What Three Conferences in a Week Will Teach you #60 April and October are challenging months if you speak as well as attend conferences. It seems they are great months with no big distractions like major holidays. Though we have Spring break and Halloween, they don’t seem to slow the conference organizers from scheduling in late April/early May or October…
Hearing Versus Listening #59 What happens when you have something important, pressing, vital or interesting you are eager to share with someone and they don’t really pay attention? Even worse, what happens when they hear you, play along and seem to be with you, but they’re not? You know the drill, when someone is there, making eye contact, seemingly interested…
Engagement is Easy #58 For most busy people, we justify our actions by the number of items crossed off a list, the number of events attended, the number of tasks we can complete in a day. While we’re busy doing all we do, we encounter other people. Whether we are multitasking, searching our devices, reading a paper, looking at a…
Add More Value #57 In Blog #56, I talked about inspiration and motivation. One of the points I made was that you should recognize people exceeding expectations. At a recent talk about core values, I made the point that core values set the bar for how people participate with you and your team at work. It is what gets you the…
12 Ways to Inspire Your Team #56 There’s a big difference between inspiration and motivation. As a leader, your job is inspiration. You are the one who has to dig down, find the goodness and communicate it even when the circumstances around you suggest otherwise. Your message is always about what’s possible, where we’re going, not where we are and…
You Can’t Have Both #55 If you want a different answer, you must ask a different question. When you’re “stuck” anywhere in life – your business or career, a relationship, your health, your finances, your free time or your family – if you want to see something different, you need to ask new questions. Bigger questions, bolder, challenging questions. These…
You Can’t Have Both #55 If you want a different answer, you must ask a different question. When you’re “stuck” anywhere in life – your business or career, a relationship, your health, your finances, your free time or your family – if you want to see something different, you need to ask new questions. Bigger questions, bolder, challenging questions. These…
It’s Not About the Words #54 Some things in life you have to experience to describe. As I write about this, I’m sure I won’t do it justice. We attended Ali’s choir concert recently, and it’s always an uplifting experience as we enjoy choral music. We enjoy most forms of live music, but when it’s also one of your kids performing, it’s special. When…
Hard Work Pays Off #53 Hard work pays off. You don’t always know when, but it does. We were doing Spring yard work recently. It was mostly raking and removing leaves, sticks and debris from our gardens. Last year, we moved away from a suburban lot, slightly wooded, mostly landscaped and straightforward. It didn’t require too much and was something…
Stop Seeking Balance #52 Balance is a myth (or as I wrote in my book, Chasing Perfection, balance is bullshit!). It’s the incredible illusion of our work and home life being “balanced” in some magical way that the world around you sees as an enviable reality being experienced every single day. It’s a topic that cycles around during specific times of the…