What is “organizational culture”?

Why does it matter?

**This is the first of a two part series. Link to the second post is at the bottom.**

After 30 minutes on the plane, we were all asked to get off as the mechanical problem identified needed further attention. We were a band of 25 people from Orlando heading to a connecting flight in Newark that would take us to the other side of the world for a study abroad course. This was not a great way to begin our adventure. When the plane was still unfixed a couple hours later, tensions rose. We began to abandon hope that we would be able to continue on together. However, as negotiations began, to figure out how to get all of our members across the Atlantic, employees insisted that since our tickets had been booked as a group – they could not break up the reservation to split the group onto available flights. This, despite the very real mathematical problem of ZERO flights heading into Greece with 25 open seats over the next several days. The story is long and epic so I’ll offer the low-lights:

Due to employees’ inability to use common sense and creatively problem-solve, several flight opportunities passed before they finally realized they would have to split the group. One half was put on a plane to a connecting city. The other half was placed in a hotel for the night which turned out to have trouble with running water. The staff at the hotel commented that they are forever housing ‘refugees’ from this airline.
When the second group boarded their plane the next morning, they again had to deplane when a mechanical problem was once again identified. They eventually left on a different plane.
Both groups upon arrival in Frankfurt found that their reservation had not been properly transferred to the partner airline that was rescuing the flights and so they had no seats booked to our destination. Thankfully, this new airline did have a different organizational culture and a few nail-biting hours later, managed to book seats for every person….except one who ended up having to wait alone in a foreign airport for a later flight. It just so happened that she was the one student who had expressed a mortal fear of being separated from the group because on a trip she had taken in undergrad, a classmate was separated from the group and found murdered. We begged and pleaded for someone else to be left behind but already taxed by their efforts to fix the ticketing problem, they explained that because the original airline had not broken up the group booking in their system – they were unable to switch out any individual tickets.

This particular airline has been in the news numerous times over the past few years for GROSS mis-steps resulting in severe consequences. They are a perfect illustration of poor organizational health manifested in high turnover, low productivity (major fleet issues), politics which prevent employees from having the freedom to problem solve, confusion and low morale. The employees we encountered were clearly unhappy and we could not blame them. The public remains puzzled as to how these problems continue. A closer look at the players reveal experts in all the usual concerns: marketing, finance and strategy. Clearly, the problem is not smarts. So what is it?

Organizational health. I’m not talking bean bag chairs and napping rooms here. It’s hard to describe; difficult to measure objectively, but you KNOW when it’s good (Southwest) and you KNOW when it’s bad (the airline we were on). It’s a simple concept but it’s incredibly complex to implement. Finance, Strategy and Marketing (smarts) are the what. Organizational health is the how. The way in which you implement and maintain budgetary management, goal setting, and telling the corporate story – that is organizational health. That strays into emotional and awkward territory which is why it is typically skirted over in management schools (or spoken of largely in intellectual terms) and avoided by most managers/leaders. Problem is, as organizational culture expert – Patrick Lencioni asserts: sustainable success is impossible without BOTH smarts AND health. Business leaders may want to stay in their ‘smart’ comfort zone but guess what?

Intrigued? Interested in learning what this looks like and how it applies to you? Stay tuned tomorrow for more…

Part Two

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Business, Corporate Culture, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Culture