The Secret To Dealing With Difficult People: It's About You Do you have someone at work who consistently triggers you? Takes credit for your work? Wastes time with trivial issues? Acts like a know-it-all? Constantly criticizes? Each of us has a lens through which we see the world, but we have the power to view the world through other lenses. There are three worth trying on when you find yourself defaulting to negative emotions.
Updated Mon Oct 17, 2011
The 12 Attributes Of A Truly Great Place To Work Great employers must shift the focus from trying to get more out of people, to investing more in them by addressing their four core needs--physical, emotional, mental and spiritual--so they're freed, fueled and inspired to bring the best of themselves to work every day. Here's a 12-step plan to getting it done.
Updated Mon Sep 19, 2011
We Don't Know What We Don't Know "It is a law of human nature," David Brooks writes in his newest book The Social Animal, "that the more men you concentrate in one happy pack, the more each of them will come to resemble Donald Trump."
Posted Wed Jul 27, 2011
Ten Principles To Live By In Fiercely Complex Times If you're like most people I work with in companies, the demands come at you from every angle, all day long, and you have to make difficult decisions without much time to think about them. What enduring principles can you rely on to make choices that reflect openness, integrity and authenticity?
Here are ten that work for me:
1. Always challenge certainty, especially your own. When you think you're undeniably right, ask yourself "What might I be missing here?" If we could truly figure it all out, what else would there be left to do?
Updated Thu Jul 21, 2011
Is The Life You're Living Worth The Price You're Paying To Live It? What toll does it take, over time, if you get too little sleep; skip breakfast or settle for something unhealthy; struggle with a relentlessly challenging commute; attend meeting after meeting with no breaks in between...
Posted Thu Jul 7, 2011
The Six Keys To Surviving On The Road The greater the performance demand, the greater the need for intermittent renewal. It's just common sense. If you're spending down more energy than usual, you need to refuel yourself more than usual.
Posted Fri Jun 24, 2011
Take Back Your Lunch And Transform Your Day A senior executive at a Fortune 50 company recently invited my company in to help his team better manage the overwhelming demand he believed was taking a toll on their productivity and their satisfaction.
Updated Thu Jun 16, 2011
What I've Learned About Collaboration From My Daughters I was sitting last week with my older daughter Kate in a restaurant in Ashland, Oregon, as she described the extraordinary experience she's had as the assistant director of The Pirates of Penzance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival during the past three months.
Updated Mon Jun 13, 2011
The Only Thing That Really Matters Think for a moment of the last time you felt triggered -- pushed into negative emotions by someone or something. Here, for example, are several of my triggers: feeling taken advantage of, not getting a response to an email I've sent to someone, and not being acknowledged for good work I've done.
Posted Fri Jun 3, 2011
The Only Way To Get Important Things Done Most everyone I meet feels pulled in more directions than ever, expected to work longer hours, and asked to get more done. But in these same audiences, there are also a handful of people who are getting things done, and somehow still managing to have a life.
Updated Wed May 25, 2011
Whatever You Feel Compelled To Do, Don't Remember the last time you pushed the "send" button for an email and then instantly regretted it? Or snapped at someone in a moment of frustration?
Posted Thu May 19, 2011
Let Us Now Praise Uncertainty A few weeks ago, I found myself in a conflict with someone in my work life. I felt he had clearly violated an agreement we'd made. My first reaction was righteous indignation. It was a familiar feeling.
Updated Tue May 10, 2011
A Wake Up Call Which would you rather have: air traffic controllers who are permitted to take naps during their late night shifts, or air traffic controllers who stay awake but operate in a constant state of fatigue?
Updated Tue May 3, 2011
The Power Of Deceptive Simplicity Most people who give advice for a living either offer too much or too little. What moves me most is deceptive simplicity.
Updated Tue Apr 26, 2011
How I Became an Optimist For most of my life, I was someone who saw the cup as half empty. In my mind, pessimism was simply realism. I took this to be my temperament -- an unchangeable personality trait.
Updated Wed Apr 13, 2011
Why I Appreciate Starbucks Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, is not an empty suit.
Posted Tue Apr 5, 2011
We're in a New Energy Crisis. This One is Personal. Throughout our lives, we've taken our capacity -- the fuel in our tanks -- for granted. It's no big deal to spend down our resources, or the planet's, so long as we're assuming there will always be more available.
Updated Wed Mar 23, 2011
Take Back Control of Your Work (and Your Life) We've truly entered a world of nonstop input and output. So what exactly would it take to seize back control of our lives? We need a series of deliberate practices to counter the powerful forces so accelerating our lives.
Updated Thu Mar 17, 2011
The Case for Vacations Did you know that the United States is the only country in the industrialized world that doesn't guarantee paid time off for vacation, illness, or personal emergencies?
Posted Wed Mar 2, 2011
Take Back Your Attention As we seek to work, just a keystroke or two away we also have access to Google and YouTube, books and blogs, TV shows and movies, music and video games, email and texting, newspapers and magazines, and countless web sites and apps.
Updated Fri Feb 11, 2011
