general-business

I’ve been called relentlessly positive. I’ve been called Polyanna-esque. I have a default, deeply engrained ability to look on the bright side and see the best or the good in a given situation.

Every spring, many of us start to feel a sudden rush of activities driving us towards summer. It’s almost as if the period between spring break and Memorial Day is jam packed full of all the things we hope to get accomplished in the first half of the year.

Deep down, through and through, I am a lover of people. I delight in the presence of others, I love to energize other people and to be energized by them. I love to inspire them and to be inspired by them. I love to encounter the way they look at the world and learn from it. I love to be able to share the workload. Yup, I’m a "people-ist". I love people.

I happily find myself in a job that...

“If you are five minutes early, you are already ten minutes late.” Vince Lombardi

Meetings continue to be the topic of much discussion, sarcastic memes, eye-rolling, and general irritation. The good news here, and frankly the positive reality we don’t hear much about, is that there are good meetings. There are examples of productive gatherings of people working towards a common goal that...

So when was the last time you sat down and wrote a thank you note? When was the last time you received one?

Just this week in the mail, I received two Thank You notes, and they warmed my heart!  Reading them was like a gift in and of itself.

But it seems that the act of writing and sending a thank you note is becoming harder and harder to come by. How sad is that?

A good friend and fellow leader told me a story today of the rush that he felt as he watched his team come together to work towards a common good.

Sometimes decisions, for whatever reason, don’t stick. Maybe they were poor decisions. Maybe they didn’t get enough buy-in. Maybe they weren’t communicated clearly. So what are the warning signs? How can we tell if our decisions aren’t having the impact or effect we thought they would, and what can we do to course correct?

I am struck with how many times we seem to demand perfection of ourselves or of those around us. It’s as if in our haste to make things excellent, we forget that perfection is a direction not a destination. And then we, as fallen human beings, will continue to make mistakes day after day. When we demand perfection of someone else, we are setting an expectation that is unachievable. When we...

When I think of networking, I think of conferences, as I’m sure most do too. I attended my first in October, and it was something we were constantly reminded of in nearly every session I attended. It was in one of these that the idea of networking was presented with the tagline of ‘Never Eat Alone.’ 

What a perfect way to present networking in a simple way to someone whose never done it. 

The first step to being successful is stepping out of your comfort zone- and that means being uncomfortable  

As the new year is well on its way, a time of change is upon us. It’s visible in the leaves as they shift colors and fall off trees, in fashion, as the shorts and tank tops of summer are traded for coats and boots, and as some forge ahead into the New Year, resolutions in hand.