This summer, two of my sons traveled to Long Island in New York to sell pest-control services. This job requires their employees to work in teams and go door-to-door doing summer sales.
Due to an increase in employees working in off-site locations, one of the biggest challenges for leaders in recent years is managing these remote employees.
Why do we make mistakes? We are human--that’s how we learn. Hopefully we learn not to make the same mistake again, but do we? Many times there are situations when we don’t know what we are doing because we can’t see clearly or understand how to fix the situation.
During a radio show interview about my book, Overcoming Fake Talk the interviewer was very much intrigued by the notion of the energy that we portray as we express our thoughts and opinions. Understanding the dynamics of the energy that accompanies your conversations is a great way to improve the power of your message.
That’s a contradiction in terms. When I was a boy, my brother and I would get into arguments over some dumb thing or another. Rather than having us talk the issue out, our Dad would make us put on boxing gloves, then take us out in the backyard where we would duke it out. Since I was three years older than my brother, I won every argument.
At the end of the sixties, I was a young college student, the Vietnam War was finally ending, and I had the opportunity to leave the country and venture to France. On my first weekend in the north of France, a large group of us decided to ride our bikes from Lille to Dunkirk. After traveling over 100 kilometers to our destination, we parked our bikes and ran down to the beach to relax. As we walked down the beach, we noticed a large hill of sand
We are sending ourselves messages. Often we don’t receive them until it is too late. A couple of weeks ago, I had blocked out an entire Friday to write an article for a magazine. Just as I got into the car, my cell phone rang. It was the dentist reminding me of my appointment that was to occur in ten minutes. Because it had been awhile since seeing the dentist, I decided to keep my 8:00 a.m. appointment. Somewhat frustrated and numb, I returned home to pick up my laptop and head to the library. Big mistake! As I pulled up to...
Find out how our conversations have many parallels to experiences running the river. Sometimes when we least expected it, the river would grab our boat, throw it against sharp rocks, and cut the rubber tubes that kept the boat afloat.
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Are You Working on You? 10 Questions for Improving the Quality of Your Leadership. Here are a number of questions you may consider to improve your awareness and the quality of your leadership.
Recently a vice president of human resources shared with me that he had been approached by another senior executive who was having trouble with a particular employee. When he asked her what the problem was, the other executive informed him that her employee was just not doing the work that was required. In response to her query he asked her, “Are you using the magic words?” Somewhat puzzled she answered, “I guess not because nothing has changed.” Then she asked, “If you don’t mind sharing, what are the magic words?”
When my second son graduated from high school with honors we were very proud of him. When all the celebration and fanfare were over, I asked him, “If there was one thing that you could do over, what would you do differently?” He responded, “I would have ignored all the blame and criticism from my coaches and just gone out and played my game.”
Everyone has a story. Sometimes the story we tell becomes an explanation for why we don’t achieve the results that we want. The first challenge is to notice the stories we tell. The second challenge is to change our story so that what we speak about moves us to create what we want. Changing one’s story is not easy because the best stories are true, and they usually describe things for how they currently exist. We become additionally challenged because once we see things in a particular way, we have difficulty seeing them any differently.
I recently gave a speech on the topic of EQ to an audience of over 1,000 people. After my presentation, I went to lunch along with the participants. Sitting at the table just behind me were two women who struck up a conversation about my presentation. I couldn’t help but eavesdrop a bit. “Look! It’s him,” one woman said
This summer has been a new learning experience for me.--this is the first time in a number of years where my two oldest sons returned home to work and live. I must admit that I have not been forced to relate with these two twenty-somethings for such an extended time in such close quarters.
Recently a college professor friend of mine told me that one of his younger students would not confront him directly about the struggles that he was having with his class. However, the student did send my friend a private Twitter message that he was needing his help. He replied to the student’s tweet with a tweet of his own inviting the student to come to see him the next day at a specific time during his office hours. Only then did the student
