It wasn’t an empty someday-we-should-do-that promise. It was a commitment in honor of 40 years of friendship. A date was set; plane tickets were purchased. No hesitation. No excuses. All in!

Planning the adventure gave my guy a distraction during chemo. He extensively researched and created an itinerary chock-full of reservations for tours, hikes, cabins, and dinners in Sedona, the Grand Canyon, and Phoenix.

But the day before we left, his oncologist delivered the news that his most recent scan showed a potential new issue. Additional tests would be needed upon our return.

The uncertainty of his health weighed heavily on us as we boarded the plane and met his friends at the airport. When he shared the unsettling news, the group was visibly shaken.

The fear of the future was threatening our time together. 

I suddenly recalled the phrase “Be where your feet are.” Coined by Scott O’Neil, author of the book by the same name, this mantra invites us to focus on the people and the moment directly in front of us instead of mentally living somewhere else.

I needed to ensure we did not miss these friends and this moment.

So, for the entire week, whenever I witnessed worry walk across my husband’s face, I pounded on the table and shouted, “Hey! Where are your feet?” Returning to us, he tentatively responded, “Right here.” I then encouraged, “Great! Join them!”

Soon, we were all reminding each other, “Be where your feet are!”

Each time someone mentioned Monday morning or some other future event, someone else would yell, “Find your feet! Find your feet!”

The result?

• A week of feeling acutely present.
• A week free from brooding about the uncontrollable future.
• A week of genuine laughter and shared adventures.
• A week of intense awareness of the beauty surrounding us.

Being where my feet are, I discovered a deep appreciation for the value of investing time and energy in creating the present with people who are important to me.

While we don’t yet know the results of any tests or what the future holds, I’m not going to miss this moment worrying about the next one.

I found my feet. And I’ll continue to nudge my husband to find his, too.

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.

They didn’t hit it off initially, but eventually they stumbled upon a shared love of Norse mythology. This commonality bridged their acquaintance-to-friend gap.

Over the next few years, they formed a literary group with other colleagues to discuss and workshop each other’s endeavors.

In December 1929, Tolkien courageously asked Lewis to review a poem Tolkien had been working on for four years. He was apprehensive about sharing it with the world but felt safe doing so with Lewis.

After reading it, Lewis wrote to Tolkien praising his work and offering suggestions for improvement.

Tolkien greatly valued Lewis’ perspective, so he revised his poem to include many of Lewis’ recommendations.

Lewis sparked in Tolkien the courage and confidence to pursue his masterpiece, offering feedback and encouragement throughout the process.

In 1965, Tolkien reflected on his relationship with Lewis and wrote: “He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more, I should never have brought The Lord of the Rings to a conclusion.” 

And then Tolkien reciprocated when Lewis asked him to review his work. Tolkien offered, in Lewis’ words, “substantial and unsparing critique and feedback.”

Grateful and earnest, not insulted or defensive, Lewis incorporated Tolkien’s contributions.

Lewis credits Tolkien for urging him to renew his faith, which, in turn, fueled his imagination and creativity in penning The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Through their galvanizing relationship, they encouraged and supported each other as they exchanged advice, suggestions, and ideas that transformed their respective novels.

What allowed their peer mentoring relationship to flourish and ultimately produce masterpieces?

They discovered the essentials for turning friends into peer mentors:

• Trust: explore commonalities and create experiences
• Courage: vulnerably share interests and aspirations
• Wonder: look for ways to exchange wisdom
• Invite: ask for specific support
• Gratitude: greet all input with respect and reverence
• Eagerness: open and welcoming, not defensive or outraged
• Reciprocate: offer observations and suggest ideas
• Nudge Don’t Judge: “Is this goal big enough for you?”
• Champion: cheer effort, praise progress, encourage more
• Action: turn conversations into action

Peer mentoring can play an important role personally and professionally. Turning casual connections into contributions deepens our relationships and propels us forward.

Friends are soul-filling. Purposeful peers are powerful!

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.

When Clark joined the team in 2021, the team started winning. By 2025, Vanderbilt won 10 games, beating six nationally ranked opponents. Clark led one of the best turnaround stories in college football, earning him SEC Coach of the Year in 2024 and 2025.

On The Learning Leader podcast, Clark shared his secret: “Relatedness is our edge.”

He continued, “In today’s environment, people don’t actually see each other. We don’t take time to know each other, love each other, or care about one another.”

“Relatedness is this idea, this shared experience we have. It’s a sense of belonging and community. It’s a deep, foundational respect. That’s what we’re cultivating here at Vanderbilt.”

“Once we learn how to see each other at that depth and understand one another, and care for one another, and fight for one another, we carry that as an edge in our performance.”

Interestingly, Clark’s obsession with relatedness is not about retention. Every year, he loses team members as they graduate from Vanderbilt. But as long as they show up, he is committed to helping them strive, not merely subsist.

According to the Self-Determination Theory, we each have an innate tendency to grow and a universal need for nurturing from a social environment. In other words, we crave connection, compassion, and community. We want to trust the people around us, feel like we belong, and experience caring for others.

But the onslaught of AI distances and disconnects us, depriving us of relatedness and undermining our motivation to grow and develop.

For relatedness to be our edge, we cannot allow it to occur accidentally or be thwarted. We must design for it. We must normalize humanity.

• Assign a champion to everyone new to the organization, team, and leadership
• Launch structured, formal mentoring programs
• Engage in mentoring as a Mentor and a Mentee
• Create structured peer connection opportunities (ex, speed mentoring events and cross-unit shadow days)
• Incorporate personal check-ins, remembering people’s important milestones
• Use conversations not to demonstrate competence but curiosity
• Admit uncertainty: “What am I missing?”
• Ask for dissent: “What are we not seeing?”
• Acknowledge people for contributions on and off the proverbial field
• Identify moments that mattered with people each week
• Make time for end-of-meeting reflections and gratitude

By designing for relatedness, we can ensure connection is prioritized and repeated, which fuels trust and belonging.

Most teams don’t lack caring; they lack expressed caring. 

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.

Based on his experiences, Will recently published the book Unreasonable Hospitality and launched The Summit, a training workshop focused on the book’s concepts.

Upon creating the Summit, Will expected people to attend with their colleagues. But when he reviewed the guest list, he discovered that many registered to attend alone.

So, in the spirit of “unreasonable hospitality,” he offered to connect each solo attendee with another for dinner the night before. Most accepted his invitation, allowing Will to play matchmaker. He connected 40 people and booked dinner reservations for pairs at restaurants around town.

How Will defines “unreasonable hospitality”: doing something thoughtful, generous, or personalized for someone that goes beyond what’s expected, even beyond what is “reasonable” in a traditional sense.

It’s beyond excellence, accuracy, efficiency, and even politeness. It’s about making people feel deeply seen, valued, and cared for through unexpected, personal gestures.

Ways my team infuses unreasonable hospitality into our interactions:

• Lue personally and swiftly responds to every help desk question.
• Meg personalizes participant monthly emails for every program leader.
• Julie researches evidence and ensures program leaders meet standards.
• Patty uses LinkedIn to get to know our clients and prospects personally.
• Olivia eagerly accepts challenges to contribute to every project.
• I give participants the spotlight (and then prepare them to shine!) to share their experiences on our monthly podcast.

Ways Mentors can leverage unreasonable hospitality:

• Reach out to Mentees immediately upon being matched.
• Text between scheduled meetings with encouragement or a resource.
• Look for new opportunities and new connections for Mentees.
• Invite Mentees to shadow a meeting or an event.
• Connect Mentees to their next Mentor.

Ways Mentees can engage with unreasonable hospitality:

• Have a completed goal worksheet ready by the first meeting.
• Block Mentor’s calendar with invites for every meeting.
• Send a list of questions in advance of each meeting.
• Share insights, ideas, and resources to contribute to Mentors.
• Connect Mentors with potential Mentors.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I met the guests at my wedding with unreasonable hospitality. 

Like Will Guidara, I wanted people who traveled far to feel confident about connecting with strangers. So, I created a personalized name tag for each guest with their hometown, their connection to us, and an interesting fact. Our guests felt special, engaged, and playful!

Forget the easy button. Effort for exceptional.

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.

Sydney joined a cast steered by Elisabeth Moss, the show’s lead actress, producer, and director. 

Being part of the production, she watched Elisabeth work on the script in the writer’s room, direct scenes behind the camera, and, in front of the camera, perform. Sydney witnessed firsthand Elisabeth shape the show’s creative direction.

Sydney was always fascinated with the business side of the industry. But observing Elisabeth made that future possible.

In 2022, Sydney ventured behind the camera with the rom-com Anyone But You.

As the executive producer, Sydney pitched the concept, hired the actors, and sold it to Sony. She explained proudly, “I put the whole project together.” Not unlike her inadvertent Mentor, Elisabeth Moss.

Inadvertent mentoring is a consequence of the Leader Amplification Effect, as explained by Adam Galinsky in his book Inspire: “When you’re a leader, you’re constantly being observed. Those around you are attending to your every move, studiously interpreting your expressions, and analyzing your every word.” 

In other words, leaders (and Mentors!) attract attention, which then magnifies their actions and intensifies their influence. 

As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage.”

And the attention that stage demands is amplified when the actors on it are cloaked in leadership titles.

When Diego Rodriguez, Senior Nursing Director at City of Hope, joined our podcast recently to talk about feedback, he echoed Shakespeare’s sentiment.

Diego shared an experience in which he participated in a meeting with a new executive who, he noticed, was texting and laughing with someone else. Diego reached out immediately following the meeting to offer his observation and advice:

“I’m concerned that other people might have taken this the wrong way. I want you to be aware that people are looking at us. When you’re a leader, it’s like being on stage – all eyes are on you always. Everything you do and say can influence people in a positive or negative way.”

Unaware of the spotlight on her behavior, this leader was grateful for Diego’s mentoring conversation and welcomed his future support in her success.

Self-awareness and perspective-taking help us temper the Leadership Amplification Effect.

The stage bears enormous responsibility but also a tremendous opportunity. An opportunity to use this stage to inadvertently mentor… advertently.

As people watch our every move, we can influence them with our courage, our compassion, and our contributions.

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.

During this year’s March Madness, he sat down for an interview.

“What’s one thing about college basketball that you would not want to change?” Without hesitating, Coach K responded playfully, “Winning.”

The interviewer then asked, “As a coach, where do you find the words if [your players] lose?”

Coach K: “The toughest locker room is the losing locker room, especially in the final championship game. I want my locker room to be emotional. I either want them to be jumping like crazy or crying like crazy. Because I knew they gave their all. And that’s what I would tell them: ‘I’m proud of you for giving your all.’ Then you hug them and try to help them move forward.”

In his book, The Gold Standard, Coach K outlined his “Next Play” philosophy for moving people forward.

He taught his players to:

• focus on the next play instead of the last play
• refocus after a mistake
• let go of disappointments
• not waste too much time celebrating a play

Coach K: “To waste time lamenting a mistake or celebrating success is distracting and can leave you and your team unprepared for what you are about to face.”

The Next Play approach shifts the focus from ruminating on the past to acting on what’s in the moment.

When cows ruminate, they bring their food back up to chew it again slowly.

When we ruminate, we mentally chew on prior experiences, especially negative ones. “I should’ve said…” or “I wish I had…” Useful for digestion, not direction. 

Next Play can powerfully stop the spiraling:

• “OK. That happened. We can learn from it, but we don’t have to stay there. What’s your Next Play?”
• Shift feedback to action with, “What’s your Next Play based on this information?”
• Anticipate conversations or situations deteriorating, and prepare by asking, “What will your Next Play be if it goes sideways?”

Success isn’t about life being perfect; it’s about shortening the recovery time when it’s imperfect. Next Play becomes our recovery script.

“What’s the next play?” can strengthen emotional readiness, curtail the fear of failure, and actively write the present storyline rather than dwell on the past.

Missteps are expected. Stagnation is optional. 

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.

Not rigid and beleaguered, a loose garment is flexible, flowing, and carefree.

Intriguing. If I “wear the world like a loose garment,” I might better adapt and improvise, staying open to the unexpected, unfazed by the constantly changing world, unbothered by others.

I tested the board’s advice during a recent travel fiasco when…

• My flight home from a conference was delayed by 10 hours due to storms, then canceled.
• The airline gave me a $20 meal voucher, which turned out to be worth only $0.20.
• The airport luggage handler wouldn’t store my luggage, boxes, and conference booth display, so I dragged them with me all night.
• The airline booked me into a hotel, but upon arrival, the hotel clerk informed me there were no vacancies due to a trucking convention.
• Stranded in Louisville at midnight, I dragged my luggage and conference booth materials back to an empty airport to wait 7 hours for the next flight.

With each roadblock, I whispered, “Loose garment. Be like a loose garment.” 

An altercation, a tantrum, or even venting would not have changed my situation, a confluence of events outside of my control.

So I stayed responsive and receptive, amenable to my shifting circumstances.

When I returned to the airport at 1:00 am, I investigated my sleeping options: a wooden platform under the stairs where a man was settling in, a deserted yet dingy carpeted area, and three brand-new, empty couches with electrical outlets!

Delighted by my discovery, I invited the man to upgrade his accommodations. We each grabbed a couch, and from 1:00 – 5:00 am, we dozed and chatted, without judgment or agenda. 

His name was Tom, a transient trucker taking refuge at the airport while his truck was locked at the convention center. Tom bears a storied past and an inconvenient present.

He was so grateful for sharing my couch discovery that he insisted on gifting me tchotchkes from the convention: two pens, a flashlight, and a fidget spinner shaped like a semi steering wheel.

At 5:00 am, I wished Tom well, checked my bags again, and trudged through security.

Here’s what I discovered:

• Instead of clinging to expectations, I danced resiliently through the chaos.
• Instead of judging other people’s situations, I focused on my own.
• Instead of should’ing, I practiced could’ing.

When we wear the world like a loose garment, we relax our grip, knowing that:

• Nothing is personal or permanent.
• External circumstances don’t reign over us.
• Success and failure, opinions and ideas, titles and jobs all change.

We can care about life, work, and relationships without allowing those to define or control us.

We can be engaged but not entangled. 
“One of the most reliable ways to guarantee we suffer
is to cling tightly to what is always changing
in a fundamentally unpredictable, nonnegotiable world.
You get rope burn.” ~ Pema Chodron, a Tibetan Buddhist and author.

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.

According to Fogg, we assume that giving people information will change their behavior. But information does not equate to action, as evidenced by our unfettered access to the world’s information via the internet since 1995.

Why? Fogg believes we are missing an emotional link.

For change to happen, Fogg says three things must come together:

1. Motivation to do the behavior
2. Ability to do the behavior
3. Prompt to take action

According to Fogg, his breakthrough was understanding that there has to be a prompt, something that says, “Do this behavior now!”

A calendar reminder is a prompt. An alarm is a prompt. A Post-it note is a prompt. A Mentor asking about progress is a prompt.

We can forge behavior change simply by focusing on prompt design.

• Identify the new behavior
  (ex: exercise more or stop procrastinating)
• Find the prompts that can trigger the new behavior
  (ex: engage a Mentor in our goal to exercise more and procrastinate less)
• Use feelings of success to wire the behavior and create a new habit
  (ex: Mentor praises our progress)

Mentors can serve as prompts, but only if we involve them with regular cadence.

I’ve observed the power of the “Mentor prompt” when I ask this question on the final program evaluation: “How often did you meet with your mentoring partner?”

After analyzing the results of this question alongside the impact-of-mentoring questions (ex: What did you accomplish together?), I invariably discover, time and again, that those who meet consistently achieve more, feel more confident, and create more value than those who meet “as needed.”

For example, a recent program evaluation survey revealed that:

• Of those who met monthly, 92% increased their confidence and 98% achieved their goals
• Of those who met as needed, only 61% increased their confidence and only 54% achieved their goals

Not surprising. When we know that someone we respect and trust (our Mentor) will inquire about our attempts on a certain date, we take action. But without that regular prompt, we might want to change, and we might be able to change, but we don’t typically take action to change.

To design a powerful Mentor Prompt, enlist a Mentor to meet every 2-4 weeks to:

• explore your vision for change,
• ask about your efforts,
• support you through struggles,
• praise your progress

Why change alone? Exchange willpower for mentor power! 

© 2026. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved.