Brian Tomlinson
Clarity. Growth. Impact.
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Leadership Debt: How AI Is Killing the Future of Leadership
In 2015, Zappos offered its employees a strange deal. Adopt a new system with no bosses and no managers, or take a severance check and leave. Around 18% took the…
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What Astronauts Know About Fear (That Leaders Don’t)
In April 2001, Chris Hadfield was holding onto the side of the International Space Station with one hand, 250 miles above Earth, when he went blind. He was on a…
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Someone Else Wrote Your Self-Image (Take It Back)
Andre Agassi won eight Grand Slam titles playing a game he hated every single day. Not “grew tired of.” Not “had a complicated relationship with.” Literally hated. The first sentence…
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The Truth About AI Layoffs
In 2002, a baseball team (the Oakland Athletics) with almost no money beat teams with ten times the budget by noticing that everyone else was measuring the wrong thing. The…
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How to Write in the Age of AI (Without Losing Your Soul)
If you’ve been writing with AI for a while, you’ve probably felt it too. You put in a solid prompt, and it gives you back something clean. Everything is right:…
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Credentials vs Stories: Why Buyers Choose Story in 2026
The job market is brutal right now. More highly qualified people chasing fewer roles than maybe ever in my career. And credentials might get you in the door, but they…
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Decision Poverty: Why Your Calendar Overload Isn’t a Time Problem
I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a senior leader who told me that his calendar no longer belonged to him. For a bit of context, he’s one…
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The Self-Leadership Stack: 3 Documents That Make AI Sound Like You
Peter Drucker wrote the manual for working with AI in 1999. He just didn’t know it yet. Drucker spent his last years writing about a specific kind of worker. Someone…
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Self-Leadership Has Receipts: The 52-Study Case for Leading Yourself First
Stop calling it soft. For twenty years, leaders have treated self-leadership, inner work, and “lead yourself first” as wellness language. Those words fell into the same category as “fluffy.” It’s…
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Mastery Without Mattering: The Hidden Driver of Executive Burnout
I’ve been working my way through Brad Stulberg’s The Way of Excellence for the past few weeks. Long-time fan. The book is about how to find the best in yourself…