2011′s Top Ten Posts

To say 2011 has been a big year for me and my family would be a gross understatement. I left my old job and started a new one, moved from New York City to Northwest Arkansas, and welcomed a new baby into our family. In addition to these huge life changes, this blog has seen its traffic grow ten-fold.

As I did last year, I decided to collect the year’s ten best blog posts all in one place. I defined “best” based on page views, number of comments, and my own completely biased opinions. With 80 posts to choose from this year, selecting the top ten was tough—here they are:

Leadership or Manipulation? This February post deals with the thin line between leading others and manipulating them.

5 Tips for Knowing When to Stop I love when I can write a post that applies to leadership, relationships and creativity. I think I achieved that in this post from February.

Leveraging your Fear as a Leader This March post was the result of Michael Hyatt encouraging me to expand a comment I had made about the misunderstood nature of fear.

Leading with your “Yes”  A fun night with my family turned into this popular post in March about fighting our tendency to resist others’ ideas.

How to Share Credit without Losing Any This post from April shares a mistake I made when I when I was 20 that has shaped my view of sharing credit ever since.

3 Tips for Displacing False Beliefs I think this post from June is fundamental to understanding how to lead anyone in the world—including yourself.

The Power of Listening I’ve been thinking a lot about listening this year and this post in July tried to put into words how powerful I think it is.

What Darth Vader Taught me about People This post from August about a seminal moment in my life is now far and away the most popular post on my blog.

My 3 Core Values as a Leader This September post was the result of my good friend Doug Crandall asking the question (he’s good at asking great questions).

5 Things You Could Learn from Military Leaders This popular November post came after a conversation with a coworker who was preparing for a speech in Japan.

It’s been an amazing year for me, both personally and professionally—thanks for sharing it with me! I’ve so enjoyed the conversations we’ve had and I’m looking forward to even bigger things in 2012.

Which of the top ten were your favorites? If I missed your favorite post, what was it?