general-business

A Few Thoughts on Having and Being the Favorite

My grandmother gave all five or her children a t-shirt that said, "Mom loves me best." My dad, aunt, and uncles all started teasing each other about who was really the favorite child. Each insisted that mom loved them best.  My grandmother, of course, said something about how they were all her favorites. While this might seem like a sweet gift...

6 Phrases for Kinder, More Productive Conversations

It’s no secret that civil discourse in our modern American society is, at best, eroded.

6 Characteristics Leaders Look for In Their Employees

We’ve heard it before, and we will hear it again: soft skills really are important. Emotional intelligence and communication skills are paramount in the decisions hiring managers make to engage a given candidate, or not. But once you’ve got the job, what kinds of things can you do to cause a boss to look on you with more favor?

Employee engagement continues to be a hot topic. But, we've found that fully understanding what it is, and even more importantly, what to do about it, can be tricky.

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.