I received a call last week from a client who was in, as he described it, a “crisis.” The sudden and unexpected resignation of two key players on his team within two days of one another had been quickly followed by a near “mutiny” of the remainder of his team as he leaned on them to pick up the slack. …
Falling in Love
Tom and I just celebrated our 13th year together and our 8th wedding anniversary. The year we fell in love, we had both turned 50 and had a better idea of what we were looking for in a partner and, maybe more importantly, what we deserved. Our courtship and the process of falling in love overshadowed everything else in our …
Drama-Free Living
One of the things I am most passionate about is the power of operating in work and life “drama-free.” Why? Because I’ve seen the massive positive results that living drama-free can produce with my very own eyes. People who operate drama-free move their personal and professional lives forward in ways that those who live ‘in drama’ can’t even imagine or …
Scared to Life!
There are times I look back on raising kids and wonder how on earth any of us survived, me or them. Take trick-or-treating on Halloween for example. Trying to keep both my boys who were seven years apart in my motherly sights with all their friends in tow was like herding hungry cats. One Halloween, having worked all day and …
The 4 “C”s
I have often believed that my actions in life and work are an extension of my confidence. In other words, if I want something to happen for myself, I just need to muster the confidence and do it. Over time, I have discovered that three things are wrong with this idea. First, I had them backwards. You don’t need …
Committed Sardines
You probably already know the largest mammal on earth is a blue whale. But, did you know the blue whale is so large that it can take up to five minutes to turn 180 degrees to swim in the opposite direction? No surprise, really, when you consider an adult whale is roughly the length of 2 ½ Greyhound buses, weighs …
Failure Avoidance Vs. Error Recovery
I often hear from employers and managers that finding critical-thinkers, problem-solvers, or self-starters is hard to do in this day and age. And yet, it’s interesting that the very traits that makes them so are generally frowned upon in business and in society in general—taking risks; exploring new possibilities; learning and adjusting from the inevitable mistakes. Many of the world’s …
We Can Give It… But Can We Take It?
Why is feedback so easy to give but so hard to receive? In my experience most of us have negative emotions associated with feedback. Receiving feedback, even from people we trust and with whom we have good relationships, can cause us to have a defensive, emotional response. Sometimes that response is voiced and sometimes we internalize it. Either way, we …
The General’s Tent
Stephen Covey once said, “Wars are won in the general’s tent.” In other words, preplanning, deciding on priorities, and committing to action is the difference between random success and consistent success when it comes to your most important goals. If you’re like me, you do battle every day (all day!) with the “tyranny of the urgent” as emails, texts, messages, …
The Story We Tell
If you’ve ever seen the movies Courage Under Fire or Snake Eyes, you know that a circumstance or event can look very definitive from one vantage point, causing us to come to a conclusion about which we feel very confident. But, viewing it from another angle can cause us to draw a completely different conclusion and, therefore, experience a new …
