Adrian Pei – Healthy Leaders

Author

Adrian Pei

About the Author

Adrian's passion is to make leadership connections about topics that matter. His current job is to oversee leadership training and content development for an Asian American ministry organization. Adrian consults, writes, speaks, and designs content. He loves innovating, collaborating, and seeing a project through from start to finish. Adrian graduated with degrees from Stanford University and Fuller Seminary and lives with his family in sunny southern California.

The Temptation of the “Quick Fix” in Leadership

Sometimes we have to look at things on a deeper, heart level and understand why people and situations are the way they are. Even why we are the way we are, and what we might need to change.

Great Leaders Are Great Observers

This is Part 1 in a series on Listening Over my life, I’ve been fortunate to work with many leaders who are older and wiser. Sometimes when people have that much experience, they’re tempted to be “advice dispensers” – to always need to educate, direct, and caution everyone around them. But many of the leaders I’ve […]

Why Leaders Must Not Be Afraid of Doing Hard Things

As leaders, doing what’s “most needed or important,” and serving others and the greater good, often requires doing the hard things in life, whether it’s confronting somebody or holding them accountable for their actions.

The Role of Patience and Pain in Leadership

Looking around at the most relevant and cutting edge ideas about leadership today, I’m guessing these two ‒ patience and pain ‒ probably wouldn’t make the list..

Great Preacher = Great Leader? Not So Fast!

When a leader admits his or her weaknesses in front of an audience, I think to myself: “That’s great that you see that and can articulate it so well. But how will you follow that up? What kinds of steps will you take over the next few months and years in response to what you just shared with everyone? Are you sharing because you want [...]

The Evolution of a Leader

I have yet to meet a leader who hasn’t doubted him or herself at some point in their lives. Yet so often, we can feel pressure to have things “all together.” Or when we make the same mistakes again, we feel we should have learned our lesson already. We feel we should have “arrived.” But is the journey […]

Are You Drained or Tired?

Do you ever worry that if you give to others too much, you won’t have anything left at the end of the day? Author Dr. John Townsend addresses this common concern and some misconceptions about love in his book Loving People, which I recommend. Dr. Townsend writes that it is normal to feel tired when we love […]

Before We Criticize Our Leaders

I can still recall walking out of the leadership meeting, feeling deflated and invisible. They just don’t get me, and what I’m trying to do, I thought to myself. I felt frustrated, indignant, and angry. And then I did the exact same thing to a group of younger leaders. I neglected to value and honor their […]

Resisting Temptation: The Urgent and the Loud

When was the last time somebody called you on the phone just to ask how you were doing? No particular item of business to discuss … but just to check in? Or, the last time you were new to a group setting, who (if anyone) approached you to introduce themselves? From my experience, these kinds […]

Great Leaders are Great Observers

Here’s my hypothesis: the more we talk, the less we notice. What do you think? Over my life, I’ve been fortunate to work with many leaders who are older and wiser. Sometimes when people have that much experience, they’re tempted to be “advice dispensers” – to always need to educate, direct, and caution everyone around them. […]

Great Answers or Great Questions?

Four questions I love to ask, and three unexpected benefits that come with them. According to a well-known story, Nobel Prize winner Isadore Rabi shares how his mother unknowingly taught him to be a scientist. He explains, “Every other child would come back from school and be asked, ‘What did you learn today?’ But my […]

Less Is More

I’m sometimes shocked at how little I have to actually do in order to make an impact on another person. When I coach leaders, I often find myself: Repeating back to them what I heard them say Simply acknowledging the challenge or value of what they’re doing Over half the time, I find that these things are […]

Why Don’t We “Circle Back” More Often

In the fifth chapter of Facing the Demands of Leadership, I write about the leadership skill of “learning from our mistakes.” Let me tell you a personal story about this. In college I had a “falling out” of sorts with a friend. For years after college I didn’t see him and it bothered me that […]

Why Logic Is Overrated

Many people aren’t looking for a rational explanation from their leaders, but for a relational connection.

Ask, Don’t Assume! (Open and Closed Systems)

What I’ve learned is that there are two modes we get into as leaders ‒ closed and open. I wouldn’t let anything or anybody get in so everything stayed the same.

From Passivity to Empowerment

Leading in weakness does not mean passivity, and it’s not just for times of crisis or exhaustion.

Ambition, Fame and Our Obsession With Success

No matter how big our church or ministry is, no matter how much we are respected, we are never “above” God’s words that remind us that “the first shall be last” and that “those who exalt themselves will be humbled.” If anybody was deserving, it was Jesus, but He chose humility, sacrifice and death for those He loved. May our ambition not [...]

How Leaders Become Out of Touch

What can we learn about leadership from the United Airlines fiasco in 2017?

What Is Leadership?

I like to think and write about leadership a lot – I love that there are so many ways to look at it. My passion is to make unique connections between these insights, and raise important questions for leaders to consider.

Indirectness: Is It Good or Bad?

Is it time for us to go beyond “East vs. West” leadership charts?