Posts tagged as:

Courage

A Leadership Fail for Black Friday

November 21, 2011

As I write this, it is four days prior to Black Friday, long considered the kick-off to the start of the retail industry’s crucial holiday shopping season.  Every year, Black Friday starts earlier. Now, Thanksgiving Day is the new Black Friday. Many retail chains have announced plans to open at some point on Thanksgiving Day [...]

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Do You Have a Career Bucket List?

June 17, 2011

The kids and I were on our way to a Little League game the other day when I mentioned, “Hey guys, what do you think about making a list of things to do during your summer break?” “You mean, like a Bucket List?” asked my son. “That’s a great idea!” I exclaimed so on the [...]

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Friends Don’t Let Friends Stay in Their Comfort Zone

January 13, 2011

  This weekend I posted the following comment on my personal Facebook page:     As so often happens with social media, my “posse” rallied to my side, offering lots of encouragement.  One note of encouragement was especially helpful to me. It was sent via private message, but I’ve received permission to anonymously republish it here [...]

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Are You a Courageous Leader?

January 6, 2011

Google the words “leadership” and “courage” and you’ll get 10,500,000 search results. Clearly, it’s a hot topic. If you’re a leader, it’s likely that you don’t think of yourself as particularly brave— that description seems reserved for heroic acts, like saving someone’s life, right? But, it appears that perhaps you have more going for you [...]

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How To Accept an Apology at Work

November 16, 2010

Recently I wrote a post encouraging professionals to have an interpersonal “disaster recovery plan” for those times when they wish they could take back an unfortunate choice of words. After all, I reasoned,  if you’re truly a professional then you’ll have some sort of plan for the (rare!) times you let your emotions get the [...]

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Disaster Recovery for Emotional Outbursts

November 12, 2010

You’re a professional, right? [Waiting for the affirmative.] Yep, that’s what I thought. Me too. One of the hallmarks of professionalism is emotional restraint; I pride myself on my ability to zip my lips when needed. But once in awhile, I experience a momentary lapse—times when exasperation or sarcasm gets the best of me and [...]

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Tasty Salsa and Avoiding Snap Judgments

September 8, 2010

If you’ve been a People Equation reader from the start, then you know that last year, I taught myself the hot-canning bath method of preserving food and learned a few things along the way.  This year, I used the Labor Day weekend to do some late-summer canning. At my request, Mr. People Equation obligingly stopped [...]

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The Z Factor

September 2, 2010

KNOWING WHEN TO ZIP YOUR LIP IS KEY TO SUCCESS Given that my company’s tag line is “master the people equation”, I’m always on the look-out for clever “equations” that tie to human dynamics. Of course, people are far too complex to be reduced to one “correct” answer like a math equation. Still, it’s fun [...]

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Managing Large Group Discussions

August 26, 2010

ENLIST YOUR AUDIENCE TO MAKE THE LOAD LIGHTER Ever go to a conference break out session and experience 90 minutes of lecture, paired with the never-ending Power Point slide deck?  It’s not a very engaging experience, is it?  Now, imagine attending a four-hour conference break out session, with 70 other people in the room with you. [...]

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Making Decisions, 100 Years at a Time

June 3, 2010

I’ve been watching reruns of the Ken Burns series The National Parks  on PBS. It’s an in-depth look at the birth and evolution of our country’s national park system.  Called “America’s best idea” by writer and historian Wallace Stegner,  men both famous ( Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir )and lesser-known (Stephen Mather , Charles Young) were [...]

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